The first thing I decided to focus on was creating the Cure Crystals, the "Precious", the Cure Weapons and their Shining Star transformation item.
With these items covered it allowed me to consider the main characters power-up forms they would receive in the series. The first being the Shining Star Precure form, a look that unifies them as a team. The second was their Elemental Angel forms for the end of the series.
For their Shining Star forms I decided to keep their hair, boots/shoes, gloves/arm accessories and the style of their outfits in their midriff sections the same. This way it keeps their appearance inline with their original appearance. To unify their look they were all given the base colour of white with their original colour acting as their secondary colour. All were given an open front double skirt, a gold belt with a star, stars added to their boots, choker and hair accessories. I also gave Cure Sagittarius a very minimalistic hair accessory to bring her into alignment with the other 11 already having a hair accessory. They are all also given a double bow on their chest with their new transformation item in the center. From here I worked on the Elemental Angel forms, the first step was for me to consider the wings they would have. I wanted each to have unique wings but a style that links directly to their element's theme.
For the Earth Cures I decided to give them wings that would relate to the idea of the Earth element itself. This brought me to insect wings. With them also representing the plant life on the planet insect wings were a good choice as insects play a vital role in a plants life cycle. For Virgo I went for elegant butterfly wings, Capricorn wings that were more traditional wings in shape for flies and Taurus wings that resemble a dragonfly. The Water Cures I based their wings off of various fish fins with Pisces resembling a lion fish, Cancer's off of a more spiny fin seen on bottom feeding fish such as plecos and Scorpios based on the flying fish. The Fire Cures had an obvious choice of wings made from fire, so Leo got a wide spread pointed fire based wings and Aries having more sleek and higher positioned wings. Sagittarius I went for a different route, I gave her wings that resembles leaves with the edges slowly burning. For the Air Cures I gave feathered wings, with it being an obvious choice I decided to give Libra and Gemini wings that had a similar look to each other given that they are sisters. So the top of Libra's wings are given a feather layout to match Gemini. For Aquarius I gave her much more curved wings to emulate a small bird such as a sparrow or robin.
I simply reversed the colour scheme on the Shining Star forms to create a base for the Elemental Angel forms. This gave each character a much more pure appearance with all of the white with their wings acting as the main accent of their theme colour. I also added a third layer to their skirt and added more gold to areas such as their shoulders, arms and boots.
With the main characters primary designs for the series complete I turned my attention to the Gods and Goddesses of the series. I knew the genders of them so the only thing to consider was how to portray their element?
With the basis of portraying the elements in the Gods and Goddesses I decided to make the God of Earth emulate an warrior barbarian, the Goddess of Water to be much like a Grecian Goddess with a long elegant dress, the Goddess of Fire I emulated battle armor with large metal wings to give the impression she is constantly in flight and the God of Air I went for a more modern style in his clothing while also being a very handsome male figure.
I discussed the series with friends to gain insight into peoples initial reaction to the series concept. A friend of mine in America offered to design for me Gaia as she had a really good idea for how she should look, and knowing her art skills I was very happy to allow her to proceed.
I discussed the series with friends to gain insight into peoples initial reaction to the series concept. A friend of mine in America offered to design for me Gaia as she had a really good idea for how she should look, and knowing her art skills I was very happy to allow her to proceed.
Channeling a Roman Goddess she came up with a design for Gaia, her attention to detail was perfect. Gaia even has multi-coloured eyes to represent the four elements. One eye is blue and green while the other is red and yellow. This small touch really impressed me, so I compiled her design for Gaia with her children.
My next task was to consider my villains more. While I had the first four generals I was still left with the Anti-Lifimals and the Evil Cures. I decided rather than designing all the Anti-Lifimals for the entire series I would simply focus on the first Saga.
Where Petulance will be acting as the only enemy for one episode and another featured a battle purely between the Earth Cures and Water Cures it left me with only 7 Anti-Lifimal designs to create. Where Precure tend to have pretty unintimidating foes in general, I decided I wanted mine to be a bit more twisted and adversarial. I took basic ideas and began to play with them. For example the Chaos Wolf started with a simple were-wolf design, but I wanted it to look more of a hybrid with scaled hands, feet and tail, where the Soul Slimer I wanted a clear jelly style mass which is bubbling while bone protruding from the top.
While my Evil Cures were a way off in the series I decided I wanted to consider their appearance now, as I could slip them into background shots in their civilian forms as a surprise for the reader later when it is revealed who they are.
While my Evil Cures were a way off in the series I decided I wanted to consider their appearance now, as I could slip them into background shots in their civilian forms as a surprise for the reader later when it is revealed who they are.
I decided from the beginning to give each a color to correspond to the elements, Red - Fire, Blue - Water, Green - Earth and Yellow - Air. I also made the decision to have each have their own style, to show how unlike the Shining Star Precure, the Anti-Cures of Oblivion were not a unified team. Venom (Yellow) I gave the image of a young prissy girl and having an umbrella as her weapon seemed to fight better than any traditional weapon given her style. For the Destruction (Red) I decided I wanted to break away from tradition and gave her stocking and shorts instead of a skirt. I also decided to give her half a shaved head with a side ponytail to make her seem more rebellious than the other. With Darkness (Blue) I emulated a Samurai so make her the more disciplined member of the group and I wanted her to look like an evil counterpart to Cure Pisces. With Evil (Green) I decided to give her shorts also, but hers are tight fitting, I also wanted her to have a very heavy looking weapon to reflect how she is the leader of the Anti-Cures. Giving them the names Anti-Cure Venom (Yellow), Anti-Cure Destruction (Red), Anti-Cure Darkness (Blue) and Anti-Cure Evil (Green) was to represent aspects you think of when considering a villain.
With this process completed I began to consider the transformation sequence images and the attack images to accompany the episodes. Like the Anti-Lifimals I decided to focus on only the first six characters to appear in the series. Please click the following link to see the process of making the images come to life:
http://neptunestritonproductions.weebly.com/making-the-series-come-to-life.html
http://neptunestritonproductions.weebly.com/making-the-series-come-to-life.html