Planning and design

When looking at feedback to help me produce better quality designs, I had gathered that my characters needed more expression in their body and face. I tried to ensure that with my final design the character was doing something with her body so that she had some sort of expression. This is because she has a mask that covers half of her face; making it hard to convey emotion. In another sketch I used the characters face to show expression, making her quite tough and menacing looking.

The planning and design of my character came from a few different influences. I first started to shape my character in the style of chibi art, using images from the internet to help me replicate the shapes and style. I then took a inspiripation from a children's book that a friend of a friend had recently published, I found that the vector drawings with simple shapes and bright colour appealing to me and easy enough to replicate. I used hints of colour to get an idea of the colour scheme I initially intended to use. I wanted to ensure that the colour scheme was still true to the NHS but also recognisible as a superhero.

Colour palette inspired by classic heroes and the NHS

For this, I was able to look at different colour palettes and determine those that worked best. by looking at classic hero palettes it was evident that as heroes become more modern the colours of their costumes became more subdued and less bright; reds and yellows aren't used as frequently and if so, they are dulled and muted. I then took a look at the palette for the NHS and the colour of scrub uniforms, they varied from a range of blue to blue. When comparing the two palettes it was evident that there was a crossover between them thus making it easier for me to choose a primary colour for my character.

Storyboard and plot

Act 1 setup

The story starts off at home, my hero is lounging at home and there is a disturbance outside. The ground shakes and there is a loud thud; the villain has landed. The news is on the television and we can see that the world has suddenly gone dark, it begins to rain, there are people running for their lives because ‘the virus’ is here, people have been warned of it arrival but now its finally taking its wrath in the city.

Our hero, Frankie Vengence, then gets a call on their pager machine ‘A call to all heroes and non-heroes alike’. Frankie, along with a few other side characters will appear to do the same thing and there will be a moment where the screen splits and shows their faces having a strong look of determination; something resembling the avengers.

Frankie will then try to get to the hospital where the virus is rife and taking over. On her way there are big screens of a Conservative gov telling people confusing messages such as stay inside but go to work but stay inside and eat out. A few of them have the same coloured eyes as the virus, is there a connection here? This is something our character picks up on, but her main target is the virus monster.

(Time jump at some point to get to the brink of the virus being out of control)

Act 2 confrontation

On the way to the hospital where the virus is taking over, our character calls her friends that are also just ordinary people and have jobs in sectors like teaching, health and social care, and public transport services. They each have their own power and aid our protagonist on her way. There is a split scene of all the characters receiving their call and getting prepared to fight. The Met man, a guy that can transform into any public service vehicle, Metrolink, train, bus, taxi etc will take her to the virus.

In the hospital our character is geared up and ready to fight, masks in abundance to hand out to others, hand sanitiser that comes out of wrists like spiderman webs, antibacterial spray guns and fighting sticks she keeps behind her back to ensure that she keeps a two-metre distance from the virus infected zombies.

She finds the virus and tackles it, she is almost at a loss when the zombies start to attack from every angle. Luckily the rest of her team are there to support and they manage to contain the virus. She plans to take it to the government so they can dispose of it at parliament/ lock it away in their underground dungeons...

Act 3 resolution

The protagonist arrives at parliament and is surprised to see the PM and all the MPs doing nothing to help the situation. Some took a doomsday approach and were cowering in corners crying, tearing their hair out over figures and statistics other MPs were laughing and joking, drinking alcohol and paying no attention to the crisis happening outside.

The PM was in a separate room, dark and silent, his eyes glowed green like the virus. The Prime minister was her only hope, he had to do something to help the infected people.. in a brief conversation our hero discovers that the PM has had the antidote all along but didn’t do anything with it, he did nothing to help stop the spread of the virus and when he tried to, it was too late, the virus grabbed hold of him and made him do his bidding - to aid the spread of the virus, eat out to help out etc...

Our hero steps up as a leader and tells our government to follow her lead to get the antidote to the people. With the help of her teacher friend who is a scientist they create a device that can spread that antidote as a gas and can relieve the effects of the virus instantly, a greedy MP that wants to relish in the lockdown and the havoc it has caused tries to stop them alongside a zombie minion of his, however, he is easily defeated and the world has been saved.