My group set about trying to find a way to represent death in a less than usual manner; the obvious ideas of a cowled skeleton mounted on a horse and carrying a scythe were quickly placed aside in favour of more unusual ideas.
We cast the net broadly at first with our initial idea generation. Looking at popular representations of death in religions of the world or in media and stories. We also looked at those who effect death such as big game hunters or predatory animals and plants. When we found a Tanzanian lake that would fossilize the bodies of animals that found their way into it which was an image that we found particularly compelling and started us on the route of the lake scene.
We did not initially decide on only one idea, we toyed with a more comical idea of a cat as a big game hunter but eventually settled on our final idea.
During this time we also decided on our style; a slightly exaggerated realism inspired by the exaggerated physical forms of Otto Schmidt's art.
Our final idea, refered to as 'Lake' was to represent Death as a part of nature. A calm influence and an end of things to be met without fear in the end. I liked this idea as it lined up with a few personal beliefs that dying, not Death is the thing to be scared of.
We decided to portray Death as a thing that grows in the darkness and as a beacon to those lost. With this in mind we set about concepting. Initially death was to be in the lake, but quickly rose onto a plinth to display status and to accentuate the journey into death. And Death as a beacon.
Though we started off generally concepting, we moved onto more specialised areas and I was in charge of designing the general body and clothing of the Death character. An initial challenge was to create an androgynous form for the character.
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| Final design |
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