Monster Marketplace Project

A young girl finds herself in a dark and strange world, full of danger and old magic. Here she is only known as The Stranger, and she has a mystery of her own to solve. About me: My name is Seven Bloom, I am a student at PNCA. My focus is studying Illustration and Animation. This project is a semester-long independent study adventure in concept art, world building, and character design.

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A quick peek at a work in progress illustration! This was an older drawing of mine that I always thought had some potential. I've also got some conceptual drawings of the wandering nomad that span several years, so hopefully I can dig them all up and share them alongside the finished drawing!

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Just a spunky crow gal, out on the town, probably looking for some garbage to hoard or some sparkly cloth to steal.

A quick pen sketch and some experimental photoshop coloring

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Wow! Finally, one of the first images featuring a market scene.

This was my final “show stopper” image, featuring the two main characters I worked on- our young protagonist, “the Stranger”, lost in the market; and our slippery, charismatic vendor owner, who is very interested in The Stranger’s background.

I spent Fall developing this project as an independent study, working from a disorganized but excited freewrite and a rough project outline as the basis. From scratch, I started to develop a consistent visual style and with guidance I learned to turn my quick sketches and doodles into a way of creating dynamic character with life in them. It was a huge deal for me- the last few semesters of art school, I’ve been feeling pretty stifled and so having a mentor support me and guide my process along was really a lifeline for my creative process!

In the next week or so, I’d like to compile my sketchwork from this project and post it- for every drawing you see, there’s probably at least 5 other explorative doodles that weren’t included, but helped me develop each creature and idea. Once I finally finish the great sketchbook dump, I can get back to work on expanding the world!

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What a long break between posts! I’m doing well now, but I was pretty useless for almost a whole month- as it turns out, I snagged myself a particularly unpleasant strain of mono. I couldn’t draw or even hardly do anything other than sleep… thankfully, that’s all over now.

So here’s my rough composition sketch, awaiting some much-needed input from my mentor. Composition has always been a challenge for me, so I’m really trying to push myself and finally demystify the experience.

I’m looking forward to getting down to business on this piece. It will be the last piece of work from this independent study, and the beginning of a new stage on this project.

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Background character design exercise, from shapes!

Scribble some loose shapes, then come back and try to create characters. This was really challenging, but it also really helped me push the variety in my character design.

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The Butcher! Clever, devious, charismatic, he runs the biggest and most successful food and grocery stall in the Market. All manner of dishes, produce, meats, breads, and spices can be found at his shop, and he works tirelessly to find new ingredients and recipes. He’s also works very closely with the Eater Sisters and has his hand in all sorts of pies, including some black market activity. 

If you’re on his good side, he’s a likeable guy with a great memory for names, faces, and your favorite foods. He uses his influence and means to put himself on the public’ good graces, and even those in the know of his shadier dealings generally regard him as a good egg. He’s been known to give a hot meal to those down on their luck and is just generally the kind of guy you’d like to know, at least superficially.

However, he can be petty, ill-tempered, and downright explosively violent, if pushed. Ultimately, all of his efforts are self-serving, and he is quick to even the score with anyone who has wronged or offended him. Any vendor brave or foolish enough to attempt to compete with his business often finds that their stall (and all their wares) have suddenly become very flammable in the middle of the night. 

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The Stranger!

A young teenager from a large American city, through means unknown, finds herself in the Monster Marketplace- and what’s more, she’s gained a strange symbol on the palm of her hand that wasn’t there before.

She also can’t recall if she used to lose control of her body, consumed by a sentient, plasmatic green fire either, but she feels pretty confident that it definitely is a new thing. Puberty, am I right?

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The Eater Sisters (and one bonus fluffy guy)!

The Market largely owes its existence to these two beastly ladies, along with other Eaters who bullied, terrorized, seduced, blackmailed, and bargained to set up trade routes, establish the Market structure, and otherwise create the Temple Market as it stands now. 

