Time to start the rebellion! - Character development

It is high time to shape personality for my female character. I’ve already set up the background story, so a quick remainder of what I’ve got so far.

Background story

 My character is a daughter of 18th century English merchant, a member of East India Company, and a Dutchwoman, also from the line of traders. She’s helping her father in business and accompanies on each business trip. That makes her quite experience in business and sailing ship navigation, despite of her young age (20-21). 

Personality

Now I went deeper to describe the personality, I tried to imagine the behavior, moves and gestures. That gave me the taste of what kind of character I want to create. She is going to be one of those independent, well informed women with a huge signs of the rebel. I want her to be curious of new technology and points of view, thanks to reading psychological and invention books. That will also reflect her behavior, as an open minded person who’s looking for new directions In life, she won’t obey stiff rules imposed on females back in that era, who were best seen as a good looking housewives and who doesn’t meddle in “Male” topics. She can be some kind of a feminist but not the one who scream and fight for females rights but rather do it in a quiet, personal manner, being a walking proof of what females can do. That specific mentality is going to flash in her clothes. Obviously she won’t follow 18th century fashion standards, as a starting point for her rebellion. Unfortunately many people, women in particular, won’t read her hidden message and show their disapproval in a very sophisticated way . This won’t matter my character, only the ones who feel the same as she does will read the signs properly.

Seems to be detailed enough explanation for the personality, now let’s think of some solutions regarding clothes!

 

 This must be something outstanding and not typical for that era, something to get disapproval of half of the society, something charismatic, appropriate for strong, independent women and, very importantly, suitable for her position in society and style of living. 

Before I start breaking fashion rules, let’s research what was trendy back in 18^th century.

These are examples of aristocratic female fashion. As we can see, it's typical aspects are: gown with a huge bottom part, laces, layers of fabric, corset with a deep neckline, pointed shoes, fans and hairstyles: big, high up stylized wigs, sometimes with curls.

My character is a merchant and merchants liked to dress up in fine clothes but I want to make her style practical, with a use of great fabrics and may be a little decorative to highlight her occupation.

Here I'm screening digital pictures but for research I was also using my never letting down book "Illustrated history of costumes" by Melissa Leventon. I was also doing self research and reference gathering, here are some pictures I took in the Royal Welch Fusiliers Museum:

Now, some comparison of clothes of aristocrats and people from middle and lower classes.

At this point I though, gowns are definitely something I need to skip, that's revolution for female appearance. If I apply pants instead of dress, I need to add changes to the upper part of attire as well. This means clothes are getting more familiar to male fashion; let's research it as well.

Here was a mixture of society positions but it's not the point I worry about. Most important was to understand shapes, which were used in male clothing, seems like dependence of wealth and more patterned fabrics.

Very effective research but those are clothes of landlubbers. I need some examples of clothes for sailors, people who need strong, practical clothes, not fancy, flower covered stockings.

 The exploration continues.

My images are mixed again, but it's not hard to spot the difference between the sailor and the pirate. Sailors clothes were actually quite chic, while pirates seem to wear everything they need, and whatever they find at the same time. As my female supposed to be rebelious, I shouldn't just copy male clothes but mix them as well. I can borrow some ideas from both occupations and create something new. Although, there is still something missing.

How to make my creation controversial for it's peers? ......

.....spice it up! That's the style I like, also keeping in mind there might be a chance to use this character for the comic book, it has to look suitably attractive. Although, to me that style is exposition of confidence, for some people that mean no more than seducing. What is my response for that? Simply, this is not my target audience. Comic books also have lovers and haters, this phenomenon is common for everything, that's why it's important to describe who's going to look at your work. Enough theory for now, I'm going to present my designing process. I am not really eager to show my first, VERY quick sketches which I've used just as a starting point for the ideas.It's very embarassing to show these sketches, they should never see the daylight but I have to document my progressions so I just bite my lip and rush with explanations. This was very early time because all of this was done during holidays and I was looking for some design which will inspire me to forward action. Just like concept artists do, once the client get to like one design, they continue developing this one with more variations. In this case I'm my own judge and I'm choosing what I like to extend in more design.

 I was imagining this sketch in red or scarlet color. It's quite mysterious. I sketched skirt which would be made of some soft fabric, unfortunately, as I realized later, that light fabric would get really nasty on a strong oceanic wind. Also laced up shirt seems rather simple and it's better to replace it with something closer to 18th century fashion. I liked the idea of short jacket, though.

