Since I'm lacking in uni content on here I figured now that I'm working on my next project over Christmas I can do some process updates on my personal blog.

The next uni project is the 'Dichotomous characters' project which involves us concepting two characters that (to my understanding) look well together but also look very different.

To begin the project I used a similar process to my sentry gun which was to decide on a strong definite 'theme' before I even began concepting. This means I don't need to spend ages searching for a theme through my concepts and can instead focus on my own mini brief. I decided to do a space Queen and her handmaiden with inspiration from Queen Amidala's elaborate costumes and her plain (in comparison) hand maidens.

Although I was directly taking inspiration from somebody else's idea I tried to back track and look at where the designers may have got their inspiration from.

As I was pulling up reference and inspiration I was finding that I could trace back almost the exact costume and/or headress and hair inspiration for their designs. Something that I admired in their costume design was the solid base in Historical and cultural reference; one of the costumes for example doesn't differ any further than a kimono and one hairstyle/headpiece is almost exactly the same as a Mongolian Queen's.

Since they're so similar to their reference and probably more iconic/better known than their real life counter-parts if I try to start my designs from those inspirations I will arrive at something far too similar and would just end up looking like a Star Wars rip-off no matter how hard I tried.

To counter this I tried picking out aspects of the costumes that I liked; the impractical head-pieces, the excess of fabric and the detail and overall strong impression of the costume. I started pulling up Medieval/traditional Russian clothing which I was actually quite unfamiliar with. They ticked a lot of the boxes I needed especially in terms of huge and elaborate head pieces and rich detail in their layers of fabric. I still had to include some Chinese pieces since they were so fantastic I couldn't not let them influence my own design.

Moving away from the Queen's design I knew I wanted her hand-maiden to look plain beside her while also looking sleek and elegant. I found more modern reference for this design. I also began looking at Alien faces; to further separate my designs from Star Wars' I decided I should make my characters Aliens. I thought this would be an interesting challenge and would be more fun.

I also began looking at Art Deco and geometric shapes. Of course being influenced by my last Ancient Egypt themed project I considered designing my Aliens to look like they were the ones that influenced the Egyptian's style but I knew this may be too far-fetched and would limit my possibilities of a cool design.

Knowing that Silhouettes probably weren't going to work for me I went straight into sketching. I tried to focus on shape and not get bogged down in details since I knew once I started I'd never stop. I made the decision to design the Queen first since that was going to be the strongest design and then let the handmaiden be influenced by that.

Moving on with my favourites from the last batch I was struggling to find something I 100% liked- I had aspects of each that I really liked but they wouldn't all fit together properly. I did feel like I was achieving a sense of what I set out to achieve with my concepts though.

I started to refine some of the ideas which helped me move forward with something I quite liked.

Finally I had settled on an idea give or take a few details. The large headpiece is incredibly impractical but also large and imposing. The dress is relatively plain instead of silhouette but too much may have made the design lose balance.

Something I didn't want was for the queen to look too inviting, overly feminine or sexy. I felt the bare arms made her look just a little too nice and the large sleeves blocked her out just enough to make her look solid and strong. My alien space Queen does not dress to please the male gaze!!

With a Queen design I was comfortable with it was time to move on to her handmaiden. I really struggled at first to come up with something that looked good on its own but also worked beside the Queen and didn't make her look remotely as high-rank.


Eventually I came through with some designs I liked. I came up with veiling the handmaiden which would also hint that she was not as important as her Queen.

With the designs somewhat solidified so far I knew it was important that they worked from anything other than front view. I sketched them out in slightly more lively and realistic poses to begin to visualise them further. The next stage is their Alien faces which I'm hoping to make work really well with their clothing. Once I've done this I'll probably go all out on the details and my my am I looking forward to it!