Mage & warrior design development
In the last week before Easter I was able to try different versions of the jewellery warrior design I had started. I played around with the headgear and weapons. I chose two opposite types of headgear: heavy helmet and light sequined mask. As this was still a preliminary stage I wanted to see how the character would differ depending on type of armour used. With the lighter sequined headpiece I felt that the character looked more like a dancer(?) than a warrior. With the heavier one, the character looked almost bull-like but more like a warrior as the material seems solid and more protective.
I researched into long range lasso type weapons and was interested in the blade/hook combination as it was a physical weapon which could be thrown/spun/twisted in various forms to create exciting combat as a potential video game fighter. In addition this weapon type was asymmetrical which I'd learnt from character design videos was good for design as it drew viewers in.
In contrast the other weapon design veered towards magic with snake head spirits on either end of the weapon. I think the aesthetic of the rope design consciously made me choose the snake head design as it was the animal most like the design. These design combinations can be seen below:
After this I did quick sketches of potential outfits for the embroidery warrior. This was also an exercise to try to get things on paper so I could decide on visual appearance from a few ideas. They took me about 5-10 mins to do each and I found them quite useful as a way to compare and contrast ideas. Although many of them were discarded later, I was still able to utilise and combine elements from various concepts to create a new one. These were some of the sketches I did:
I used these ideas to try a different approach to designing the warrior (as I wasn't happy with the above) and so with my tutor's advice I took inspiration from the armour worn by Mughal soldiers and adapted my process to using photos of designs and quickly putting together an image (rather than drawing out intricate clothing designs). The result is below:
I colour picked the theme from the references I used (as seen below) so that I could focus on making the design itself fantasy inspired. I kept with the flower motif for embroidery and edited the design to make it glowing on the chest so that it could be visually read as something that held power. I tried to make the weapon seem enchanted by using a fantasy colour - red - which is reminiscent of roses and blood and also inspired from the reference below. I liked this reference as it used flowers (which is a major theme in my embroidery characters) within the sword itself. I added extra elements such as the purple fabric which wraps around the sword and the warrior themselves as a way of 'enchanting' the sword. The orange fabric belt wrapped around the warrior is also exaggerated and extended to near floor length in resemblance to fantasy motifs, which are often aesthetically designed rather than practically.
In architecture there is a principle which some architects in the late 19th and 20th century used: "form follows function" or functionalism. This means that the purpose of the building dictated its design. As an prior student of architecture, this was one of the principles which intrigued me as it questioned how certain functions should look like. After having this mantra drilled into me throughout the duration of my studies, I feel that I have absorbed this wholly and cannot let it go. Practicality is consistently present in my designs and fantasy could not be further from this. I find it ironic that I wish to pursue a field that, yes calls for some practicality that works within the mechanics of the game, but ultimately seeks to subvert it to make the player experience better. And yet here I am, a student embedded with functionality and practicality, wanting to create designs that are fantastical, wondering why this is so hard(!)
I'm not sure why I chose to incorporate magic into the warrior design as it was meant to be jewellery themed but I think this was due to the fact I hadn't laid down foundations for what I wanted the warrior to be. With certain rules aka a sound brief, I think it would help to focus my design so I don't get lost with adding too much into it. At the moment my 'jewellery' theme is very loose and from this exercise I realised that after exploring different avenues, now was the time to hone the design down which also means establishing rules about my characters' backgrounds e.g. where they live, culture, environment, resources available etc.
Over the Easter break I've been able to progress somewhat in my character design development for embroidery. I wasn't satisfied with my previous work on the embroidery mages so I tried to use advice given during tutorials about using embroidery tools for weapons/motifs e.g. sewing kit. This made me think of the different types of objects used in sewing and thought about using scissors and string as motifs for the design. This, along with masking intricate embroidered patterns onto clothing, helped inspire my next embroidery mage design:
This was a design I tried to draw up fairly quickly. This took about 30-40 mins. I tried to take on board my tutor's advice about exaggeration and made the scissors elongated like a staff so its proportion is larger than normal. The string looped around the scissors and hand is part of the embroidery magic which the character wields as a source of power. I made the string orange to match the colour to the flowers on the clothes. Also I made the scarf draped around the head floor length for emphasis. I wanted to show that the more material the mage had, the more power they could evoke (larger surface area = more embroidery patterns). Here again I used photos of Kashmiri embroidery to mask onto the cloak and scarf to replicate clothing embroidery. The colour scheme is from an earlier mage design I did with the white scarf. This is also in theme with juxtaposing against the jewellery characters (light vs dark). However, I noticed that the style was pretty similar to the design of the jewellery mage with the floor length robes, so I moved on to the next design.
