Further Developments

I got as far as I could with the character design without dropping asleep on my keyboard. I decided to keep the alien much more tree-like and I started playing with the branches and roots, making them look a bit more like an octopus' tentacles. I also think clothes was the easiest way to make them look intelligent, detract from their "treant" appearance, and elevate them as more mysterious, "How do they put on clothes!?!"

I also started the environment study. I was struck by inspiration when I was talking to Ellen earlier and decided I wanted the environment to be designed as a "cathedral of light." Which makes sense because the aliens are so plant-like that I wanted to flood their environment with light. I think the stark lights would also create very interesting speckling effects on the floor and in combination with the alien's own foliage.

I started looking up bizarre trees and I found I really like banyan trees, particularly their root systems and their odd behavior of growing supporting root structures from their branches. I thought this would be perfect to create columns or pillars in my environment. I also was interested in trying to recreate a cathedral's stained glass windows by creating intertwining branches and vines to create port-holes along the walls. A few wells of light above water fountains completes the environment. Since its 2:00am I think I'd like to sleep a bit before looking at the environment again. I'd like to come up with more ideas for it. I'll probably think about drawing out individual elements to give them more design-attention and to better illustrate their structure. The light well is particularly important I think because right now it gets lost in the stark value-image I have here.

Oh, here are some banyan tree images from google for good measure.