Silhouette Summary & Development Part 2

After producing a first set of silhouettes, I still felt I could produce more, so I experimented with different brushes. One of the best ones I found created a very erratic and spiky effect when moving the pen quickly, whilst being small when I was slow and consistent with my brushstrokes. This created a good variety of parts that stuck out, which I could turn into various accessories later on.

I saw a lot more potential in the silhouettes developed here. I kept in mind the basic shape of the kimono which is very prevalent throughout Japanese clothing. I also began to form a basis of what character I wanted to create. Whilst originally I wanted to either do the soldier or the witch from The Tinderbox, after doing my first silhouettes I felt more drawn to the Princess or the Queen, as this would allow me to bring in quite extravagant designs as the royalty often wore quite bright and detailed clothing to denote their status. Here are three silhouettes that I developed so far from this silhouette sheet. 

The first design I feel could represent the soldier, however I was not terribly drawn to this idea compared to the next two. The second could represent the King or Queen, since I did not give the design a defining gender and I could transform it into either. Judging from the pose, I feel that the second design would be more male, though. The third design is possibly my favourite out of the three, although I know it needs more development after my research into fashion designs in the Edo Period. I may just select this one to develop from here on as I feel like the pose is very expressive for the Queen, who I felt to be quite aloof and very confident in herself.