Queen Jadis- The White Witch concept process

10:35

In order to take a break from the Jadis repaint I was doing (which I'm now probably going to scrap because I want to do it EVEN BETTER) I decided to finally get around to concepting her White Witch 'look'.

I find the world of Narnia incredibly fascinating, and I'm also a big fan of the film adaptations and the kind of Medieval England style they took on although I never did like Jadis' costumes (loved the acting though!).

A glammed up Vogue Queen Jadis

Reading the books again and re-imagining Jadis pre-Narnia with a completely different cultural approach to her design was really fun and almost liberating(?) to make her something other than a white woman.

Now back to my version; I was well aware that in the Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe that Jadis is described as having white skin, which kinda contradicts my brown-skinned pre-Narnia Queen concept. I figured I'd have to do something different with her skin and still keep it believable- I'll cover that later.

First idea iteration

I started with a large moodboard of visual references and made some really sketchy silhouettes; I was trying to go the 'right and proper' way of concepting, as I feel like my concepting (for somebody who wants to be a CONCEPT ARTIST) isn't as strong as it should be (I do two or three ideas and then go 'I like that one!' and cease concepting).

After the first four scribbles I actually started to churn out some interesting ideas (number one- Maleficent anyone?!) I wasn't sure whether to have her immune to the cold or not as it would be quite restricting to some of the big elegant dresses I had in mind or just completely unrealistic so I did a bit of both.

One of the things I also tried to bear in mind when I was doing these was the different poses/gestures I gave her. Although she's a pretty evil/badass/strong/powerful character there were a lot of different ways of portraying that. Some turning out a little sassier than the others..

After I sorta ran out of ideas for the silhouettes I picked my favourites and cleaned them up a little. I probably could have done more exploration on each concept, but I instead decided to pick my overall favourite and then add in different elements from the others that I liked.

Again, back to the 'whether she feels the cold', I was still tossing it about a little- sometimes the fur added a nice decoration and then sometimes it just ruined the whole look. Eventually I came up with the big fluffy fur cloak which gave her the chance to have a nice dress but still retain the 'I've just plunged Narnia into a hundred years of winter' impression.

I was still trying to keep away from the details at this point because I get very attached to my details.

This step was probably a little unnecessary at this early stage because the dress details aren't really doing much for the overall impression. Realising this I moved swiftly onto her face:

Unfortunately I had such a solid vision of her face I neglected to do any alternatives. For these I decided to use photobashing (which I rarely do) to conjure up a realistic face based on what I had in mind (sketching what I have in mind results in quite a stylised drawing which I didn't want).

Now! Back to what I mentioned with her skin! How do you make a dark skinned character suddenly have white skin? The answer? Magic!

In a world where a witch can plunge it into an eternal winter I decided it wouldn't be too extreme for the witch's skin to completely drain of the beautiful rich colour she originally had! The faces are a work in progress currently as I'm still trying to get to grasps with painting over the greyscale version and also getting her skin to look the way I want it to.

Overall I'm really enjoying this project so far! I have so many thoughts and idea processes behind Queen Jadis' design that I figured I'd compile it into a blog post.

Any thoughts on the direction its going or suggestions for other cool projects would be much appreciated! Thanks for reading!