COVETOUS: Building a Concept Art Portfolio

As an aspiring concept artist, I used this honors project as an opportunity to build a character concept art portfolio for professional consideration and artistic development. Concept art generally fits into the pipeline of a TV show, film, or video game’s development after initial ideas are proposed and before integration of the final design into the medium is made. Naturally, character concept art is made with each decision towards body type, hairstyle, costume, and more being carefully crafted in consideration of the project’s narrative. This required me to create my own intellectual property (IP) to design the characters for. Therefore, inspired by my own experiences growing up moving to different countries every few years and consequently wrestling with feelings of belonging, the project is set in a dystopian scenery largely focused on a few main characters while it explores themes of friendship, loyalty, and societal upheaval. Through design and iteration, the resulting portfolio aims to showcase my own artistic ability, investigate my personal struggles with stability and belonging, and pay homage to my decades abroad in different countries and cultures.