Ok, these are the first sketches for the story I'm creating. It will be a Noir plot set in Babylon, a city-state, during the 30s/40s. Babylon is a city of limitless progress, apparently a paradise... or perhaps not?
Babylon has existed for less than a century, and the majority of its inhabitants are immigrants from all around the world, so almost all the characters are from another country or at least have strong roots elsewhere.
The Characters (from left to right):
Maximilian: Mayor and Head of the Senate (American)
(No name yet): Reporter (German)
(No name yet): Private detective (English)
(No name yet): Femme fatale / gem thief (French)
I accept suggestions regarding names, character designs, etc.
Also, I'm still building the lore, but there will be eldritch magic heavily inspired by Lovecraft, Werewolves, ghosts and vampires.
ssshhhh....im putting my redesign here..okay?.. okay....
little note: coleg is eating me out,in many ways possible please RELEASE ME RELASELALAREALSEASELRELASE ME
also i think im redesigning her again, i did not put too much thought on this and i havent been more free with it. I like the idea of her having goat ears though!! whoever redesigned her first with goat ears is goated (heh... get it?? goat ears...goated...)
These ones were a little tough because there's not really a canon time period they're from, as far as I'm aware. I ended up running with 1940s, because I needed to commit to something, and I guess the 40s was it.
--Carmilla--
Design:
--Color pallette- I wanted to use a steely cold grayscale, but include an accent color. I stuck with this for all three of them.
--hands- I didn't like how bulky canon made her arms, so I just altered them to be more aesthetically pleasing to me. It balances with the rest of her design better, imo. The main idea is that she was an arms dealer, so her arms were enlarged.
--hair- I did not like the horn styled hair. Her daughters have actual horns, so I wanted Carmilla to have real horns too. Her hair is now in a bun because it feels like a more businesswoman look, as well as being reminiscent of a typical ballerina hairstyle.
--outfit- the shapes on the canon dress is just a tad too complicated for my liking. So I wanted to simplify them a bit. So I tried a few different things. I tried things more similar to the stereotypical tutu, but it didn't feel right. So I eventually found a blazer that felt right. It had just enough of a 1940s powersuit vibe while resembling her canon look and hinting at a skirt.
--ballet- she clearly has a strong ballet theme. I spent far too much time trying to understand how the leg wraps work. But I got it mostly worked out.
--ice skates-One thing that I do not understand about canon, is that they gave this character plot relevant bladed feet, but didn't make them ice skates. Ice skates are literally blades strapped to feet, and can be deadly.
Many figure skaters will have a ballet background, because the skills translate decently well. So I am making her an ice skater too.
--Background--
Life: She was an ice skater and ballet teacher, and two of her students were Odette and Clara. Their biological parents were either out of the picture or abusive, so Carmilla started treating them as if they were her own daughters. They all emotionally adopted each other.
Life got a little difficult during WWII, and Carmilla ended up taking advantage of the weapons market. Particularly the black market. Not sure how a ballet teacher ends up doing that, but whatever. She has a shady background, I guess.
She's Latina, but I don't have a specific nationality in mind.
She's in hell because she was in the weapons smuggling business. And also I think something happened to Odette and/or Clara and she killed the perpetrators in revenge.
Death: I haven't decided. Either early 1950s or mid 1960s. Cuz that's just what my instincts say. Probably died in her 40s or 50s, so she has that "mom of young adult children" vibe.
Afterlife: She made it her entire purpose to protect her "daughters". Everything she did was to make their life in hell as palatable as possible.
She got into the market of weapons manufacturing. Since hell is full of people who like using weapons, it was very profitable for her. She's only recently discovered the potential of angelic steel with the help of Odette's scientific curiosity.
--Odette and Clara--
Ballet: Both of them are ballet themed because of their relationship to Carmilla. Swan Lake specifically because it is very famous. And Odette is the name of the main character. Odette is a white swan, while Clara is a black swan. BUT, their roles do not match Swan Lake's Odette and Odile. Clara does not parallel Odile, who is the secondary antagonist in Swan Lake. (Except that maybe she is used by her father to do bad things, but idk).
All three have thematic parallels because of their familial bond, despite not actually being related. Demonic features in sinners are not hereditary. They're determined by life circumstances of the individuals, but sometimes the relationships they have will give them similar features. (Angie's family are all spiders because of the nature of their mafia involvement)
Odette and Clara turned to Carmilla as their parental role model because their actual families were awful.
