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History of Pilot Velvette and How Her Redesign Made Me Fall in Love with Her

So, in the spirit of the whole look of my blog, I thought my first real post should be about Velvette. With season 2 putting her in many different outfits, I saw people in the fandom doing rankings and thought it would be fun to do my own as well. Before I do that though, I wanted to ramble a little about something first. As I was going through her outfits, in the back of my mind I was thinking about her pilot design.

I was always interested in the vees and was excited to see them in the show proper, but I clearly had favorites. I was curious about Velvette but wasn't exactly chomping at the bit to know about her compared to Vox and Valentino. At the time I just chalked that up to just having very little information about her. After all, Val was clearly going to be important for Angel's story, which was made very clear by the Addict music video. Meanwhile Vox was being set up as a rival for Alastor in one of the old Hazbin Hotel comics.

***If you don't know what I'm talking about, there were two comics written by Viv that were released during the pilot era. One featuring Angel Dust and another one featuring Alastor. The one I'm referring to in particular is Alastor's. It's most likely not canon anymore, as you can't find it on the website, but the wiki still has a record of it if you want to read it. I think it's still worth a look!***

My point is Velvette really didn't have much information in comparison. There were little bits of info here and there scattered about, but you really had to piece things together to get a general impression of her. We mostly just knew she was part of the Vees and was potentially the social media overlord. That lack of information is why I thought she fell under the radar for me. But then when season 1 was being promoted and the vees were revealed, something shifted.

WHO IS THIS DIVA!!!!!

Velvette easily had the most changed in her design from pilot to show. Immediately I was so much more interested in her and the dynamic she had with the others. Once she fully appeared in the show, I was hooked and never let go. Season 2 in particular just fueled my love for her even more. Looking back at all this, I want to really analyze why her redesign really improved her for me before the show was even out. Don't get me wrong, I liked her first design, but it clearly didn't grab me as much as her current one. So here I am, after all that rambling, ready to take a look back into Velvette's design!

*For reference, everything in red and indented is a side note. Velvette's name was spelled Velvet during the pilot era, so I will be using that spelling when referring to the pilot design*

VELVET

Despite not being able to see her doll joints in this outfit, you can definitely gleam a doll-aesthetic from this. I think a good descriptor of this kind of look would be in the realm of dollcore. This is an aesthetic inspired by both modern and vintage ball-jointed dolls, particular from Japan. It definitely has some aspects from that, like the dress with its puffy sleeves, the frills in her skirt and hair pieces, and the white eyeliner makeup. Even the way her expression is here kind of reminds me of a doll whose eye got a little out of place.

As I mentioned I still do quite like this design. I believe it fits in terms of what some of her characterization appeared to be in the pilot era, which I think is also important when talking about her design. Velvet didn't have much during that time but there were a couple things that included her. From what I remember, these would be used by the fandom to piece together what her character could have intended to be.

PILOT

Starting with the pilot itself, we have one of the few shots that includes the vees.

From this small interaction we can infer a few things. That Velvet is perhaps a little whacky and silly by the way she moves. She purses her lips up at Vox and gets up in his space, (which she probably knows annoys him) and then stretches her arms out before taking a selfie with him. It's only a few seconds but compared to Vox and Valentino, Velvet has the most outward movement. Her big wide smile could also suggest that she is a little unhinged. We see this more clearly in the next frame.

Her smile and eyes are very wide, which if nothing else shows how excited she is. We can also guess that she is younger than the two by the way she interacts with Vox and her phone. Vox very much looks like a disgruntled older man when Velvet gets all close and pulls out the phone. Velvet immediately really focuses on her phone afterwards, either implying she is about to post the picture or is just really into using it. Compare this to Valentino, who is also on his phone, but he clearly is looking at it for more practical reasons. In this scene he is receiving texts from Angel. This gave us the idea that her main thing would be social media and since that is associated with younger generations, she is naturally younger than Vox and Val.

Her other appearance in the pilot can be easily missed, but it's during the time Vaggie is explaining how dangerous Alastor is. There is a graphic of Overlords shown and she is in the corner.

Her teeth are noticeably sharper in this picture. It adds to that feeling of her maybe being a little crazy.

Again, all of this mostly speculation and with hindsight from the actual series this is probably clearer now, but I think it starts to paint a good picture of what I and others thought would be her character.

LIVESTREAMS

Next thing we can look at is previous livestreams either Viv herself was a part of or some past crew members. This is where we would usually get little tidbits and lore about the characters. Obviously, a lot of information is now changed or outdated, but it is what we had to go on at the time. I'm not sure of the exact number of instances that Velvet was talked about, but there are at least two confirmed livestreams where she was mentioned.

The first one was in January 2020, a charity livestream for the Australian Wildfires. Viv was asked a question about Vox and Velvet. You can listen for yourself as the livestream is still up, but I will do a little paraphrase here as well. The question was asking if Viv could tell us anything about Vox and Velvet's personalities.