I wanted to develop the embroidery mage design further. I felt like I was getting there from the earlier designs which relied heavily on the shawl as the power as it was heavily embroidered. Whilst researching I came across a shawl that was wide enough to be draped around the whole body and was almost floor length. At the same time, I looked more into sewing tools and found intricate designs for scissors as inspiration.
This started to make me think of how heavy the material must be to hang off the shoulders loosely but still stay on the body and also how the scissors could be incorporated as a staff/weapon of some kind. I combined these two motifs to create a new design for the embroidery mage as seen below:
Previously for quicker drawings I used a flat colour art style which I feel was good for laying base colours down. However with the design above I feel that I had developed my design enough to reach the stage where I could spend more time on details. I used the scissors as a staff/weapon like before, which in this image is being hoisted on the mage's back and due to its position creates a halo aesthetic. The scarf became the main piece of clothing and I masked on a pattern to create a heavily embroidered effect on the clothing so it would resemble the ongoing embroidery theme. The process of design from sketching to line art to colour can be seen below:
In addition the mage wields cloth fabric as an extension of their magic so they have it wrapped like bandages around their arms, head and chest. I thought about how they would realistically carry that amount of fabric. I thought it made practical sense if they wrapped it around themselves as protective gear which could be unravelled to use when required, hence why some of the cloth is unravelled onto the floor. I also did this to try to make the design look interesting and appealing as this style of dressing would make someone question why they were using cloth in such a way. The green and red colour theme came from studying embroidery which had red and green on black. Black seemed quite dark so I opted for the more brighter options to emphasise the richness of fabric these characters used. Having an embroidery background would mean that they made use of various fabrics, thread, dyes etc.
I tried manipulating the hue, saturation and lightness to come up with variations of the above design, first changing the cloth wrapped around the arms and then the main piece of clothing. I went with colours that were vibrant, colourful and appealing to the eye. In this world I imagine their culture having access to multiple dyes and thread to create colourful pieces. I also thought that the different colours could equal status/ranking(?). The variants can be seen below:
After this I went back to designing the embroidery warrior using a similar theme to the above mage. In this regard I found it much easier to plan the design as colour theme was already established (and could be manipulated like the above). I searched for more references with a scarf/cloth theme to establish a visual language similar to the mage outfit above. I wanted to create a style that was unique to the warrior (separate from mage) but still resembled one another so a player would be able to tell that they belonged to the same group. As I had already digitally painted the above, utilising the same techniques for this image was also quite simple. The design:
The outfit was influenced by the references below (see end of page). I used the same colour theme and masking pattern from the mage design to keep the designs connected. The weapon design was influenced by my research into sewing tools and I quite liked the design of the thread snipper (see reference below) as I thought about how as a weapon it could be either a 2 pointed sword or unlatch into a two sided spear. I quite liked the scarf design which had the front fold. I made this longer so it became knee length (similar to the Mughal inspired design earlier) and included a green belt which extended to the floor. This was purely an aesthetic decision to add colour contrast between the red and green and to make the design different from the mage's. The flared skirt was influenced by a Pakistani outfit (can be seen in references below).
I wanted to keep the theme of cloth rather than include metal armour as metal is a major theme for the jewellery group. I tried to think of ways the warrior could still look durable and be protected even whilst dressing in this manner. Of course, there are some soldiers (South Asian and others) who historically dressed without wearing armour and were still credible and fierce warriors, so I thought this would be fine as is. Also the concept of not wearing any visible armour I believe adds to the mystery and makes the player/viewer think of how strong this person must be to not rely on armour (I hope!).
I included tattoos for the warrior as another different element from the mage. I did this as I had the idea that the tattoos of flowers. stems, leaves and curves (as is prominent in Kashmiri embroidery) could also be embedded in the warrior's skin via tattoos so they can still benefit from their power, although unable to wield the magic themselves. Or another idea could be that those with tattoos are a hybrid class aka 'warrior mage' where their fighting style is similar to the warrior but they are also able to wield some form of magic via the tattoos.
