collage in progress

Character designs for Ward 6

In my game design class, we're doing art for, story for, and design for, a complex game of our choosing. At the end of the class, we'll present the idea as if we were pitching it to a company that would possibly make it. Mine's been fun to think about - based possibly sometime in the past few decades, having to deal with "Ward 6" of a mental institution, where people who haven't been "helped" by any form of therapy or treatment have been sent, and where the main character, a young doctor, finds herself trying out a new experimental treatment she came up with herself. (Her father, a stage magician, taught her various seeeekrit forms of hypnotism, and she combines this with her more traditional training as a head dr.)

Basically, she hypnotizes the patient, then herself - and goes into the world of their minds to try and solve their problems in a more, er, direct fashion. Each of the "worlds" is different in rules, goals, and scenery depending on the mind of the patient and the problems they have. (some are puzzle games, some are action-adventurey, some are, well, dangerous.) It's possible to help each patient - but you can also choose to screw everything up, and either way you're in danger of harming yourself too. You get sanity points at the beginning of the game, and can lose them throughout, as well as having a higher chance of hurting whoever you're trying to help. This effects the ending, which can go one of two or three ways.

Anyway, I had to do a presentation of character designs, and it was due a week before I thought it was - so this was all done in a few spare hours I had 24 hours before I had the class. I'll probably make the color job more detailed, maybe.
This is the main character, the young head doctor. Yeah I know the outfit is unreasonable but it's fun! In the mind-worlds she goes into, the pendulum becomes a weapon, a light source, and a healing implement depending on the scenario. Also, before going into the mind of the patient, one can hypnotize onesself to "equip" the tools necessary. (you get clues ahead of time as to what might be necessary, as well as the "patient file" cards.
Above is patient 001, who never speaks, and does simple black and white ink paintings constantly - perhaps as a form of communication, perhaps as a form of self therapy. Her world is much like "harold and the purple crayon".

Patient 003 - obsessive compulsive, anxiety, ect. his world is one big puzzle game of getting everything in order.
Patient 009 - the pyromaniac and arsonist. He's nuts, but possibly knows more of what's going on than the good doctor herself... and tries to warn her, though of course it doesn't work.


Of course, each patient looks "different" in their own minds, and sometimes you don't look the same either - you look like a mother or brother or daughter, because it's what you need to look like to fix it all.