For Game Arts, we are tasked to design a wholly original depiction of one of the Seven Deadly Sins, through a series of steps: from silhouetting to rough drafts, refining them, line-art and coloring, to then have a final design.
Before all that, however, we were tasked to research the topic to choose which sin we’d focus on. In my research, I found out a lot of the general definitions of the cardinal sins, along with what Christianity deems sinful in comparison to other religions. In short, most sins (such as greed, pride and anger) are repeated as sins in other cultures and religions such as Buddhism and Hinduism; the only two of the seven sins that seem to be exclusive to Christianity are Gluttony and Sloth.
In the end, I decided to focus on Gluttony, as I believed I could extract more design ideas from it; gluttony is an action, whereas sloth is more of a lack of action, and therefore possibly harder to visualize.
Thus, I started looking at pre-existing depictions of gluttony in media: books, illustrations, animation etc. Some general traits were clearly recurring: it was often portrayed by a bald, fat, disgusting entity, usually in the shape of a man, with a large mouth (or even multiple mouths) and arms reaching out to take more. Basing myself off of this, I started creating silhouettes, basing myself on these for some, as well as purposefully trying to ignore and avoid them for others, to come up with more unique designs.
In general, I focused on entities that would eat their way through anything; for some designs, I based myself on pre-existing beings that eat a lot, like caterpillars or babies. For others, I went more abstract, and pictured monsters that would have eating their only goal, specifically trying to make them non-human and terrifying.
This was a really interesting exercise to me, as I love creating characters; this forced me to think of the immediate design, and to make something that’s instantly recognizable and genuine. A few coursemates walked in front of my computer and recognized these to be depictions of Gluttony, so I believe I mostly succeeded in my task.