In 2025, my team and I started working on the Shadowborne Chronicles animated series. As the director of the series, I was in charge of creating the characters.
The show follows two leads, Umbriel and Aria, who fight against Zarka, the villain trying to take them down.
In order to take them from text to visuals, I worked with Daniel Matui, our amazing illustrator, to create their designs. Let's take a look at what we came up with:
Aria's a human who can use both light and shadow magic at once, a talent that hadn't been seen for centuries. She doesn't realize how important that is yet, though.
She grew up in an orphanage after her parents left when she was very young. She trusts people fast, sometimes too fast, and that ends up being both her best trait and the thing that gets her hurt the most.
We wanted to visually showcase her character arc throughout the series, so we made her hair lose its dyed color and become more natural as the story progresses, going from blonde to dark brown.
Creating her was a very interesting challenge, since Umbriel's journey partner needed to be someone very special. Finding the balance between trauma and happiness was also a very complex task, but I hope you'll all like how she turned out.
Umbriel is our other main character. He's the ex-leader of the Shadow Lieutenants, who got banished to the In-Between (a prison realm) and comes back centuries later thanks to Aria.
He starts out cold, formal, and can't stand being touched. After a season with Aria... Well, that changes.
His goal in Season One is to reclaim his powers, and make those who wronged him suffer eternally.
Umbriel was the character that started it all, and appeared to me one night while I was trying to fall asleep. I started to create the world and storyline that same day, and the rest of the characters came naturally after that.
I must say, I'm glad I wasn't able to sleep that night, because otherwise this story wouldn't exist.
After Umbriel comes Zarka, the first season's villain. He used to be Umbriel's second-in-command, before he decided he deserved the throne more.
He's shorter than Umbriel, which people make fun of him for behind his back (not exactly intimidating), but his actions and words do terrify others.
Zarka got rejected once in his childhood and never recovered from it. Now he wants control over everyone, so that can never happen again.
These are not all characters in the series, though. While designs for the rest are not public yet, they're being polished as you read this page, and I can't wait to share them all.
If you want to know more about Shadowborne Chronicles, check out the official website!
