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meisje

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10 years ago

Sun Feb 17 2013, 07:10pm
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meisje

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10 years ago
So I am slowly working on drawing all of the main characters of Obernewtyn. Yes I realize that is 40 or more but it is fun to be able to put a face to the person. Anywho, I would like everyone's opinions on what I have so far and how I might improve on certain characters. I won't really take offense because I am just a beginning drawer but I had a lot of fun with these anyways.

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The handsome Swallow! I am almost 100% sure that the Twenty Families are African American so I drew Swallow with African American features. He is such a hunk!

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Rushton, at least how I imagine him, and he also matches the scene in the sending that I drew.

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Maruman, I still need to draw in the detail of his fur.

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Gahltha

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Elspeth in her dress and shawl that the Futuretellers made for her. She also matches the scene I drew.

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Dragon, sorry she is on a slant. This is slightly older Dragon that is in The Sending.

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Brydda, whom is one of my favorite characters because of his beautiful spirit. At first I drew his hair and my husband said he looked like Jesus so I had to change him to more slicked back hair.

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Ariel, whom I originally drew looking more evil than this, but my sister pointed out that he shouldn't look evil but beautiful and that he was also more dainty but I didn't want to draw him any smaller.
Sionainn

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10 years ago
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Sionainn

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10 years ago
Well, if there is one thing you should do as a beginner it is draw heaps so drawing 40+ characters is an awesome idea, Angels3 :P

I'm not sure I agree that Swallow is African American though. I always assumed that Cassy was (or at least one of her parents were because I get the impression she comes from a mixed race family but I'm not sure if their is any evidence for that) and I always assumed that she looked different to the rest of the gypsies because she originally came from a different place to them. Also I think it would be extremely difficult for a white person to simply dye their skin and pass as someone who is black (I've seen cosplayers try this, just no) and Elspeth and folk were able to do it reasonably well (though I guess they were going more for half-blooded gypsies and genetics would allow for all sorts of variations in appearance). Anyway, I'm rambling.

Apart from that I agree with your designs. And I don't think their is anything wrong with a Jesus looking Brydda :P I think my own mental picture of him would probably be similar looking in a way. He's just more muscled and grouchy looking :nods:
meisje

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10 years ago
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meisje

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10 years ago
There are just countless quotes where Isobelle says dark skinned girl, really dark skinned girl, Maire's white hair was almost a exact difference to her skin and she was only a little darker than Swallow. Isobelle also mentions when Maire is talking how she could Easily tell Elspeth wasn't a Twentyfamilies or a gypsy at all because she lacked facial featers of a gypsies ( I assume this means bigger lips and a bigger nose) Also whenever she talks about their hair, I think she mentions brains, and ultra curly, sort of like a person of African American decent. Then Half Blood gypsies are gypsies that are lighter colored skin and I think that is the only reason why Elspeth can't pass it by Maire or even Iriny. There are several passages where is says dark brown skin and almost black eyes with sleeked back black hair. It just makes sense to me, but I could be wrong. I just have always pictured them as African Americans.

I do love how Brydda looks. He makes me so happy every time I read about him. Such a good person, like Jesus! lol

I'm hoping to eventually do proper shading and coloring on these, except for Gahltha, because he is already a magnificent stallion. lol

I know everyone has a different idea of what the characters look like. It has always been interesting seeing what other people think of what certain characters in certain movies look like. Like Katniss in The Hunger Games, spot on!
Min

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10 years ago

Mon Feb 04 2013, 07:33am
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Min

