Lily Aolagi Smith

Concept Artist & Illustrator

Stylized concept artist and illustrator specializing in telling stories through characters.Currently working as a freelance illustrator, and open for all types of work.Interested in working with me? Check out my resume and shoot me an e-mail!e-mail: [email protected]
Based in Auckland, New Zealand.

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The Lord is one of the eight designs that I submitted for ArtStation's Community Challenge in Character Design: Medieval Back and Forth. The challenge was to design eight characters, four from the past who travel to the future, and four who travel from the future to the past.The Lord comes from a long line of physicists and astro-scientists at the top of their own game. Centuries of academic expansion and advancement throughout multiple generations lead the Lord's scholarly family to become recognizable as their own modern aristocracy-- no small part due to their natural super-conductivity. The Lord was set to be one more notch on the long list of successors, when a wormhole appeared before them and left behind remnants of sand and undefined scrolls bearing the same sigil her family wears. The hole also showed a vision of the past, and an ancestor she will never meet. Thus began her first major scientific venture: to reopen this same wormhole. Her academic prowess and years of collective knowledge proved to be her advantage in her endeavors, and after years of testing and bad decisions, it worked.Going into this challenge, I knew I wanted the Lord to be a mirror design with another character from the future, their ancestor. As such, the main challenge I had to approach with this design was the motif language that would link these two across time. Aside from that, I knew I wanted their personalities to with the Lord being tall and proud, wearing their inventions like badges of honor.Art Station Community Challenge, 2023

The Bard is one of the eight designs that I submitted for ArtStation's Community Challenge in Character Design: Medieval Back and Forth. The challenge was to design eight characters, four from the past who travel to the future, and four who travel from the future to the past.Ironically, in a world of medical advancements and technological pursuits beyond anyone's imagination, the Hippie is someone who embraces the world of the past to be more connected to nature, and is unconcerned with technical prowess. Their naturalistic lifestyle is one made entirely off of impressions and an aesthetic, however when she's thrusted into the world of the past by the Temporal Paradox, she is oddly calm. Almost unnaturally calm. Now closer to a more natural world than before, she hopes to change the past by traveling as a minstrel, singing of peace and prosperity.During the start of this challenge, I knew I wanted to make some sort of bard, but didn't know how to tackle the design without making differential choices that would make it stand out from the potential bards that would be submitted. Initially, she was meant to be a crystal healer, but as her development went on, she began to align more with the hippie aesthetic, as well as festival costumes and cultures found in western societies.Art Station Community Challenge, 2023

The Corsair is one of the eight designs that I submitted for ArtStation's Community Challenge in Character Design: Medieval Back and Forth. The challenge was to design eight characters, four from the past who travel to the future, and four who travel from the future to the past.The Corsair was an Admiral of the Fleet. In his prime, he was a sea dog of war-- a tactical warlord who had lead his ships to victory multiple times and singlehandedly defeated captains in battle. When it came time for him to hang up his mantle, he was dragged into the Temporal Paradox. Thrusted into medieval Scandinavia, he was thrown directly into a maritime battle, and onto a viking ship. With no time to explain and the ship's captain dead, the Corsair turned a dire situation into a decisive victory. The remaining crew sailed home with their new quarry, and after a merry celebration involving meat, mead, and bad decisions, the Corsair was gifted a new ship and crew to sail with. Thus, his second life at sea began again.The Corsair changed very little from his iterations in concept. One problem I tackled during the challenge was not wanting to have my designs entirely Euro-centric. So during my research and development of this character, I wanted to focus on Nordic and Scandinavian cultures, particularly with their sea-faring sections.Art Station Community Challenge, 2023

The Hunter is one of the eight designs that I submitted for ArtStation's Community Challenge in Character Design: Medieval Back and Forth. The challenge was to design eight characters, four from the past who travel to the future, and four who travel from the future to the past.The Hunter is a model student: Perfect record, perfect test scores, perfect attendance. When she's pulled through the temporal paradox into the past, she ends up in the forest with her senior dog, Hachi. Whereas others would crack from the displacement, the Hunter sees this as an opportunity. She is able to carve out a place amongst hunting guilds with Haci, famed for their precision and accuracy that was celebrated during their career as a student.The main design philosophy that I took when designing the Hunter was to take the stereotypical issekai trope that's commonly seen in anime, and to put a spin on it. So rather than the hunter being teleported to a fantasy land and being greeted with a harem, they would be horribly dreadful, and end up as a Lord of the Flies savage. This design ended up more apocolyptic than medieval, however.
One thing that I came across in my research, though, was the concept of huntsmen and gamesmen. A savage hunter wouldn't work, but a hunter surrounding by precision? That would.Art Station Community Challenge, 2023