Viv responds that Velvet is really energetic, stylish and trendy. She is someone that can keep up with trends easily and that's why her and Vox get along very well. Both characters have gone out of their way to follow the march of technology, so they are both pretty modern. Viv also mentions that Velvet is really good with food and potion making.

*Except for maybe the food part, looks like most of this made it into the show. I'm glad the potion making was kept, I think it's really cool*

Next, we have a livestream from Faustisse, who was a former illustrator and visual developer for Hazbin Hotel. They left the project in 2020 to pursue their own work, but before that they did livestreams and talked about character and worldbuilding lore. Unfortunately, they have removed all the streams from their channel, but someone did make a little transcript of that one in particular. A lot of the information Faustise provided is very outdated now but it's cool to look back at potential earlier concepts. The brief mentions of Velvet are:

Vox, Valentino, and Velvet are all close friends

Velvet is batshit crazy, Vox and Valentino are about equal when it comes to levelheadedness

VOXTAGRAM

I think all that's described and shown in the pilot and livestreams bleeds a little into how she appears and acts in the Voxtagram era.

***For context, the Voxtagram era was when people, presumably from the spindlehorse crew, would make Instagram's for the characters and run them like it was actually the characters posting on there. Sometimes different characters would interact in the comments. These were made for fun and were never meant to be canon, so they are now archived probably to avoid confusion. I still think it was a fun interaction with the fandom while we were waiting for the show to come out. For me it was kind of funny having all of them in my following tab. Luckily a tumblr blog archived a lot of them, so we can still look back at them despite the accounts themselves no longer being available***

I'm not going to go through every voxtagram post but will highlight some ones that I think shows Velvet's personality a little. If you want to see them all, check out the Voxtagram archive on Tumblr, they did us a great service by not letting these become lost media.

For reference, her username is radvelvetcakes

This appears to be the photo she took in the pilot, which is a cool reference. Vox is definitely giving that look of, "ok I'll do this for the brand"

We can see her doing her nails and potentially her makeup as well with the glitter also appearing on her face. This is leaning into the stylish aspect of her character.

Here we can see that energetic and potentially childish side of Velvet. She seems to enjoy messing with both Vox and Valentino.

Appears to be showing her crazier side, with her clearly having fun helping Valentino kill. This is one of the few times we see her with a knife as well. Maybe it was intended to be her main weapon for killing. Valentino is giving her a nice head pat; she looks very proud.

This next post is from Valentino's Voxtagram and has a long thread of comments between Vox, Val, and Velvet. A funny gag in this era was that Stolas from Helluva Boss would frequently go into Valentino's comments and roast him. The context of this particular thread is Valentino arguing with Stolas, while Vox and Velvet watch and comment in entertainment. I didn't include the full thing as I wanted to focus on Velvet's comments but it's all very funny. Username refences, voxtagram_8k is Vox, moth_pimp is Valentino, and daddy_hoothoot is Stolas.

A few things to take away from this is that

Velvet bakes, such as cookies and based on her username, cakes

She frequently threatens to run away from home

Jokes about Vox and Valentino being her dads

I will note that the voxtagrams were mostly the crew and not Viv herself, so we can't know how much her characterization was accurate to Viv's vision at the time. However, since the fandom didn't have much to go on, this definitely shaped how we viewed the character.

VELVET'S CHARACTER

With all these little bits of info, at least for me personally, this was the general impression I had of what Velvet was going to be like.

One of the three Vee's, Velvet is highly energetic and a little insane. She is in tune with the latest trends and is very stylish, suggesting that she is an overlord of social media. While being somewhat crazy compared to the others, especially with her big knife that doesn't appear to be used just for cutting cakes, she gets along well with her fellow vees. She has fun messing with Vox and Valentino, appearing to act almost like a daughter figure to them. Don't let her childish acts let you forget that she is still an overlord, and you should watch out for her potions.

This was just a little description I wrote for fun, but that was the general vibe I was getting from her character.

PILOT DESIGN

With all this additional context, let's go back to talking about her design a little more. With her presumed characterization in mind, this design does fit in some ways. Really what I think was holding it a little back for me is her supposed place in the story, she doesn't feel like an overlord equal to Vox and Valentino. I think part of it is leaning too heavily in the doll aesthetic. She doesn't feel like the overlord of social media, just that she participates heavily in it. I can see her fashion aspect a little, but I think in the vein of she would dress up a lot or be dressed up by Valentino or Vox, like a doll. Her style feels too vintage and doesn't look like she is keeping up with modern trends. Again, while she is supposed to be a doll, I think the rest of her character gets a little lost in that.

The Vees, 2020, Artwork by Vivziepop

This design to me communicates to me a childish energetic girl who is a bit sinister. Which isn't a bad thing at all, and I think visually she looks interesting. I like the tricolor scheme and think how it's distributed is very pleasing. The colors in a way separate parts of her body, as if they were pieces put together, which can play into her doll theme. Her rougher hairstyle in the form of pigtails, the stripped sleeves, and the cute pom poms on her shoes all add to a more youthful, childlike appearance. This might be a stretch on my part, but the triangle shapes on her waist and the bottom of her dress can be seen as V's with the negative space, I think that's a nice touch. It's a nice design for a cute but crazy girl, which is a part of her personality. I tend to gravitate to these types of characters, so why didn't she grab me as much? Was it just the fact I couldn't visualize her as an overlord on Vox and Val's level?

