Secondary characters

I had been toying with the idea of adding a second mask character and basing the film around them, but over summer as well as falling in love with masks, I fell in love with Kitsunes from Japanese myth. I had created my own characters and storylines separate from this story, and I will admit I decided to add these into the story purely because I liked them so much!

I started out first with these fox characters based on kitsune, they were merely doodles playing around with my own themes on the subject.

























I really liked the shape of the fox and simplicity of the fox so I stayed with the style.
I began to think of them as a group of foxes that lived in a little community. I mused on the ideas that they'd be able to play instruments, and would wear hats and shoes etc. I wanted them to have quite a Japanese feel since that was where I was drawing my ideas from.










Yet more character sketches. The large ball that all my foxes have is something called hoshi no tama, which in Japanese myth are described as a large pearl and they are thought to store a portion of their power in it. I did try to keep close to how Kitsune were described. I was musing on ideas that they would play with this ball when bored, like balancing it on their nose. They also are able to produce fire, which is simply called fox fire. In one of the pictures below I was trying out a more stylized fire to fit in with my style of art.