Dorethe's (mother's) Outfit
Victorian dresses are extremely detailed so I made sure I followed my ref really closely.
For the wife I relied heavily on the Harper’s Bazar book that I have; the dresses are often extremely intricate and are very much statement pieces. I did a range of dresses ranging from the low-neck more flirty attire, to the fully covered but elegant and I like how they’ve turned out. I really like the lace and high-collared look. As she reminds me of Venus I want to keep the almost aquatic looking frills.
These are my favourite dress designs I like things about both of them; the 2nd definitely looks more formal though I’ve been told that the skirt looks more maternal.
Dress made from strongest designs, I really like the almost mermaid-esque feel to this dress; there’s also a really lovely balance between with both glamourous and formal hints.
I got some feedback from a tutor who said the underskirt had too much material and could be shorter and flow with the one above a bit more; more space to show off detailing on skirt as well. Improve silhouette. As there are more parts to dresses, it makes it harder to do the values for but having all the pieces separated definitely helps. Looking at the book I have dresses seem to have similar values and vary more in colour so I’m going to have to separate it up better later on. I ended up adding more flowers and an extra skirt layer, this greatly improves the flow and aesthetics of the dress.
Final dress values: I’m going to edit certain parts later on but for now I’m satisfied with this dress. Adding colours will definitely help me make it look more maternal later on, at the moment things are looking slightly too dark.
Twins' Clothing
The twins outfits are a balance of a more relaxed and youthful which give me more room to play with the designs, it also wasn’t uncommon to have the dresses at calf length, I tried it out and the length looks really awkward to me. I might try it out with some of the other dresses and shoe styles. I really like the difference between Bethany’s more elaborate dresses and Eliza’s more demure but still elegant ones.
I combined the elements that I liked most from each dress to make these, I really like the waistlines of these and they’re both suitably glamorous enough for a family photo, but also very much work with their quite dichotomous personalities.
Luckily the values for the younger dresses were a lot more contrasting than the women’s which made working out the values for Eliza and Beth; I really love the difference between their outfits as well as it’s very much a princess vs. Gothic countess feel. These dresses also make use of semi-transparent materials which will be really fun to texture later down the line.
These are the final outfits for the twins, I feel like I’ve really captured their personalities in their dresses and am really pleased with them.
I'm now working the last (human) characters outfit, the midwife Vivienne.
Vivienne is part of the more elusive rich black Victorians so I really wanted to capture that allure and regality she has in her designs. Looking at my ref pearls and lace ruffles are the fashion of choice and I tried to capture that in my first design. I also really love the look of a high collar on her and will be experimenting more with her designs.
Considering what I've done so far however, I imagined her to be sleeker and more streamline so I'm going to revise her body shape and thus how her clothes fit on her.