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10 years ago
Ooh talk about Beforetimers! :D
I'd gathered Cassy's mother was Indian, and her father, English. With Hannah working in London (see 'The Journey' from Trust Me Too) for the Reichler Clinic, and Jacob undeniably Scottish, it makes sense they meet in the UK, and we know they meet while Cassy's still young enough to be living at home, so it makes sense that she lives there. The other reason I think Cassy can't be from the US is her whine in TKP (I think) - 'Why can't I go to Mericanda with my friends?'. This suggests she's not from around there - it's a holiday destination for her.
The assumption Cassy's mother is Indian comes from Isobelle's reading of that part of The Stone Key before it came out - where she gives Cassy's mother what sounds precisely like an English-living Indian woman's accent.
I know the gypsies are from a group of 'trashers' (homeless?) from the Beforetime, but they sound a lot like Romani gypsies by the time we get to Hannah/Cassy's time post Age of Chaos (see 'The Dark Road'). Google image search Romani gypsies and you'll see what I mean. So from this I'm gathering that they again derive from the UK. There are a ton of Eastern-European people who travel to the UK for jobs - factory jobs and the other lower paying jobs (yeah, it sucks, but it's just what happens). We can already see the UK is trying to discourage this migration with the ad campaigns they run in Bulgaria (I think?) to deter immigrants. From this it makes sense again that the original trashers are simply immigrant Eastern-European workers, which is why it makes sense for them to adopt the nomadic/gypsy lifestyle and culture once left to their own devices - as part of their people's culture. Also this could account somewhat for the mental shield a lot of gypsies have 'naturally' by Elspeth's time - we know the govamen were experimenting on trashers - what if they were paying for human guineapigs? The sort of human trials that attracts students and immigrants in need of money nowadays? So because they were exposed to the govamen experiments, for perhaps generations, their minds developed a compensation sort of shield to protect themselves.
In saying all this - it's much easier to 'pass' for a gypsy, as you then really only need to be able to look Eastern European, not African. Which many Welsh people would be able to do, if they were tanned a little (in the case of Elspeth, there's also that weird dream where Garth tells her she's really a gypsy, so she may well have genetics from their region anyway).

Anyway, huge digression in a thread devoted to artwork, but I'll pounce on any opportunity I see to talk about the Beforetime. My only suggestions for your characters is to look at their ages - Dragon is no more than ten when we meet her (I'm not sure which book your Dragon is from though), as is Ariel. And you're right when you say everyone has different ideas of who looks like what - you've inspired me to try put to page what I think characters look like, too...
meisje

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10 years ago
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meisje

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10 years ago
This Dragon and Ariel are more of The Sending's age. I think Elspeth says something about Dragon being a little more developed. When Dragons mother was killed she was 5 or 6 according to TKP and then she lived in the ruins for a few years, I always pictured her as 8 when they found her in TFS. According to my diagram,

It's about 4 years from The Farseekers to The Sending. This is a timeline of every mention of time there has been and I assume that Elspeth's birthday is in Winter and that she had just turned 13 or 14 at the beginning of Obernewtyn.

Ariel is a Herder here, with long hair.

Sorry if African American kind of threw everyone off. I meant just of African decent or a tribal black color. I think during the dark ages of the United States taking slaves from African, Europe did, too, so I was thinking that they could still be black and live in Europe.

I have yet to get a hold of a copy of Trust Me Too. Isobelle's books are expensive in the U.S. I have two copies of TS and paid $75 for the first and $45 for the second and a lot of her books are that way, but I'm almost there.

It is possible that the gypsies could be Indian, if they are very dark, because there are just to many mentions of dark brown or black skin for me to think otherwise.
Sian

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10 years ago
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Sian

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10 years ago
I wrote a really long post before, but it's not here now :'(

Anyway, something just occurred to me. The land is extremely isolated and they've only really had exposure to four variations of skin tone: Caucasian, Tanned caucasian, Sadorian and gypsy. The Sadorians have been described as having a yellowish/golden skin tone, so that's still fairly pale so far as skin goes.
Ergo, our definition of very dark and Elspeth's definition of very dark might be a little different.
meisje

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10 years ago
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10 years ago
One more, 'Half Breed,' which is said several times to be lighter. Oh yes, and 'The White Faced Lords.' What was your post about? I get beyond irritated when I have been typing for a while and it get erased. Sometimes if I am on the same page and hit the back button, it will take me to my writings.
Sian

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10 years ago

Mon Feb 04 2013, 10:50pm
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Sian

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10 years ago
Yeah, I'd have retyped, but I didn't have time. I was using gypsy as an inclusive term because halfbreeds are only paler on average as is emphasised in Ashling when Elf is discussing why they don't try to pass themselves off as twenty families.

