character design - dahlia

current read - lolita by vladimir nabokov (1955)

I was excited to announce the third of my novel character designs until I learned that I didn’t post my second one.

But to me it’s still my third! I’ll get around to posting the second.

Presenting Dahlia the Red Wolf.

I’m super happy with how this turned out. I’d been getting super frustrated with my lineart, until I realized that the key to getting smooth digital lines is…enabling smoothing. I really wanted to focus on lines and flats for this one, and I’m glad I did that.

Dahlia is based on my character from my first playthrough of Curse of Strahd, a dhampir vampire hunter. Medieval Blade, basically. Here’s a costume breakdown I did of her circa 2017.

(honestly a huge part of why I like character design so much is it satisfies the part of me that grew up using online dollmakers……..)

They look quite different! This design was meant to be camp Victorian goth. She has a battle corset, after all. And that little vampire collar in her waistcoat.

I needed something different for this go-around. Dahlia is no-nonsense, very practical. She’s here to kill monsters and drink elixers and she’s all out of elixers, etc etc. My original sketches of her were pretty boring.

Until I finally remembered: this character is basically “what if Blade was raised by the Undertaker and Geralt of Rivia?” So that’s what she’ll look like.

The Witcher series are very practical fantasy, so I went with a standard gambeson. The length, as well as the armored collar and hat are meant to evoke the Undertaker’s classic Huge Goth Guy silhouette.

I also wanted to highlight the little mirror attached to her belt loop (for identifying vampires) and also the very last minute monster hunting trophies tied within her locs. The hat is also labeled for your convenience.

(I know the sword and cloak don’t make physical sense………use your imagination…….)