I think the discrepancy between her design and story status was part of it, but with all this reflecting I have found another reason. It's clear that her archetype for me was already being fulfilled by Niffty. Even though Niffty didn't have much screentime in the pilot, she was at least able to showcase her personality and unlike Velvet, she had some voiced lines. Niffty is a cute design, but she is very unhinged and crazy, which we love her for. I think in the back of my mind, Velvet to me would have felt a little redundant. You could make the argument that both of them could have been counterparts. Velvet acting like an evil daughter with Vox and Valentino in comparison to Alastor and Niffty's dynamic. I think that could have interesting AU potential.

But back to my point, Velvet's niche was already being filled by Niffty. With Velvet not giving us much to go on in comparison, she had my curiosity, but not my full attention. At the time I thought maybe it was just because Velvet didn't have any screentime outside of the few seconds in the pilot, so I assumed I just needed to see her in the show with a voice to get more interested.

BOY WAS I WRONG!! Just seeing her new design, without hearing her voice or seeing her in the show, I was captivated 💕

SHOW VELVETTE

😍 Just absolute diva and queen 😍

But let's get into specifics. The main points I want to touch on is clothes, colors, and body language. I won't be mentioning anything that occurs in the show, because I didn't need it to love this design.

First thing I want to focus on is that immediately she feels much more modern. We do lose a bit of the doll aesthetic, but I think that is a fine compromise as it's not the most important thing to communicate right away. You can even relate her look to a Bratz doll. Instead of the big dress, she has a more fashionable business look with the long pants, crop top, and a sleek fur coat. She also has nice addition of the heart belt and skull earrings for little accessories.

She actually retains some design elements from her previous design; it's the way it's executed here that makes all the difference. She has the same pom pom shoes but now they have a heel added to them. The fingerless gloves are present but are no longer attached to ruffles and have a darker color palette. She still wears her hair in pigtails, but they are much neater and smooth while still being a very fun and interesting shape. Her bangs are smoothed out as well. I think they did a good job of using some of her old design and making it more modern. She now definitely reads as a fashionista who keeps up with trends.

*I want to gush again about her pigtails; I love them so much! I just really like the swirly shape of them. The white highlights in them are also fun. It's so satisfying to me*

Her color distribution is handled differently as well. She was mostly white in her previous design, but now it's more of an accent color, instead she is in deeper blues, reds, and purples. I think the prominent white with the dress in the pilot gave her a more whimsical and innocent feel, which may have been the point to contrast her more crazy personality. The shift in color palette in the show gives her a more professional but still threatening tone with the darker colors.

Last thing I want to touch on is her body language. Her expressions appear more confident and controlling. Her eyes are more focused, her smile doesn't go as wide compared to the pilot, and she poses with more intention. Let's take a look at the Vee's promo image again. Velvette doesn't appear out of place anymore. She looks just as sinister as the other two, which I think includes the way her eyes and smile are drawn. In the pilot era, even when we see her eyelids, Velvet's eyes maintained that circular shape. Now they allow her eyes to be more angular and sharper.

This Velvette fully convinced me she was an overlord equal to Valentino and Vox. She still retains a youthful appearance compared to the other two, but she looks like a more mature older woman who knows how to play the game. Velvet was giving "I'm just a girl", Velvette is giving "try me bitch".

Once she fully appeared in the show, I was even more convinced that the pilot design would not have worked. Funny enough, we can see Velvette briefly in her old design when she calls Vox in Season 1 episode 2. It's his contact picture for her.

Even here there is some subtle differences compared to the original. Her bangs are a little messier, but it's clearly based on her new hairstyle. Her fingernails are colored black and looks like her ruffles are white instead of red. The changes are small, but I think it helps to fit the current Velvette better. I think it would be cool to see her wear briefly in the show, since she changes outfits so much, but it not being her default look was the right move. I have seen screenshot edits of her in the show with her original design with nothing changed and think it just looks off and clashes with the way she is currently.

*Also love her facial expression in this picture. She looks so silly and cute. I wonder when Vox took the photo*

Now with all that said, I'm grateful with the direction they took with Velvette. I probably would have liked her regardless, just not as much as I do now. Her previous design and characterization could have worked, but I prefer the #Bitch we now all know and love. Season 2 especially let her shine with all the different outfits. I can't imagine how much work that was, the team did a great job!

Speaking of outfits. This whole thread came about after ranking all of Velvette's different outfits. Man, I really derailed myself there. You think I was writing a research paper. I'm going to make a separate thread going over my outfit rankings. Let's see if I can manage not to ramble as much in that one! If you made it to the end, thank you so much for reading. I hope my word vomit was if not entertaining, then at least a little informative.

-Rosemelancrow🌹🐦‍⬛

Velvette Streamily Print. Artwork by ONYX

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