Triisp - Character & Story Development

Animation Class Project - Character & Story Development
Triisp came about from an old sketch of a spirit character taking inspiration from the designs of "Journey" and "Sky: Children of Light". Triisp is an anagram of 'spirit' that also sounds like a portmanteau of 'trick' and 'wisp'.

At the start, I had a vague design of a robed character, The thumbnailing stage explored different possibilities so that I could hone in on what Triisp would be. One key design feature I zeroed in on was cloth-like arms, so the variations would have fabric-heavy designs related to different occupations, myths, and superstitions. For example, 7 is a brawler wrapped up in bandages as its cloth characteristic, 10 is a magician with the endless handkerchief magic trick as its arms, 16 is an origami soldier with paper arms, and 18 just has a big rabbit hat. Throughout thumbnailing, the spirit's story would develop into being like "The Fairly Odd Parents" where spirits are assigned to a child, but rather than granting wishes, they are in charge of protecting and escorting children through their dreams, and of course their nightmares. When the child falls asleep, the spirit will be dragged into or see the world warp into the dream the child is having, it could be the walls opening up like a dollhouse, getting pulled into a television, or a beanstalk sprouting from the floor through the roof and lifting them into the sky, as seen in the storyboard.
The thumbnail I would go on to develop is number 6, the fox mask with ropes (Shimenawa) as arms. This design takes inspiration from Japanese culture, the fox mask gave it a quality of mischievousness, but the Shimenawa being a ward against evil spirits ties into the character's role as a protector.