I LOVE designing clothes for Thedas and DND that draw from different cultures. For @thedasincolor Splash of Color Saturday, I wanna talk a little about my Evanuris/Elvhenan re-design project.
First of all, credit where credit is due: there are a lot of historians and artists working together to study Late Classic and Late Post-Classic Mexica and Maya garments, their uses, their stations, and such.
One of my favorite artists is Daniel Parada (ArtStation,Comic,Twitter). I can only show some snippets because Tumblr hates topless female-presenting people, but here’s just one example of the amount of detail and research is available for historical mesoamerican dress:
*Disclaimer: All of this is preliminary and everyone will be varying shades of brown if/when I actually color them.
Doing these portraits, I was heavily inspired by the incorporation of brightly-colored feathers and ribbons, and body paint, we find in historical sources like the Magliabechiano Codex. But I did want to also have visual parallels to modern Dalish dress--like Andruil’s choker being similar to that of the Keeper’s Vestments in DAI, and Mythal’s hair ornamentation being similar to Flemeth’s.
One of the things I love thinking about is: in a world where you are immortal, and fight perhaps more with magic than with weapons, and you are vain af--what does your armor look like? (And as an artist: maintain an interesting silhouette and shape language.)
You learn pretty quickly in pre-modern times, armor wasn’t actually that “sophisticated.” Woven fibers that are hardened with something like mud and baked in the sun. Maybe a shield. But mostly, people went into battle wearing less clothes and more intimidating displays and dressed for luck.
Andruil and Falon’Din and Elgar’nan are the warhawks of the bunch, so I chose Andruil as the first Evanuris to fully redesign. None of these are final designs but my iterative process started with the one on the left, and then has started to narrow in on designs that are SHARP and DANGEROUS and with POISONOUS COLORS. I don’t want to give the Evanuris themselves vallaslin designs given the connotation we have of vallaslin, but body decorations and body paint were important in religious and social contexts. Giving Andruil the spots of an honored predator/god felt fitting.
Some other resources and Inspiration
(mostly linking Twitter and ArtStations but most link to many scholarly sources)
And as a bonus, here is Felassan in a sarape.
