Turtle and Coral Concept Design...

The above images show my rough sketch and the finished concept of a turtle gliding over a bed of coral for Clodagh's pre production project, A Plastic Ocean. 

For this design I used Adobe Photoshop and used a combination of Mr Kyles watercolour brushes for the background and the standard pen brush for the line work on the turtle. For the sea I tried to use a combination of shades of blue which gets lighter around the turtle in order to draw attention to the turtle and the surrounding coral. For the coral I used a range of bright and not so bright natural colours you would find in ocean reefs. I used a watercolour coral study as colour reference when painting the coral. I made sure to have the opacity on low in order to blend the colours and give the coral detail and depth. 

In terms of the turtle I kept the design simple and tried to make it as abstract as possible though I wanted to include details such as the spots on the turtles head and flippers and the fan like pattern on it's shell, these are trademark features on most turtles, apart from perhaps the leathered turtle. 

I like the overall look of this design, however I think it would look nicer if I pushed the coral further and added in pieces of plastic to show and draw attention to the plastic pollution problem that the film is addressing.