Stemming from a single illustration concept of a young girl facing off against a horde of Oni, or Japanese demons, I conceived this story following some further research on Japanese mythology. The story follows the aforementioned young girl on her quest to retrieve a rare plant – the eponymous Sakuraba plant – so that she can cure her deathly ill father, while the Oni also seek this plant for their own reasons.
To visualize the story concept, I created a variety of character sheets as well as a mock comic book cover to showcase the various characters and overall visual style, drawing inspiration from both western and Japanese animation. All character art was created in Photoshop CS6 using a Wacom tablet, with additional graphics created in Illustrator CS6.
