MAGICAL GIRL
UNIVERSITY PROJECT
My project was to design a team of magical girl characters. Because many magical girl shows like Sailor Moon put emphasis on the difference between the main characters ordinary life and their superhero life, I chose to design both an everyday and a magical girl costume for each character.
FINAL RESULT
Everyday wear
Transformed
Character one
Weapon
Everyday wear
Transformed
Character two
Weapon
Everyday wear
Transformed
Character three
Weapon
DEVELOPMENT
Moodboard and research
In my research I put the most effort into studying characters from shows that I remember loving as a child or teen.
From this I paid particular attention to:
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How the everday and transformed designs compliment / contrast eachother
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The lack of variety in body types and facial features
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How the transformed designs work together as a cohesive set
Character one
From my reaserch, I noted that the main character of magical girl shows is often the everyday girl who ends up wrapped in something big. I chose to go this route with character one.
As I was designing her, I fell into the approach of the transformed designs being similar to their everday designs but elevated.
Character two
Character two was designed as being the tomboy best friend character like Kyouko / Sayaka from Madoka Magica.
Character three
Like Character two, character three was designed with a pre-existing character directly in mind. She was designed to be the cool, older sister type, mostly based of off Cornelia from W.I.T.C.H and to a lesser extent Mami from Madoka Magica.
Pendant
In magical girl shows, it's typical that there is some kind of jewelry or accessory that they use to transform. Normally, the form and function of the accessory remains the same for each girl but the colour and detailing changes.
I wanted to stay true to this in my design.