Rainforest Shaman - Concept Art

This was an exercise in character design and concepting for a character art course. I was given the prompt to create a "forest witch," and I wanted to do something new with this concept that's been done the same way so many times. To do this, I experimented with interpreting the word "forest" in many different ways- a marshy bog full of mangrove trees, a frozen pine wood, or a dense jungle rainforest. I let the locations inform the design, and wanted the costume to reflect both utility, and ritual significance. I ended up loving this idea of a rainforest witch designed after a parrot. I experimented with non-human designs, but decided that it was more interesting to have the costume introduce the bird elements. The hardest part was introducing the parrot coloration without losing the "witchiness" of the original prompt.