Looking at my fairly old design of this character, I knew I could do better in terms of design. The clothing is very simple as I had most of the focus on her features then what she was wearing. But now I believe my drawing and design skills have improved somewhat so I sketched a few clothing designs.
The original outfit was meant to emulate a book with boxy shapes and folded white cloth to look similar to paper. This is because this character is a demon of knowledge and so is often associated the books and other scholarly things. Her legs are also bound in the original design as symbolism for her original backstory because despite her thirst for knowledge she would get caught up being jealous of others and constantly trying to surpass them, focusing more on emotions than innovation and so she never truly 'moved' much despite her best efforts in scholarly pursuits in life. I wanted to keep this design feature but however make these bindings look more complicated and somewhat artistic or elegant to better match her personality while also making them look far more difficult to escape and move within. I also decided these bindings looked strange to only have on the legs and so I incorporated them around her entire body and outfit.
For these designs, I researched two main things that influenced the designs. The first thing was traditional Brazillian clothing because in the story this character is a part of, this demon is attached to someone of Brazillian descent. I have established within that story that when a demon and a person are bound together they can start to take on characteristics of each other.
This feature of the design mostly shows in the sleeves of a few of the designs as it mimics a very popular style in Brazillian clothing with the many layers of colourful fabric usually in dresses. These dresses are inspired by Carmen Miranda, a very famous and influential Brazillian actor from the 40s. I thought this design feature could also mimic book pages similar to the original design with the layered/ pleated white fabric.
The other main inspiration for the new designs was regarding the bindings. I decided to take inspiration from a common Japanese art form called Shibari. This was perfect for how I wanted these bindings to look and so I collected a few inspirational images on Pinterest. You can find my university work-related pin board here: https://www.pinterest.co.uk/finis2292/uni-work/year-2-iris/
Once I had done my research and drawn the first sketches, I picked my favourite of them and started redrawing Iris.
I believe this is a significant improvement from my first design of this character, which I drew about two years ago in 2021.
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