Andraste
Character Design Client
DND Character Design for Campaign 2023
About the Project: Andraste is one of the few characters that I have created that is not a Vtuber. The client, Rin, wanted to have her Dungeons and Dragons character realized visually. It was my job to synthisize a long history of DND campaings and character backstory into a fantastical design. My secondary challenge with this project was designing with the mindset that she had to still fit into the world that Wizards of the Coast has created. The great thing about DND is that there is a lot of flexibility in character creation.
This one was another of my "blender" designs where the client expressed that they wanted a bunch of somewhat disjointed design elements to be mixed into a cohesive design. They also had a very clear color palete in mind for Andraste that I needed to adhere to. This constraint would be one of the more difficult elements due to balancing issues. The final product, however, came out beautifully and happens to be one of my favorites when it comes to "prop" design alone.
Client Brief:
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Draconic
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Blood element emphasis
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Angelic
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Ranger aesthetic
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Red, purple, white, and black color palete
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Mix of Elven and draconic elementes
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Tan skin tone
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DND worldbuilding
Blood Wings: My favorite part of this design has to be the blood wings. Orignally when looking up inspiration for the design I found that the majority of images were very water like. While I appreciate the fluidity of the designs unlike water, blood, is has a vastly different consistency. Instead of taking that approach I decided to dig back into my forensics knowlege. Then the concept came to me to use blood spatters for the shape language as a substitute to traditional liquid and water forms.
The result is a graceful and dynamic shape that communicates the angelic feather wings on top and the draconic bat like wing shapes on the bottom. If I had to choose one of my most favoirte concepts I have worked on over the years it would have to be the hemomantic wings.
Multi Hairstyles: One of the important design elements that was requested by the client was two different hairstyles. One that was long and flowy and the second being a hairstyle that would fit in with Andraste's Ranger class. I originally wanted her hair to be shorter so that it fit under her hood with ease and what ended happening was that the back of her hair is shortened so that she can keep the longer pieces in the front.
The design was also made with a strong back silhouette in mind so covering up all that work was a detriment to the rest of the piece. This compromise allows for those back details to be seen while also having the longer hair if desired. There also had to be room for the wings to come from the shoulder blade portion of the back.
Designing with Liquid Forms: In keeping with the design philosophy of the prior mentioned wings, I wanted to make sure that her outfit had blood forms in it as well. The stylization was the most difficult to translate to pieces that would be worn on the human body. The inspiration of Vladimir from LOL (secondary right image) really helped me in trying to figure out how far to push the shape language.
Using a body suit as a base that would be functional for a Ranger class I built up more of those liquid shapes until I was satisfied with the result. What I wanted to make sure I maintained was an actual blood consistency without it looking too quagulated.