I included variants of the above design with and without the masking pattern (plain vs pattermed) and without including string (as I am still unsure of why I added that in, perhaps to make it visually similar to the cloth dangling to the floor in the mage's design). In addition I also made colour variations similar to the ones I did for the mage:
I researched into long range lasso type weapons and was interested in the blade/hook combination as it was a physical weapon which could be thrown/spun/twisted in various forms to create exciting combat as a potential video game fighter. In addition this weapon type was asymmetrical which I'd learnt from character design videos was good for design as it drew viewers in.
In contrast the other weapon design veered towards magic with snake head spirits on either end of the weapon. I think the aesthetic of the rope design consciously made me choose the snake head design as it was the animal most like the design. These design combinations can be seen below:
---
After this I did quick sketches of potential outfits for the embroidery warrior. This was also an exercise to try to get things on paper so I could decide on visual appearance from a few ideas. They took me about 5-10 mins to do each and I found them quite useful as a way to compare and contrast ideas. Although many of them were discarded later, I was still able to utilise and combine elements from various concepts to create a new one. These were some of the sketches I did:
I used these ideas to try a different approach to designing the warrior (as I wasn't happy with the above) and so with my tutor's advice I took inspiration from the armour worn by Mughal soldiers and adapted my process to using photos of designs and quickly putting together an image (rather than drawing out intricate clothing designs). The result is below:
I colour picked the theme from the references I used (as seen below) so that I could focus on making the design itself fantasy inspired. I kept with the flower motif for embroidery and edited the design to make it glowing on the chest so that it could be visually read as something that held power. I tried to make the weapon seem enchanted by using a fantasy colour - red - which is reminiscent of roses and blood and also inspired from the reference below. I liked this reference as it used flowers (which is a major theme in my embroidery characters) within the sword itself. I added extra elements such as the purple fabric which wraps around the sword and the warrior themselves as a way of 'enchanting' the sword. The orange fabric belt wrapped around the warrior is also exaggerated and extended to near floor length in resemblance to fantasy motifs, which are often aesthetically designed rather than practically.
References
In architecture there is a principle which some architects in the late 19th and 20th century used: "form follows function" or functionalism. This means that the purpose of the building dictated its design. As an prior student of architecture, this was one of the principles which intrigued me as it questioned how certain functions should look like. After having this mantra drilled into me throughout the duration of my studies, I feel that I have absorbed this wholly and cannot let it go. Practicality is consistently present in my designs and fantasy could not be further from this. I find it ironic that I wish to pursue a field that, yes calls for some practicality that works within the mechanics of the game, but ultimately seeks to subvert it to make the player experience better. And yet here I am, a student embedded with functionality and practicality, wanting to create designs that are fantastical, wondering why this is so hard(!)
I'm not sure why I chose to incorporate magic into the warrior design as it was meant to be jewellery themed but I think this was due to the fact I hadn't laid down foundations for what I wanted the warrior to be. With certain rules aka a sound brief, I think it would help to focus my design so I don't get lost with adding too much into it. At the moment my 'jewellery' theme is very loose and from this exercise I realised that after exploring different avenues, now was the time to hone the design down which also means establishing rules about my characters' backgrounds e.g. where they live, culture, environment, resources available etc.
---
Over the Easter break I've been able to progress somewhat in my character design development for embroidery. I wasn't satisfied with my previous work on the embroidery mages so I tried to use advice given during tutorials about using embroidery tools for weapons/motifs e.g. sewing kit. This made me think of the different types of objects used in sewing and thought about using scissors and string as motifs for the design. This, along with masking intricate embroidered patterns onto clothing, helped inspire my next embroidery mage design:
This was a design I tried to draw up fairly quickly. This took about 30-40 mins. I tried to take on board my tutor's advice about exaggeration and made the scissors elongated like a staff so its proportion is larger than normal. The string looped around the scissors and hand is part of the embroidery magic which the character wields as a source of power. I made the string orange to match the colour to the flowers on the clothes. Also I made the scarf draped around the head floor length for emphasis. I wanted to show that the more material the mage had, the more power they could evoke (larger surface area = more embroidery patterns). Here again I used photos of Kashmiri embroidery to mask onto the cloak and scarf to replicate clothing embroidery. The colour scheme is from an earlier mage design I did with the white scarf. This is also in theme with juxtaposing against the jewellery characters (light vs dark). However, I noticed that the style was pretty similar to the design of the jewellery mage with the floor length robes, so I moved on to the next design.