Anyway, I'd started off by commenting on the similarity between your drawing style and mine back before I joined obernet and how this was cool, but yours are cooler because you can actually draw hands.

I also explained how I justify to myself that Elf etc could pass as gypsies, which I'll try to repeat now.

First of all, I would interpret that there is extreme heterogeneity amongst the gypsy population. As evidence, I note the wide variability of skin tone even amongst the twenty-families, the fact that while Maire notes Elf's lack of gypsy facial features, she notes this only in Elf's claiming a twenty-families man as her father and the fact that the misfits do pass as gypsies. (their extreme care with who can bond who also lends a tiny bit of support. Recessive genes can suck and the more heterogeneity in a population, the more of a problem they can be.)
I would guess that the original twenty-families consisted of African Americans (and or the equivalent term for western Europe) and European gypsies and a few persons of other ethnicities, leading to a population with highly variable genetics.
Conclusion: There might not be enough similarity between gypsies to make it easy to pick out characteristic facial features. We know they exist for the twenty-families, but this might not carry across to the half-breeds, who the misfits were always pretending to be.

Next, modern western rural Europe is not solely composed of western Europeans, there are people's of various different ethnicities including western Europeans and persons of Asian and African descent. For example, there's a substantial Romani population. By Elf's time, we know that the settled population is homogenous for pale skin, but that does not contradict an assumption that their ancestral population resembled modern Europe, all it means is that genes for low melanin production flooded the gene pool.
It's not unheard of for recessive genes to do this, especially when the dominant gene is selected against (it's actually easier to remove a dominant gene from the pool than a recessive gene, which is why recessives cause such problems amongst close marriages). This occurred in Ireland when blondes and redheads came to dominate a previously brunette dominated population. In The Land, the extra long winters they experience would select against extra melanin because this would inhibit vitamin D production.
The point here is that there is a heap of genetic material that could have potentially mixed into the settled population by Elf's time. Melanin production is controlled by multiple genes, but we have 23 chromosomal pairs, some of that is going to be retained.
Conclusion: The settled population of The Land would be genetically closer (if only slightly) to the gypsies than present day western Europeans.

Also, races aren't as genetically different as lots of people think (I have a couple of friends who are half Chinese. You would never guess this if they didn't tell you. Conclusion: there's more similarity there than we like to assume). Also, the settled population (at the very least) is probably not as primed at telling genetic differences between different ethnicities as we are. You learn to pick up on these things by seeing/interacting with people with those features, something that they don't seem to do a lot of in The Land. Also, people probably aren't looking too hard. After all, who'd want to be a gypsy? It's not the sort of thing you'd keep an eye out for.

Edit: See, I told you it was long.
meisje

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10 years ago
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meisje

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10 years ago
No it was good, very informative. Really? Where is your stuff Sian? I can draw hands but unfortunately they are not always the correct ration which is another thing.

For the characters that I decided to draw hands on, do you guys think they are a good ratio. I know Swallows are okay.
Sionainn

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10 years ago

Mon Feb 04 2013, 11:15pm
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Sionainn

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10 years ago
General rule of thumb is to draw the hand roughly three quarters of the height of the head. This is of course very dependant on age and other variables but a hand should be large enough to cover the characters face when fingers splayed out.

I will comment on the other discussions here later since I'm way to tired to sound logical right now, but I agree with a lot of what you're mentioned Sian.
Sian

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10 years ago

Tue Feb 05 2013, 04:19am
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Sian

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10 years ago
Umm, for drawings, I only really remember uploading my colouring pages, which are here, though they shouldn't be as similar as what I drew in high school. During my gap (when I joined ober), I tried to get better at drawing [strike]and subsequently got worse[/strike]. There's been some improvement in recent years, I can do a half decent sketch off something if it's in front of me, but yeah, I can't draw ~:| (I have fun trying though! :D )
meisje

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10 years ago

Tue Feb 05 2013, 08:44am
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meisje

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10 years ago
I remember seeing your stuff now when I was browsing. I like your stuff. It is accurate and simple so you don't give yourself enough credit.

EDIT: I just put my hand over my face in response to your suggestion. lol. Guess I will be editing Ariel's and Rushton's hands to be a bit bigger.

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