Princess Camilla of Zart

At the tender age of one, Princess Camilla of Zart had a run-in with an enchanted cauldron of plenty, resulting in six duplicates. Since there was no way to tell which was the original, the king and queen kept and raised all of the girls. Each was assigned a color and a new name to reduce confusion, and in time the seven girls each developed radically different personalities. All was well and good until the issue of succession came into play...

I was commissioned by AC to design each of the girls based on her suggestions.  These girls went through NUMEROUS revisions as I struggled to strike the balance between individuality (hair styles, poses, accessories, expressions) and consistency (face shape, proportions, dimensions), on top of differences in interpretation with AC, and--of course--my learning curve. I also experimented with several different drawing styles and compositions before settling on what you see here.

Without further ado

Royal Princess Holly. Her color is red and her motif is holly berries and leaves, which I incorporated into her diadem.  AC first described her as being the most 'normal' of the girls, which I interpreted as being the classic demeanor of a princess and (in my mind) likely the favorite for the throne.  Because I wanted to focus on her demure, regal air, she often came across looking a lot older than her sisters in her multiple revisions, like she might have been their mother rather than one of the brood, especially since her diadem was originally a crown. Letting down her hair helped significantly.

Timid Princess Dawn.  Her color is orange and her motif is a sun-in-glory, which I incorporated into her pendant. Dawn became cripplingly shy after an unfortunate experience with an impatient tutor. I had the opposite problem with Dawn as opposed to Holly--she ended up looking too young.  Dawn went through the most revisions of all the girls, but they were worth it.  This is my favorite piece of the set.

Frail Princess Saffron.  Her color is gold and her motif is a crocus, which I incorporated into her veil.  Princess Saffron is an attention monger and a drama queen. She spends most of her life feigning illness so that she can shirk her duties and have constant pampering. The trade-off is that she actually IS quite weak and delicate since she's always slugging abed.  She was one of my favorites to draw, and I think her design was one of the first that I was inspired for.  Originally she just had a cluster of crocuses in her hair, but AC asked for something else so I tried this.  Nothing says drama like a veil.  I didn't expect gold lineart to look very good, but it turned out surprisingly well, methinks.

 Feisty Princess Ivy.  Her color is green and her motif is an ivy vine, which I incorporated into her tiara. In my interpretation, she's a bit of a thug, but she always means well.  She's Dawn's self-appointed guard dog and can frequently be found in scuffles with their bully of a sister, Sky. I envision her to be the type to sneak out of the castle in disguise so that she can get some action in the kingdom's street fights (which are illegal, of course, but Ivy's not about to rat out her source of entertainment.)  I had a lot of trouble getting Ivy's pose right.  Still not sure if I nailed the anatomy, but I'm satisfied. Ivy was another of the earliest I had figured out design-wise.

Ardent Princess Sky.  Her color is blue and her motif is a stylized cirrus cloud, which I incorporated into her headband. My understanding of her when she was first described to me was that she was very careworn and nurturing, but somewhere along the process of her development she did a face-heel-turn and became a stuck-up, parsimonious snip, and I had to change the drawing of her accordingly.  Sky was my favorite (at least in terms of art) until I finished Dawn.  I still find her one of the most aesthetically pleasing of the group. I want her headband.

Tough Princess Eve.  Eve's color is indigo and her motif is a crescent moon, which I incorporated into her earring.  She's the strong, silent type.  I like what I've seen of her interactions with Holly, as the two apparently work as a pair--Holly is the ambassador, and Eve is the tactician, general, and bodyguard. Eve and I? We tight. She gave me the least problems when it came to design and art.  Once I got the angle of her face figured out, drawing her was a walk in the park; not like her brat sisters, sheesh.  I should draw myself giving her bro-knuckles or something because she's so chill, f'reals.

Apathetic Princess Violet.  Her color is purple and her motif is a violet flower, which she is wearing as an accessory in her hair.  While Ivy might have been sneaking out of the castle for street-fights, Violet was sneaking out for street drugs.  I don't know how she managed to get away with being stoned all the time, but evidently her parents and servants either didn't care or couldn't see past their own noses.  The angle on this one was tricky.

Ebony the Rogue. Her color is black and her motif is a stylized ebony branch, which I incorporated into her tattoo. Rumors have been circulating of an 8th Princess Camilla, kidnapped by a bandit just after the Cauldron incident. Wild and ferocious, the ebony-dyed highway robber is said to be amassing a band of rogues to take over the kingdom and claim her right to the throne as the true and original Princess Camilla...

Ebony was actually an accidental creation of mine, born when my first pic of Eve looked a little too femme fatale.  I came up with her story on the spot as a playful suggestion, and with my permission, AC took it and ran with it.  Ebony's concept has since changed drastically; In AC's canon incarnation, Ebony is Violet's street-walking alter ego, which I alluded to with Ebony's purple bandana.  Alas, I'm still kind of attached to the idea of a rogue 8th Camilla.

In the process of making these princesses, I played with a number of styles and ideas.  First they started off as 3/4 sketches, then I decided I wanted to try my hand at art nouveau, then I got the crazy idea to make each look like a stained glass window, as evidenced by my earlier WIP.   Unfortunately, I could NOT, for the life of me, figure out how to render the glass in a way that was neither too complicated nor cheap-looking.  As I stared at Photoshop in frustration for about the millionth time last night, I thought of a tutorial I'd seen somewhere to give sketches a soft, glowing finish, and I experimented with it on the lineart for the girls.  I probably overdid it on the gaussian blur, but I really like the effect. Coloring the lineart of each of the girls afforded a convenient way to incorporate their assigned colors whilst making for an effect I find visually appealing, and it's definitely a style I'll play with again. Here are the girls without flat colors. 

And here's a dump of some of the versions I did that are worth showing:

I still like these.  These are the first versions of Dawn, Ivy, and the Eve-imposter that inspired the creation of Ebony.  I decided against doing shots like these of all the princesses because I was intimidated by the difficulty of getting all of their proportions to match and designing/drawing clothes for all of them.  I had a hard enough time with just their faces and accessories.

I thought about posting all of the versions I went through of Dawn, but I decided I don't want to relive that nightmare. *deletes them all* DX