So this design was harder than the rest for one reason. There’s no art I could use as references for Candle. Literally no official or fanart and since Gregory Maguire seems to hate describing his character’s appearance (just look at the confusion in the fandom over Liir’s skin colour) I just kinda decided to do my own thing for this one.
(Info of AU and process under cut)
Candle’s role in this AU: Honestly Candle isn’t that much of a main character compared to Liir, Trism or Nor (as of right now). Liir and Candle met when they were kids, Glinda, Liir and Nor had moved down to Quadling Country (because Glinda will always be the Good Witch of the South!) Liir’s magic just started to activate so he was panicking a lot and refusing to leave the castle in case he hurt someone until one day he heard the most beautiful music he’d ever heard. It was Candle, practising with her ‘Domignion.’ Little Liir found Candle and the two became close super fast as it seemed in his mind that Candle was the only one who could help calm his crazy magic.
Cut to their late teens and they attend Shiz together and immediately the two notice how distant their relationship has become. They’re both bad at actually being boyfriend and girlfriend and it becomes even worse when Liir meets and gets a huge crush on Trism. One night they have a huge fight which ends in Candle breaking up with him on the spot causing the friend group to break apart and for Liir to double down on his lack of self care and focusing more on helping the birds as a way to ignore his own issues. They only reunite post time skip after Liir wakes up from a coma caused by being dropped from a great height by one of the Gale Force’s dragons - Candle had become a nurse and decided to help him as a sort of closure.
The two are on far better terms and become friendly but not as close as they once were in their youth.
Candle’s design was actually based on an outfit I have irl, the big cardigan mostly. I was trying to think of aspects of Quadling Culture I could put into her design and I noticed diamond pattern and immediately knew what her design was going to be. The patterns on her cardigan is meant to be stylised bird wings as a way of connecting her to Liir subtly. I wanted her to look as cosy as possible since that’s how Liir sees her, as a soft comforting presence in his life and this is the result.
I also gave her vitiligo as a way to make her stand out from the other characters and because I think more characters should have that design because I think it looks cool. Also because the wiki said she had dark umber skin but I see people describe her as a light red so I thought it’d be a way of referencing both.
Honestly she came out so cute. I’m so happy with her
I'm continuing to fill out my roster of Wicked designs with various quadling/half quadling characters, and trying to figure out how to give various ozian ethnic groups distinctive features without making them all too same-faced along the way :D
(Nessa mostly looks like her mom---I wanted to give them plausible deniability about who her father is---but I am firmly in the she-is-Turtle-Heart's-daughter camp)
[ID: four sketches of characters from the Wicked Years book series by Gregory Maguire. From top left to bottom right the characters are: Turtle Heart, a man with reddish brown skin and long slicked back dark brown hair wearing a green wrap shirt and a white necklace; Nessarose, a young woman with lighter pink skin and short reddish-brown hair wearing a white blouse with a black necktie and a yellow shawl; Candle, a young woman with medium brown skin and brown hair tied up in two looped braids wearing a novice nun's habit, and Rain, a teenage girl with very light reddish-brown skin and long black hair wearing a dark blue square-necked dress. The characters' faces have some similar features to show that they are the same ethnicity. Each character is captioned with their name.]
I really want to give her a cosy warm vibe for her since for a good period of time that’s how Liir sees her so I just went full cosy cottage core (also Aerith from FF7 because that’s basically Liir and Candle’s relationship in this AU except not as healthy). Don’t know wtf her instrument is meant to look like, all I know is it’s a string instrument, so I went for a guitar/loot look.
Also planning to give her vitiligo style design for her skin to make her stand out from Liir and Nor
