#vol-ogtsvt

[grazhdanintovarisch]

no way out!

[grazhdanintovarisch]

beautiful ladies accepting their share of the Lilium martagon to save the world

[grazhdanintovarisch]

here come the cuties in the traditional 19th century Sakha (Yakut) costumes! and Aksenia is also there, doubling the cute factor

a few notes on the costumes:

- in the 19th century, Sakha (Yakut) women used to wear a coat and a hat for any kind of festivities both in any season: the picture features the summer coat (the summer hat existed too, but i couldn't find any museum-stored examples of it)

- under the coat, a vest called кэһиэччик and a dress called халадаай were worn: it is thought that this type of clothing was borrowed from the Russian settlers of Siberia around the end of the 18th century

- the second outfit is халадаай without кэһиэччик: on its own it could only be worn at home, today it itself can be viewed as a separate costume

- the dress+vest+hat combo that the third girl and Aksenia wear became prominent in the beginning of the 20th century, but it still has traditional costume roots, as discussed previously... i could go on and on, but i'll stop myself here

[grazhdanintovarisch]

i've made another concept for the "fairy-tale" world: a monster based on Mu-shubuun, a Buryat (and Mongol) folklore character. This monster can turn into a bird or a young woman, but they can never fully transform their red and sharp beak, which is why they have to hide it behind a sleeve.

sadly, i couldn't find any images of this character, so i decided to follow my own intuition for this one. At one point i thought of making the beaks of all mu-shubuuns red, but i've decided against it. these designs are all based on real birds (Eurasian sparrowhawk, Great grey shrike, and Black stork), with the addition of beige colour for parts of their faces.

to be honest, the beak should "consist" of lips alone, i.e. the nose should still be human-looking, but that looks plain weird in my style, so i didn't do it that way. Mu-shubuuns can be tall or short, big or lanky: the one thing they share in common is that they turn into beautiful young Buriat ladies.

they all will have little teeth too, because it looks more interesting that way.

these designs don't look half bad, i think! i can't really draw feathers, but i'll learn if i draw more of them

[grazhdanintovarisch]

i've made two concepts for two Water magicians based on the traditional costume of Tatar people, specifically Kazan Tatars!

the first girl wears clothing, which used to be worn from the end of the 18th century to the beginning of the 19th century

i'll provide a few cool clothing elements below, since i can't do them justice in my simple drawings:

the second girl wears clothing, which used to be worn from the second half of the 19th century to the beginning of the 20th century

the most noticeable change between these two periods is visible in the dresses: the shape of the earlier dresses is simpler than those that come at the end of the 19th century due to the influence of european fashion

interestingly, the kalfak becomes smaller with time:

one more detail to ponder - even the festive boots underwent change! the amount of space between details has increased, and the patterns themselves have assumed a more general floral design

there are exceptions from the rule, of course! i just hoped to provide a small review of the Kazan Tatar costume's evolution over time

[grazhdanintovarisch]

i've done a few character concepts in the meanwhile:

the first two girls wear traditional costumes of the Sakha (Yakut) people of the 17-18th centuries, based on the results of various archeological excavations.

sadly, there is not a lot of concrete information about this period, so the casual costumes on the 1st and 2nd pictures might actually consist of festive clothing (since people were usually buried in their most decorated attire). as of now, the combination of those clothing elements is a speculation of my part, but all of them have their roots in scientific costume recreations

the third picture portrays a magical outfit of a Sand magician.

not all Sakha people used to tattoo themselves, but there is evidence of it existing in some parts of that region (which likely came from the Evenki people). their meaning has been lost to time, unfortunately. they were given to people in the early childhood, which is also unfortunate. that's history for you!

i'm not too sure, if a light hat like that would be worn with a furcoat, but both items used to be an important part of a bride's costume. there is also a furred hat that a bride could wear, so it's hard to say, really. maybe this light hat was worn during summer with sleeveless coat only, maybe it was worn with the furcoat. i'd love to know more for sure, i hope we can still discover more about this period of time!

Sand magicians are a part of Earth magician regiment, and they often work with Fire magician regiment to create Glass attacks. i'm thinking of writing out the way that power-combo system works... or maybe even draw something related to this topic... hmmmm

----

the other four characters come from different regions: the first girl is from the north-eastern part of Bashkortostan, the guy next to her is from Arkhangelsk Oblast, and the guy and girl on the last picture are from Oryol Oblast. the Oryol girl's costume is similar in structure to Tasya's costume, where she also has an apron-like cover with sleeves and also a skirt that is cut in half in the front (which allows her to tuck the ends of it into her belt).

all of them are going to be a part of a story, where they (along with Tasya) go to find treasure in a dangerous cave... Tasya will have to save their butts a lot! i hope i'll write the outline for the story soon

[grazhdanintovarisch]

ha, a double feature of two earth magicians coming your way!

the first character (Zinchay, 25 years old) has his outfits based on traiditional clothing of Ugede people:

what's interesting, is that in Udege culture there's both festive and festive "hunting" costumes. men wore their best clothing, when they went out into the woods, celebrating their hunt in a way, after which they changed into their hunting gear with fur, and during festivities they wore their festive outfit with a hunting hat (but without a head cloak)

i've decided to go with the "summer" version of the festive "hunting" outfit, because it looks cool and distinct. although if i were to draw him as a fire magician, i'd give him a full set of fur clothing, because in the context of the story fire is the most immediately dangerous element to a human, therefore magicians need to have more protection against it.

