Picture House - Sketches

With everything planned out, it was time for me to start my rough sketch for Solis.

I decided to make a mood board on Pinterest and fill it with things that inspire me to kickstart my design process.

I of course started my board with 'The Great War', so I kept it at the forefront of all of my decisions.

In order to nod back to the painting in a recognisable way, I decided that I absolutely wanted Solis to have a parasol, a wide brim hat and a bag of some kind. Keeping my whole 'inverse' idea in mind as well, I started looking at how I could develop my designs.

Above: The Great War by René Magritte

The first things I looked at were a range of designs by an artist that I follow- Dollightful.

She designs new characters all of the time, using all sorts of different inspirations and reaching all sorts of different outcomes. I gathered together a range of her designs to look at with the question 'What do they all have in common?' in mind. The conclusion that I came to was that her most successful designs had multiple layers within the clothing, so I wanted to make sure I incorporated layers into my own design.

Above: Layers within the coat.

Above: Layers within the foliage.

Above: Layers within the armour.

Above: Layered hoodie and jacket.

Above 4 images: All credit for these images goes to Dollightful. You can find her YouTube channel at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCitKV0ebZVbtU2nIPihDGMQ

After that, I turned my focus to a game that has inspired me for years - The Legend Of Zelda: Breath Of The Wild.

I chose to look into this game specifically because it is also an open world game with a lot of exploration and quests.

I loaded up the game and explored until I found some characters walking around to look at their clothing. I took screenshots of some of my favourites and sent them to my computer to look at in more detail. I once again saw that layering the clothing was a very good idea.

Above: Small bag around the waist, plain trousers, simple boots, long sleeved undershirt, layered with a long tunic

Above: Cropped trousers, sandals, long sleeved undershirt, long tunic, splash of colour with necklace

Above: Slightly detailed trousers, long tunic with undershirt, not long sleeves but arms are still covered with long gloves, simple boots

Above: Same as character above, rear view

Above 4 images: Screenshots I took in the game 'The Legend Of Zelda: Breath Of The Wild' on Nintendo Switch

After looking at the outfit in general, I wanted to focus in a little bit on an aspect I hadn't really looked at until now- armour.

I knew that I wanted Solis to have armour and that I wanted it to be fairly light for practicality's sake, seeing as the game she is being designed for is exploration based. The first thing that came to mind when considering her armour was the eye catching battle plate of the Stormcast Eternals - a faction created by Warhammer for wargaming. I looked at a few different Stormcast Eternals models on the Games Workshop Web Store to try and get a feel for the way the armour is constructed and fits around the wearer.

Here are some examples of what I looked at.

Above: https://www.games-workshop.com/en-GB/Stormcast-Eternals-Evocators-2018

Above: https://www.games-workshop.com/en-GB/Stormcast-Eternals-Knights-Venator

Above: https://www.games-workshop.com/en-GB/Stormsires-Cursebreakers-2019

Above: https://www.games-workshop.com/en-GB/Age-Of-Sigmar-Dominion-EN-2021

With all of these influences, I finally felt ready to sketch out Solis. Since I am just in the sketching stage, I didn't sketch out the face, shade or vary the line weight - this was simply for me to figure out the design to draw properly later.

This was my first sketch.

I used my mood board to ensure I kept all of my research in mind. I made sure to layer up the outfit, giving her 3 layers of shirt. One long undershirt in a tunic like style with patterning and long sleeves, another shirt on top with short layered sleeves in two shades of brown, and a black over shirt with a turtleneck like collar. To avoid drawing too much attention away from the shirts and to balance the design out, I kept the trousers plain and the boots long yet simple. For her hat I went for a black wide brimmed hat without patterning since it would make her design too cluttered if it did have it. Since I wanted to give her a bag but didn't want it to dominate her design too much or look awkward in the silhouette, I made it a small, compact pouch like bag that straps around her waist.

As for the colour, I wanted to work with the 60/30/10 rule. 60% one colour, 30% a second colour and 10% a third colour.

My main colour was the greys and blacks range. My secondary was a cream colour. My third was a small range of browns. As a little splash of extra colour, I used orange.

I took this design and added in the armour.

Seeing as I wanted her to have light armour, I avoided putting any around her joints for ease of movement, yet I still made sure to protect her chest, back and arms.

Since my main inspiration for the armour was the Stormcast Eternals, I made the armour gold without really thinking about it. I was ready to call her design finished, but then I took a step back to look at her as a whole. The gold just wasn't right - it threw her colour scheme too far out of balance. My immediate thought then was 'Oh, I'll just make it silver.', however I quickly realised that it would be too light for her colour scheme and unbalance it again, just in a different way.

So I started thinking about the context of which she would get her armour in game. Who would she get it from? Where? Who made it? Why would she feel she needs it?

After a bit of thinking, I concluded that the best time for her to get her armour would be after retrieving the Hana Orb, as it would make her a target for anyone who would want to try and take it for themselves. I also decided that maybe she doesn't purchase the armour, but it is given to her instead. The perfect person to give it to her would not be a person at all, but the Stone Guardian travelling with her as her guide. From this train of thought, I came up with the idea of making her armour out of stone, as it is a gift from the Guardian. I do know that stone is heavy, but it can be magically light stone. The Stone Guardian is literally a sentient statue, I'm sure that magic to make stone feel lighter wouldn't be too far-fetched. I changed the colour to represent the stone instead, and called her design complete.

Now that I was happy with her design, it was time for me to draw the main piece for me to animate.

Harvard References:

Nintendo EPD (2017) The Legend of Zelda: Breath of The Wild. [Nintendo Switch Cartridge] Nintendo Switch. Japan: Nintendo.