Swan Lake vs Science: Odette is Swan Lake themed because of her name and ties to Carmilla. Canon minimizes the ballet theme in favor of a scientist instead. So, I feel that implies her interest lies in science. But I wanted to emphasize the ballet aspect and give her clear swan design elements. Her hair and dress is feathery, but the dress is also reminiscent of a lab coat. I removed her glasses in favor of the face mask design. Doing both was too cluttered.
Clara was harder to pin down since we don't know much about her. But I went with black swan to match with Odette. She is similarly feathered.
Life: Odette didn't really want to do ballet, she wanted to be a scientist. But her abusive parents forced her. She was a victim of forced dieting to achieve the ideal ballerina figure. Odette tolerated it because of the relationship she developed with Carmilla and Clara. She eventually went to college and majored in science. Not sure what she did to end up in hell. Maybe she killed someone, idk.
I don't have a clear idea for Clara, because I only have the swan lake motif to go off of. Not much canon info. But her family situation needs to be bad so she gets attached to Carmilla and Odette.
Death: Haven't solidly decided on anything. Probably in their 20s. There's just not much canon info for me to base anything off of. I'd have to take some pretty significant creative liberties. Even if I go a completely different direction than canon, I still like having more canon info to use as a springboard.
Afterlife: Again, not much on Clara. Odette is involved with the research and development of Carmilla's weapons manufacturing business. It was her scientific curiosity that led to the discovery of angelic steel's potential. It's still a recent development, so it hasn't been incorporated into their products yet.
I thought they introduced the angelic weapons a bit too quickly. I wish they'd let us get more familiar with what happens when characters are killed in not-permanent ways. Why do they avoid getting hurt as if it's actually a threat to them? What is regenerating like for them?
Human designs: I wasn't super committed, so they haven't gone through much refining. Carmilla is in her arms dealer business outfit. I gave Clara something called a "Play Suit" because her canon outfit does not fit the time period I was going for(1940s).
MORE MESSY FIRST PASS REDESIGNS!!!! VEROSIKA TIME!!!!!
I have a FEW notes here actually
Original Verosika I honestly don’t have that many problems with. She’s fine conventionally attractive hot pop star succubus lady. It all comes across. I’m definitely not a fan of how heavy handed the symbols are—she’s got hearts stars X’es AND O’s, and they’re all everywhere. It’s too much!!! Like her dress is just kinda ugly to me—that big star just plastered on the entire stomach portion is so abnormal to me.
For my design I omitted the stars and just went with hearts, X’es, and O’s. I thought the base clothes were fine, so I kept the boot design but changed the dress to a one piece situation that I took some inspo from Sabrina Carpenter with because she’s. A popular fem pop star. Right. Probably
Gave her some more tattoos because her one and only tattoo being due to Blitz irked me and is NOT helping the male centric Hellaverse allegations. Also made her Blitz tattoo a full black out cover up because I don’t like it’s X’ed out design—it’s a bad cover up and I really don’t think Verosika would go for that considering how much she hates him.
She is also part imp now! Like a fourth. I thought it was a little odd she was one of the only succubi without fully black wings so I thought that was something I could attribute that to. This now also explains her black tipped horns (ik succubi can have those normally but yk). Made the horns into a crooked heart shape as well because why not. She has bat like ears and slightly bigger wings bc I’d want succubi to be a bit more bat-like in my rewrite, + I think it helps separate them more from imps.
Thatttssss all for neow!!!! Tell me what u thinkkkkk…,,,,.,,,.,,okay bye…….,.,, xoxo
and while im here doin this shit, you can have my redone Alastor redesign too. leaned more into his shadowy powers and brought out his smile by drowning his eyes completely in shadow too!
really hard to do a redesign for this guy! not for the same reasons most people do, but because i remember his creator saying that she's been trying super hard to draw him how she sees her in her head for years, so his canon design is kinda just The Way. i do not have her brain though, so i'm spinning this one the way i'd design him if i never saw him in my life and was given notes about him instead.
i was thinking of keeping the red and kept trying to do so, but i also REALLY wanted that bright green that i used as accents to stay. so i gave in and focused his palette around green fskfdjsk. my personal fav part of this was deciding to have his tie be sort of a reference to the (his?) radio that sits in the hotel.