Zinchay is a regular warrior of the Earth squad & he's pretty cool... i'm still thinking about his role for the story, but he will make semi-regular appearances in it - he will certainly try to go on a quest to find Aksenia, who's been mysteriously missing for over a year now

---

the second character (Galina, 30 years old) has her outfits based on the traditional clothing of Arkhangelsk oblast Russians:

the costume itself is also specific to the Pinezhskiy region of Arklhangelsk oblast, because this is where a unique type of a headdress used to exist - a "crown" with seven ridges. it was so rare, that in some villages only one family would have one, and others would have to rent it out for weddings

Galina's sarafan lacks colorful stripes, because in Pinezhskiy region there used to be a tradition of cutting them off, when a woman's husband passed away - as far as i understand anyway. and they say telling a story through design is hard...

i have modified the casual costume a little bit, though - i wrapped the hat with a "кустышки", a type of cloth that is tied in a way, which looks like bunny ears. it is more common among Pomors, but i thought it looked interesting

Galina is in command of the Earth squad under Zlata's rule: she is the only person that Zlata keeps close, since Galina seems to tolerate her personality the most. does she? who knows. she's chill and doesn't let any emotion get the better of her, if she has any at this point

[grazhdanintovarisch]

another one... another one... time for a sterotypical magical girl approximately from Russia's Vladimir Oblast... huh, approximately? well, i've decided to implement a few archaic elements into her casual design, some of which come from archeological findings of Vladimir Oblast region! but other elements... i'll talk about that later, for now here's a temporary description for her:

Zlata (27 years old):

- is malicious, cold-hearted and annoying; lives lavishly and solely for her own benefit

- is in charge of a "variety" regiment, consisting of fire, water, earth and other magicians; "fights" with Nuryat for the right to be Rimma's right hand: she doesn't really want to strive that high, but she loves to infuriate Nuryat with her superior skills

- in her free time she likes to do a bit of costume reconstruction - a hobby which she keeps in secret from everyone

- has the "space" ability, i.e. to teleport, bend gravity and trajectory of enemy attacks, etc. (she has Moon symbols all over her costume, contrasting with Tasya's Sun costume symbolism)

- Tanya and Dunya wouldn't have ever crossed her radar, had they only stayed on "friendly" terms...

-------------------------------

firstly, yes, Zlata wears four clothing pieces for her casual outfit. that's the way royalty used to dress in ye olde times over here!

secondly... sigh. usually i don't allow myself to be "sloppy" with character designs, but i really wanted to go for that 17-18th century fashion of the rich in Russia, but there's one big problem - around 1700s it became... French. and such style just wouldn't look congruent with the rest of the world that i'm trying to build.

for context, there was a law passed by Pyotr the I, which called for abandonment of everything Russian by the upper society, and so... it has been abandoned in favor of being more sophisticated and European... however, it's been abandoned so hard, it got lost!

some clothing pieces exist in museums (and by some, i mean probably not even a dozen separate, complete clothing pieces) and ye olde texts describing rich people's possessions. the clothing's lost to the point, where even the experts keep mixing the terminology!

i've spent a week or two researching the topic, but i haven't gained a clear understanding of how people dressed before 18th century (rest assured though, at least the patterns are historically accurate). it's a shame, really... history truly does disappear with frightening speed

------

nevermind that, here's an interesting comparison between the fashion of the peasantry from the Central and Southern regions of Russian Empire (its European part, that is):

on these first two photos there are costumes from Nizhniy Novgorod and Vladimir - the shape that the gold 'епанечка' and the brown, long-sleeved 'душегрея' create is interesting. i wonder, what the folds were for?

these costumes come from cities of the Central region, as well:

very, very pretty! then we have a few examples of what kinds of kokoshnik were common in Vladimir Oblast: some of them have that "conventional" shape, while others have a more intriguing 'disc' appearance to them, due to the way they are meant to be worn!

all of the following costumes come from Ryazan Oblast (this is what i've based Tasya's costume on!)

all of them have such vibrant and exciting colours! though i'm not sure as to how comfortable it was to wear so much clothes out in the South... i mean, some items, like headdresses and vests were only really worn during holidays, but there's still so much clothing left!

the contrast between the two costume philosophies is so fun! im so glad that at least the costumes of the "lower" society were preserved in time, cus' losing such variety and beauty would be too much, to put it mildly

----------

for those who are new, here are the links to posts with all the my magical girls: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7