Character Design - Session 3

For the morning task Justin gave us a building/monument and a style for us to remake the structure in.
I was given the Roman Colosseum and subterranean.

I started by trying to draw the Colosseum as it is. Honestly I've never actually seen what the Colosseum looks like, I had only ever seen restorations in media.

Then I had to try and make it subterranean. My first idea was to set it in a cave and have all the openings in the Colosseum be holes. However this idea lost the Roman architecture.

Attempt #2: This time trying to keep the ancient style, but still setting it underground.

Justin asked us to think about what the structure is for and what kind of story would happen here. So I thought of 2 different ideas.
1. It's a Roman Arena. This is the most logical idea as this is what the Colosseum was anyway, this fact however does make the idea kinda bland and unoriginal.
2. A quarry. So when thinking about the word "subterranean" the first thing that came to my mind was fantasy dwarves. Dwarves in fantasy are mostly known for their massive underground cities and mines, so I thought an underground quarry would be cool. Also considering it would possibly work well considering the Colosseum has multiple layers, much like an actual quarry.

After Justin came round, we discussed the idea of it being an ancient marble arena that is being excavated for rare stone. It's a shame I never had time to finish this concept.

In the afternoon we went back to working on our projects. This time working on the world/environment.

Since my subject is medieval England, I decided my setting should be a castle. So I looked up a load of references for old British castles and drew them.

Justin quite liked where I was going with the castle, but wanted me to focus more on the story and layout of the environment. So with this drawing you can see where the two characters will be.