Our final brief was to read Hans Christian Andersen's 'The Tinderbox' fairy tale and pick a character from it. We then had to design the character in a time period given to us - mine was 1800s America.
My very first idea was to design one of the dogs, so I started to create silhouettes of a shapeshifter. I also began to create the idea that the dog could shapeshift into a woman dressed in normal clothing to disguise themselves whilst they carry the money to the soldier.
I quickly scrapped that idea when I realised I had no idea how to draw dogs and didn't have the time to learn the skill in the time given. So I researched some other parts of America during the 1800s and became enamoured with the designs of Native American clothing. From this research I was able to create some basic shadows on Alchemy.
I also like the idea of the princess being an evil spirit from Native American folklore that would wear a mask to disguise themselves, so I created some quick sketches and simple designs.
From the Alchemy shadows I was able to sketch a variety of clothing designs, all based on 1800s Native American clothing. My favourites were the ones that included ponchos, layering and frays.
After researching some folklore I decided on 3 main ideas: a trickster, represented by a raccoon, the toad monster who turns into a moss-covered woman to seduce/kill men and a fire elemental who pretends to be summer, the most beautiful woman ever.
I began with the raccoon designs, basing a lot of the shapes and patterns on the Native American symbol for raccoons. This mainly included stripes, dark eyes and a circle with a dot in the center.
Next I created designs for the toad/moss monster with hanging moss being a large proportion of the ideas. None of these ideas seemed particularly interesting to me so decided to keep creating.
Then I worked on designs for the fire elemental/sun story. I found these a lot more interesting to create, incorporating several Native American symbols into the designs. My favourite idea was that the fire elemental would appear as the predominantly black design with symbols from the trickster on it but would disguise as summer in on of the dresses, a wig and a mask.
I decided to create some ideas for what she could look like underneath the mask as I was considering including a reveal of her true face in the in-situ piece, but later scrapped the idea because I wanted the focus to be about fire. I also explained a bit about the idea I was going for.
I then did some iterations for her wig design; even after all the ideas I still preferred the simple plaits the best. I used what few photos I could for inspiration.
I also did iterations of what the paint on the mask would look like; my favourite look was the bold red and the yellow lines, so decided to incorporate the two fot the final mask design.
Next I did my iterations for my final dress design. I decided on the layered - longsleeved dress with the white apron.
When doing the character sheet I decided that she would be kind of shy but also do evil deeds to very innocent things, e.g. burning a rabbit alive or snapping a rose given to her by the soldier. She would also be kind of impatient with humans but tries hard to disguise it.
The model sheet is relatively simple but I was fairly proud of my work. However, I still know that the clothes didn't look particularly 'clothes-like'.
For the final piece I wanted a strong depth of field, focusing on fire that the 'princess' would be producing. There is a vague pile of what is supposed to be dead bodies in the corner behind her. I did struggle a little with the lighting of this piece.