Working on some designs for the White Witches! The concept of them is so fucking creepy and unsettling I love it so much, so naturally I have to draw them. But before I get to do that, I have to figure out how the fuck to do that- so welcome to my process! This is gonna be long as hell, so I've put it under the cut for the sake of convenience.
First we gotta go over what we have. I haven't seen any official art of White Witches, only of the Manus and some Hunters, so we gotta work off of the narration. The first notes I took were from Arc 2, the first ever appearance of a White Witch.
These are the details I got from that scene:
Long white veil with light green and blue embroidery
Lower face showing, eyes covered
So all of these needed to be incorporated somehow. Step one was messing around with the veil and the robe silhouette.
This part was easy enough, I wanted to stick with the church theme so I started looking through nun habits. I didn't want to exactly copy any specific style, but it felt like an appropriate starting point. What I ended up keeping was a heavy lean on triangles and rectangles.
This was probably my favorite part to experiment with. The veils are described as covering the eyes, but not the lower half of the face, so you can see the mouth clearly. This detail actually spawned a whole train of thought that massively influenced my design going forward but we'll get to that later-
The first idea I had was to just take a regular veil and make it sheer at the bottom, like a gradient. But I quickly dropped that, it felt too same-y, and with colors it would blend right in to the rest of the white robes. The whole point was to bring a focus to the face. What I ended up sticking with was this!
Once I had it down it seemed so obvious- a split veil! I just put a split across the bridge of the nose and bam, suddenly it made sense. The triangular cut and the cascading folds just kind of happened, it felt natural with the rest of the shapes I had been drawing. A friend said it reminded him of moths, which felt oddly fitting given their association with magic in Arc 1. In retrospect, I think I was subconsciously inspired by early appearances of Blue Diamond in Steven Universe. Not intentional, but I do love how it turned out.
This is the "later" I mentioned earlier, because I am obsessed with the implications of this veil. It's very specifically said that a White Witch is never without her Manus or a Hunter, and the first one we ever see is flanked by two hunters. They are, fundamentally, still seen by the church as threats.
So with that in mind, one goal expanded into two. At first my goal was to make them unsettling, but beautiful. Like porcelain dolls. The church doesn't parade their cruelty around, they dress it up in fine robes and narratives of redemption.*
* This is some extrapolation on my part. It's mentioned in Arc 2 that most witches regard White Witches as "traitors". That implies that their imprisonment is not common knowledge. If it was, they would be "captives" or "prisoners". Even if they turned themselves in, I highly doubt they were signing up for whatever the fuck is going on in that church.
Now I have my second goal: make them clearly, but not obviously, trapped.
This gave me a really clear direction to move in, because now every piece of fabric has an extra practical purpose. For example-
There is a myth that making eye contact with a witch is inviting a curse upon yourself. The veil helps with that. Blocking their eyes eases the anxieties of any passerby or audience (and makes real spells that require direct eye contact impossible). It also heavily obscures their vision, making them reliant on their Manus to move around effectively. The mouth is uncovered so that they can always be monitored for recitations or chanting. Symbolically, the veil could parallel the blindfold of Lady Justice. If the narrative spun by the Church is that the white witches are willingly working in their service, then there is a sense of self-redemption to it. Turning wicked skills to the service of what is good and holy. Repenting as an act of the pursuit of justice. Obviously made all the more ironic and gross by the true nature of the whole thing.
The long sleeves are beautiful, and add to the general elegance of the uniform. They are also deeply impractical. The length makes them easy to trip over, the weight of the fabric makes them difficult to roll up.
There's a sketch on the first image by my friend who suggested that they could have twin trains coming off of the skirt, like moth wings. They create a very sleek and elegant design befitting the image of the Church. They're also easy to step on or grab in the event of a runaway witch. Naturally I took his suggestion.
This is what I meant by "clear but not obvious". None of this stuff is hidden, but most people aren't going to notice it. Someone like Zachary probably would, because he would be thinking from the perspective of how to escape or fight back, so he'd pick up on those details. But the general non-magic crowd isn't going to be thinking about that at all. They'll assume that a lack of literal chains means that there are no prisoners here. So the Church gets to keep a squeaky clean image with the public at large while still acting as a prison.
Basically, I'm having way too much fun with this. And now I have a solid idea of what I want these guys to look like! Next up will be settling on designs for Little One, Pointer, and Middle! (Speaking of which the utter disrespect of calling her "Middle"???? That was one of the details that made "As violently as possible please :D" a very satisfying moment)
