Thank you very much for the opportunity.
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Welcome to the contest. This is just a concept I assume, any updates for this entry and project, please?
Thanks for checking in. I’ve been continuing development on Lycoris and documenting the process as I refine her character design, costume, bow, and spider-lily visual motifs. I recently finished coloring several thumbnail studies and am gathering the latest 3D WIP screenshots now. I’ll share additional progress as the character and cinematic stages develop.
These four thumbnails explore Lycoris’s silhouette, movement, and visual identity through a range of poses and compositions. I began in black and white to focus on shape language, costume flow, and the relationship between her body and bow, then added color to test the balance of her dark palette, red spider-lily accents, and supernatural presence. Together, they helped refine the direction for her final character design and establish the elegant but dangerous tone I want to carry into the 3D model and cinematic.
I designed Lycoris’s bow in Blender to echo the same spider-lily motifs used throughout her character design. The curved upper and lower limbs are shaped like blooming petals, with additional floral, vine, and wrapped details running through the central grip. I also added stamens as arrows that regenerate to give the weapon a ceremonial, supernatural quality while keeping the overall silhouette readable. The goal was for the bow to feel elegant and decorative, but still dangerous enough to match Lycoris’s role as an archer.
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For Lycoris’s clothing, I began building the outfit in Marvelous Designer to translate the layered shapes from the concept art into a workable 3D garment. This stage focuses on establishing the fitted base, dramatic detached sleeves, waist panels, and long trailing fabric that will create movement around her silhouette. The current colors are temporary and mainly help separate the pattern pieces while I refine the proportions, layering, and drape before moving into detailing and texturing.
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For Lycoris’s spider-lily effect, I created and animated the flower in Blender, then converted the motion into a Vertex Animation Texture for use in Unreal Engine. This allowed the petal movement and blooming animation to be stored in texture data rather than relying on a traditional skeletal rig. The VAT workflow keeps the effect lightweight and reusable while preserving the organic motion I wanted for the supernatural spider lilies that appear during Lycoris’s attack sequence.
For Lycoris’s hair, I created the hair maps in Blender to prepare the strands for a real-time workflow. I organized the shader setup to generate the opacity, depth, flow, ID, and root information needed for the final hair cards, then arranged the strand groups into a compact texture atlas. This stage gives me the control needed to preserve the long, stylized shapes from the concept art while keeping the hair efficient enough for use in Unreal Engine.
This mood board establishes the visual direction for Lycoris by combining traditional Japanese shrine imagery, dark fantasy environments, archery references, spider lilies, red moons, ritual talismans, and supernatural details such as glowing eyes and fangs. I also gathered references for her hairstyle, makeup, clothing, footwear, and accessories to help balance her elegant shrine-maiden influence with her more onminous half-yokai nature. The overall goal was to create a world and character that feel mysterious, ceremonial, feminine, and dangerous.
For Lycoris’s face, I customized both the skin and eye textures to reinforce her half-yokai appearance. I edited the diffuse maps to add the soft purple-red eye makeup seen in the concept art, then created a vivid red iris texture to give her gaze a more supernatural and intimidating quality. These texture edits were tested directly on the character in CC5 to make sure the final look stayed elegant and feminine while still clearly separating her from an ordinary human.
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I completed a 13-panel storyboard in Clip Studio Paint using a Japanese animation layout template. I approached it as a fast visual blueprint for the short film, concentrating on shot clarity, camera placement, movement, and storytelling rather than polished line art.
The sequence currently contains 13 panels and establishes the moon, Lycoris’s bow, the soldiers searching for her, her dark purification abilities, the confrontation with the yokai, and her escape. I kept the drawings loose so I could finish the storytelling pass quickly. I’ll develop the atmosphere and lighting next through color scripts in Affinity, including the moon turning blood red and the supernatural visual effects.