 Here I was testing with a long jacket. This design is entirely copied from male clothes and actually covers all female attributes. I tried to change the image a little bit by adding higher hills but it looked really bad and didn't help at all so I stayed with a flat ones for this picture.

I kind of came to like the style of those clothes but there is many points against the hairstyle. I thought I would like it but it turned out the opposite. In my opinion they misguide the viewer and make him think this is some kind of chinese girl or it's poor copy. Also the haircut strongly remainds me of anime characters who we've seen a lot. I will go for something more European in this case. The cross necklace is a good, strong stymbol for discipline and gives some kind of excuse if combined with sexier clothes, but it's mainly symbol of religion, which I don't want to expose for this character. I liked boots style, though and the corset.

This design is composition created from pieces of previous pictures and new additions as well. I came to like the hairstyle at the first place. I decided to add corset but change it's shape a little. Also added some lace at the endings to make a reference to fashion back in those days. The jacket refers to 18th century male fashion and was often used by sailors. I customized it in a female way and made much shorter. Here are also garters where character can hook the weapon, on the other hand, it adds some sexyness to the whole look. Big difference from other sketches is application of shorts instead of long trousers. Other attribute, borrowed from historical paintings, are high boots. Overall, this design is much more valiant and that's why I decided to work on it more.

I was considering some hairstyles which might be suitable for my character.

1) First hair on the left were the one I liked the most, thanks to it's free, untamed character which is so much different from fashion back in those days (hair pin high up), also they scream of it's naturalness, confronting fashionable wigs.

2) Second, brown hair asre short and straight, they are familiar to chinese haircut, from where I borrowed my idea, it would refer to my character's traveling experience and it's visit to China

3) This hairstyle fits sailor very well, it stops hair from poking into an eye and mouth. I was quite convinced about this style but what wasn't working for it's advantage was the straightness. It's rather modern and doesn't make any reference to the past.

4) Combination of previous style, which I liked, but with some customization. As I mentioned, curls would be more suitable here. Now it has some relation to 18th century but it's not that nice anymore and it didn't steal my heart's affection

5) Hairstyle which remainds me of medieval times a little bit. It organizes hair and doesn't let it fly freely, that might be a sign of discipline which actually doesn't suit my character that much. Although, I added some beads entwined into hair to break the strong impression of the braid.

Finally, there was something I could start working with. I simply wanted to play with the design and see what it would look like in a better quality. I was testing facial features so I could remember it's details.

Then I started working on a better resolution drawing, not only to work on a details, but to exercise digital painting as well. If I'm going to be an illustrator or concept artist, I need to have better knowledge and skills inside the software. 

This is the painted result, let me just mention, it took me really long time to paint this picture, it's not something you can do in a couple hours. May be, once you're very skilled, but for me it's still very time consuming and I'll bury it mind once I'll be working on the pictures for my project. 

Alright, explanation. Thig which you can see on her corset ans shorts is a lace, I refered it to those exclusive and expensive goods that were transported from far East. It's a symbol of her society status. Corset is slightly deeper cut than corsets of ladies in a courts (but not too much, simply have different shape so it's not inappropiate). There is too many clasps on a jacket and I will reduce them. Also the green color was a suggestion but it may change at the next stages. I added volume to the hair, which improved apperiance. After this image I decided to replace shorts with trousers. At the beginning I liked the idea of thowing the legs, which you can never see in 18th century but it didn't suit in here, it's rather too much. I'm keeping garthers though. 

Once I knew what improvements should be made, I started creating a mood board to feel better sense of the character.

 And playing with shadows

And with colors

This picture includes a description of symbolic meanings of the clothes. As you can see, each part of my character's appearance is used to emphasize some features and it wasn't just a random choice.

Those designing stages were created once the new school year was already running. It took me a long time work on this design and add color, actually it's still not finished because somewhere in between work I was consulting my tutor about my project. Untill now Iw as still planning to model a 3d character, that's why I was rushing so much to get the design done because I needed a lot of time to learn Maya software. I was describing the whole situation before and so here came change to my idea and I decided to make a graphic novel. Thanks to that I gained some time and could experiment with my character more.

My designs, so far, weren't very stylized so I started working on them some more. Here are some examples of what I'm planning to do for my graphic novel, pictures will reflect characters personality. 

These were based on the old character design. Once I got some more time, I imediatelly started developing some new designs. Here are just quick sketches (again), as I had in mind to paint them digitally and sketches will be my guide map.