Your username cracks me up every time I see it; thanks for the mirth it brings
Thank you ♥ I'm happy that it has that effect :)
When I decided to open this sideblog, I wanted a serious name that was somehow related to my name in other social media. Which is why after fighting for like 2 hours to find some cool name in quenya, I ended up with the boring Ara-uco, with "ara" being the common ground with my usual name (garabatos) and my name (ara). Could I have used something related with Finarfin? Yes...but I totally forgot about his name. Which is funny because he was featured in my first post here.
Anyway, to the point. After one month of being back on tumblr after years and having fun reading everyone's user name I felt the mighty need of making mine a wordplay of sorts, artist name be damned. And I regret nothing
I only have a discarded silvergifting meme to offer here, so I hope this is not your notp or something
Hello! I love your art, especially the way you draw clothes! ❤️
Hello! I'm really happy you think so ♥ Thank you so so much ♥
I've been struggling to not make the answer to this question self depricating, because I don't think my designs are good. I'm technically a fashion designer (studied that, have a degree on it, worked as a designer on a kid's brand) so my expectations for my own creations are a bit different.
But you are telling me that you like them, a wonderful cosplayer choose my Annatar design to cosplay, and another wonderful person has commissioned me to desing some clothes for their Middle Earth characters. So, it'd be very rude to talk badly about my designs. Instead of that, I'm gonna share some part of my designing process and some details I've put in them under the cut ♥
Ok, the only characters I actually sat down to design once I finished reading The Silm where the feanorians. All the rest have kinda came from those designs (in design we would call them "Diseño rector". I don't have the english term for that).
First skecthes of them were this tiny thumnails
I changed these a lot. But I kept some elements. Specially from Maglor's first design and Amrod's. Curufin's smith clothes ended up being Celebrimbror's usual clothes (with much less detail becase I have never drawn a not meme version of him with clothes).
The general idea was to keep Feanor and Nerdanel with more royal like clothes while, at the same time, making Feanors clothes not to flowy or flashy, more like confortable to move around, because he was more into travelling and crafting rather than politics. Fingolfin's clothes for example are similar, but have long sleeves and, if I ever were to draw him again, I'd add more layers to his clothes
Maedhros was meant to have a mix of warrior clothes and formal ones, like he is a fighter, but also a prince and diplomat. I only used that like, once. After that, I opted for casual, western like clothes, that are meant to look more modest. Like he is, you know, traveling around and tired of his family and problems. And, most importantly...he wears lots of blue, because he is closer to the nolofinweans. He wore more red in Valinor, but started using more and more blue after Thangorodrim.
First Curufin there was more heavily armored, because I felt he was more violence-inclined. But I ended up discarding that in favor of more forge friendly clothes as I realized he was more of a manipulation guy, but not a fancy one. Not gonna lie, only drew him like twice, so I haven't worked to much on him. He wears only red.
Celegorm changed a lot. He was meant to have a more western look, and use lots of leather, but still look well dressed. Now I draw him with minimum clothing (still more leather and fur than the rest, tho) because he just doesn't care. He also wears all red, but in a more muted tone and a tiny bit more maroon/brownish
Maglor is the one that changed the least. He was meant to be dressed in a similar fashion than Nerdanel, both for personal views of his gender and to point out that he is more kin to her, for me. Both him and Caranthir have more formal and very not-practical outfits to show that they aren't that much into fighting and moving around, even if they did those. But Maglor in particular doesn't wear red at all. I use both green a blue for him. In this case, is not related to his cousins, but the sea. The only time I used red for him was when I drew him in full armor.
Caranthir uses the same kind of clothes as Maglor, but in his case is to look fancier. I use reddish purples for him, since purple is usually associated with wealth, and also separates him from all the rest.
(also, yes, his hair is dark red. This was mostly because I usually have a hard time telling him apart from Curufin. I thought it would be easier like that, but instead got very confused tags hahaha)
Photo limit doesn't allow to show the changes on the ambarussa, but let's just say that I only drew him once, and went for VERY simple clothes, more like Mae's, in the same colors too.
And finally, Celebrimbor. He is dressed basically like Curufin, always very simple, comfortable and modest. It's more about he as a creator than a leader. I Have thought of some fancies clothes for him, but never got around to draw them yet because I like showing his arms way too much. He dresses much like Curufin, uses his hair like him and Feanor (because it reflects on their common necessity of having forge friendly looks), but would NEVER wear anything red or gold. The reason I went for blue is both because of how he rejected his lineage and because of the time he spent in Gondolin.
And yep, that's all.
Like, I had drawings of actual, well done references of Annatar's outfits, or like 10 designs option sketches I did for Thranduil, but decided to write a thesis about these guys. And worst of all, I'm not spell checking this, so it's going to be a mess.
If you read all of this nonsense: i love you. Thank you.
1- Finarfin. That man is very good at avoiding problems with corrupted figures, so I'd trust him 100% on this one, even if it'd probably be very boring.
2- Mae is definitely not very good at avoiding problems with corrupted figures. At all. But at least he is pretty capable of living in the run. Also, I love him, so yeah.
3- Aredhel is as good as Mae at avoiding corrupted figures. Which is bad. And I'm sure we would take a lot of bad decisions and end up getting caught, but at least we would have some fun in the process.
4- Hùrin. Bad at avoiding, also a natural source of calamity. But I'm sure he has a very dark humor and is a neverending source of sass, so maybe it's fun? Before it ends up horribly
5- Celegorm. He is the corrupted figure. I'm running.
for the character game: #13 (rewatch fave TV show or movie with); Mairon, Celebrimbor, Maedhros, Maglor, Caranthir? -@mai-sau
I'll go with Labyrinth, because it's one of my favorites and I rewatched it some days ago
1- Maglor. I mean, I have this impression that modern AU Maglor could be a bit of a snob, but I think he would appreciate Bowie and dangerous quantities of glitter as much as I do.
2- Celebrimbor. He seems nice enough to not judge my awful tastes. Also, the way that it's filmed and the pseudo animatronic characters like Ludo might interested him. He would also hate the bad CGI owl, a lot. But mostly, I love him, so this is 100% wishful thinking
(I'm in a "fuck cringe culture" phase and it's showing a lot here huh)
3- Mae. He would fall asleep five minutes after the movie starts, and that would be ok. (Mostly because the whole "Evil king kidnaps someone" theme might not sit very well with him)
4- Caranthir. Either he wouldn't shut up about how bad effects are or he would just be on the phone and not paying attention. Like, I love this Gremlin too, but I don't think he is a nice option.
5- Mairon. I said that Maglor might be a bit of a snob, but Mairon would be the biggest one. He would destroy the movie in 10 minutes. Trash talk the effects? Nah. He would go directly for the heavy topics behind the glitter and made a sure to point out every gross detail in the movie just so I can't watch it again without thinking about all the problematic aspects of it. Does HE care about those aspects? Not at all, he just doesn't like the movie and wants to ruin it for the rest too. Although, he might also be secretly deflecting from the fact that he was kinda digging Jareth