Now that the Market is now mostly stable, they spend their days lounging in their luxuriously furnished upper temple room. There’s little that happens that they don’t know about, and they’re quick to get a cut of whatever new opportunity arises, or an actual physical cut of anyone foolish enough to try to sneak past them. They didn’t get the name Eaters without good reason.

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Food you might find in the market! 

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Playing around with the environment of the market. I love the jumbliness of the tacked-on structures to the original stone walls, but the color palette needs some warmth! The Market should be strewn with bright bolts of fabric, colorful lights, and jumbles of characters bustling around. I might add this to this picture in the future... but for now, more characters!

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Cats, kittens, and chicks!

Exploring some expressions of the predatory Eaters, some ways that they might style their manes, as well as their relationships with those scaly, feathery puffs they share the market with.

The Eaters are the literal (and figurative) “fat cats” of the Market- they permanently occupy its most opulent quarters, they skim off the top, living in luxury, and make no mistake, they run the place. Complacent and comfortable in their position on the top, they rarely need to throw their weight around anymore, but so help you if you’ve tried to make a buck without throwing some their way, or get too into debt with them...

Despite all this, it’s generally agreed that they run the place pretty well. The Eaters are a bright, shrewd bunch, lazy but efficient, cruel but not unfair. As it turns out, that’s a pretty good arrangement for running a bustling hub of commerce and culture. It’s mostly gamblers and petty thieves who get eaten these days, anyway, you know, riff-raff and scoundrels. The Eaters are not technically evil, exactly, they’re just living true to their nature.

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Working on some silhouettes for the shape of the temple ruins, which now house the market.

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One of the earliest sketches of The Stranger’s power/curse. Like I had mentioned before, the idea of a curse in her body came long before her character, and she was built around this idea.

This strange mark may be the reason and the means she is now in the world of the Temple Market. During times of powerful emotion, the mark may awaken- she loses control of her body and a strange thing occurs, where plasma or flame comes from her arm. It may envelop her, or it may create another shape, and there may be a lot more to this strange apparition than what is apparent.

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Compilation sheet of the character development of The Stranger!

Being the only human character in my story, it was initially very easy for me to draw a fairly generic girl at first and feel satisfied for the time being. However, a lot of my initial visual research for this project focused on a lot of other cultures, and after a while, her character began to develop and come to life through the sketches. Most of these early sketches show a Caucasian-like face, before her racial identity began to solidify.

Initially starting out with a vague idea of a cursed hand with the design of an eye on the palm, I built her character around this feature. Eventually she developed into this concept of a young American teenager, who through means unknown has found herself in this totally alien fantasy world, much like Alice in Wonderland, or Chihiro in Spirited Away. Initially I had actually planned for her to be part of this world, but from another country, but I’m a sucker for culture clash, especially when that culture clash is “modern person suddenly meets a lot of monsters”.

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A rough compilation sheet of the character design process for the Butcher!

His design went through many evolutions, starting with the idea of a feathered lizard fairly early. As I began sketching him, his shape and personality began to really form. His final design can be best described as “skinny rooster in a silk vest”.

One of my favorite surprises that came from sketching him was how much more expressive and interesting he became when I simplified his face and added that triangular, occasionally gaping mouth. Based on a nightjar’s face (a bird-eating species of bird with a very small beak, but a HUGE MOUTH), it allowed a lot more fluidity in the expressions of his mouth, as well as creating opportunities for truly alarming facial expressions.

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Concept sketch of the Stranger meeting a few Messengers on her arrival to the Market!

Messengers, for all their valuable work in the Market, are often under appreciated and ignored. For the Stranger, these were the first creatures who were not outwardly hostile or indifferent, a welcome sight after being roared at by all manner of enormous and strange creatures.

The Messengers were excited by this friendliness, but they also had an ulterior motive... bring her (and all strange newcomers) to The Butcher!