I wanted to develop the embroidery mage design further. I felt like I was getting there from the earlier designs which relied heavily on the shawl as the power as it was heavily embroidered. Whilst researching I came across a shawl that was wide enough to be draped around the whole body and was almost floor length. At the same time, I looked more into sewing tools and found intricate designs for scissors as inspiration.
References
This started to make me think of how heavy the material must be to hang off the shoulders loosely but still stay on the body and also how the scissors could be incorporated as a staff/weapon of some kind. I combined these two motifs to create a new design for the embroidery mage as seen below:
Previously for quicker drawings I used a flat colour art style which I feel was good for laying base colours down. However with the design above I feel that I had developed my design enough to reach the stage where I could spend more time on details. I used the scissors as a staff/weapon like before, which in this image is being hoisted on the mage's back and due to its position creates a halo aesthetic. The scarf became the main piece of clothing and I masked on a pattern to create a heavily embroidered effect on the clothing so it would resemble the ongoing embroidery theme. The process of design from sketching to line art to colour can be seen below:
In addition the mage wields cloth fabric as an extension of their magic so they have it wrapped like bandages around their arms, head and chest. I thought about how they would realistically carry that amount of fabric. I thought it made practical sense if they wrapped it around themselves as protective gear which could be unravelled to use when required, hence why some of the cloth is unravelled onto the floor. I also did this to try to make the design look interesting and appealing as this style of dressing would make someone question why they were using cloth in such a way. The green and red colour theme came from studying embroidery which had red and green on black. Black seemed quite dark so I opted for the more brighter options to emphasise the richness of fabric these characters used. Having an embroidery background would mean that they made use of various fabrics, thread, dyes etc.
I tried manipulating the hue, saturation and lightness to come up with variations of the above design, first changing the cloth wrapped around the arms and then the main piece of clothing. I went with colours that were vibrant, colourful and appealing to the eye. In this world I imagine their culture having access to multiple dyes and thread to create colourful pieces. I also thought that the different colours could equal status/ranking(?). The variants can be seen below:
---
After this I went back to designing the embroidery warrior using a similar theme to the above mage. In this regard I found it much easier to plan the design as colour theme was already established (and could be manipulated like the above). I searched for more references with a scarf/cloth theme to establish a visual language similar to the mage outfit above. I wanted to create a style that was unique to the warrior (separate from mage) but still resembled one another so a player would be able to tell that they belonged to the same group. As I had already digitally painted the above, utilising the same techniques for this image was also quite simple. The design:
The outfit was influenced by the references below (see end of page). I used the same colour theme and masking pattern from the mage design to keep the designs connected. The weapon design was influenced by my research into sewing tools and I quite liked the design of the thread snipper (see reference below) as I thought about how as a weapon it could be either a 2 pointed sword or unlatch into a two sided spear. I quite liked the scarf design which had the front fold. I made this longer so it became knee length (similar to the Mughal inspired design earlier) and included a green belt which extended to the floor. This was purely an aesthetic decision to add colour contrast between the red and green and to make the design different from the mage's. The flared skirt was influenced by a Pakistani outfit (can be seen in references below).
I wanted to keep the theme of cloth rather than include metal armour as metal is a major theme for the jewellery group. I tried to think of ways the warrior could still look durable and be protected even whilst dressing in this manner. Of course, there are some soldiers (South Asian and others) who historically dressed without wearing armour and were still credible and fierce warriors, so I thought this would be fine as is. Also the concept of not wearing any visible armour I believe adds to the mystery and makes the player/viewer think of how strong this person must be to not rely on armour (I hope!).
I included tattoos for the warrior as another different element from the mage. I did this as I had the idea that the tattoos of flowers. stems, leaves and curves (as is prominent in Kashmiri embroidery) could also be embedded in the warrior's skin via tattoos so they can still benefit from their power, although unable to wield the magic themselves. Or another idea could be that those with tattoos are a hybrid class aka 'warrior mage' where their fighting style is similar to the warrior but they are also able to wield some form of magic via the tattoos.
I included variants of the above design with and without the masking pattern (plain vs pattermed) and without including string (as I am still unsure of why I added that in, perhaps to make it visually similar to the cloth dangling to the floor in the mage's design). In addition I also made colour variations similar to the ones I did for the mage:
Sketching ideas:
References
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