Cross-posted from The Uncrucified’s Ko-fi blog
Much to my surprise, we’ve hit the 11 year anniversary of The Uncrucified’s inception. Time has flown by with this project never leaving my imagination, despite the road blocks along the way.
It all began with the ongoing tabletop adventures of Kalara Vadras that have inspired me for art, writing, and more over the past years! Now seemed the perfect time to share a retrospective of this character’s visual evolution through art.
Arriving at this character’s look took some doing! She’s changed with every iteration, as I never felt like I got her face right for the first 6 or so years of drawing her. Kalara began primarily as Koh, a male persona she had assumed to evade the Guild, so her original look was mutable as she swapped between identities and genders.
The fact that I also had a lot of style shifting and experimenting happening along the way also presented a challenge.
Evolving Styles
At one point, I thought I’d draw my Exalted art and comics in a style inspired by Monstress, with its blend of Art Nouveau, gothic elegance, and anime overtones that seemed in line with Exalted’s love of dark anime. As Exalted evolved with its editions and 3rd edition moved towards semi-realism, my chosen style for this project evolved to match.
However, trying to translate Kalara’s extremely spiky unrealistic hair with its flame inspiration and her original stylized features with a more realistic approach proved a big challenge. There are some awkward growing years in the middle of her evolution where the fusion of anime and realistic just did not work, equaling weird hair, strange anatomy, and inconsistent facial features.
2019 is the ‘visual puberty’ Kalara wishes to forget!
Visual Identity
What really helped me during this struggle was to keep drawing and experimenting because even if I didn’t know what I wanted, I knew exactly what I didn’t want. I only discovered what I didn’t want by drawing many ‘failures’ that helped me isolate the specific things that looked wrong.
I also gathered as many real-life reference of models that reminded me of her, either visually or just with their elegant auras (this is only a small sampling of reference images gathered over the years).
It helped me to find real-life models to ground my knowledge of her looks with awareness of ethnicity, body type, etc. This was challenging, as Kalara isn’t from a real-world ethnicity, having features influenced by the Pole of Fire’s vicinity to her birthplace, which infused the region with its magical influence.
This influence, though not present in all citizens of the South, is reflected in her hair shaped like flame tips, the red color of it, and her more reddish-gold skintone. It was up to me to decide what real-world influences to bring into her physical form.
While Kalara isn’t from a real-world ethnic group, informing myself of the visual diversity of humans, particularly in Malaysia and India, helped me immensely. As a mixed race caucasian hispanic artist, it also helped to make a note of things I often forget as an artist who primarily draws caucasian people. Referring to elements such as the way palms are generally paler on people with darker skin or that the lower lip can be paler than the top lip, etc.
Small observations like this help art be more attentive, respectful, and authentic when drawing diaspora outside what we’re familiar with.
The Power of Fan Art
Artist Sam Hogg‘s rendition of Kalara, which referenced Indian models, also set me on a path towards finding her visual identity with the artist having chosen Indian models to inform her rendition of Kalara.
Seeing how other artists approached her mercurial appearance over the years helped immensely! Many thanks to the Exalted Secret Santa annual exchange and the folks over at the Forge of Wonders Discord server for always helping with cool fan art and providing their interesting takes on my character.
The Breakthrough
This style experiment from 2020 in which I drew Kalara in the style of Castlevania made me think “Oh, there you are!”
Something about that style captured her for the first time with my own art and defined her lips and eyes, in particular, moving forward.
The blue Kalara in the timeline (her Abyssal AU self), also helped things click, which shows the power of wild experimentation for your revelations. Much of that look with its elegant earrings, shorter hair, etc. was absorbed into a new, final look for her signature Solar design.
The Final Form (For Now)
Kalara’s latest evolution seems the closest to feeling ‘right’. This final (for now) version embraces more realistic hair, pointed full lips, thick eyebrows, shaded eyelids, etc. The fusion of a dark animation style a la Castlevania with my own semirealism also feels like the best of both stylized and realism that I want to channel for The Uncrucified as a whole moving forward with this project in comic form.
I still miss those hard to draw flame hair tips, however! Don’t you?
The Silvertonged Devil
Meanwhile, Koh, Kalara’s male persona, has remained somewhat consistent, at least visually. He was originally meant to channel the charisma of Vash the Stampede (see the original high collared jacket in his early design) with the swagger of a wild west gunslinger, but has evolved into an irreverant playboy with visuals currently influenced by the quiet rage of Blue Eye Samurai‘s be-spectactled Mizu, who is also a kindred spirit for Koh with their all-encompassing revenge driven by pure Conviction.
To the Future!
Will Kalara and Koh’s look stay consistent? Probably not, as the very nature of an Eclipse Caste is to embrace cultural exchange and progress. I’m looking forward to seeing how she evolves in the future as she reflects my taste and own artistic growth!
What was your favorite year for Kalara looks? Mine was definitely 2020’s Castlevania and her most recent iteration. Tell me yours!
– Ang
Artist, writer, geek, gamer, wannabe ninja.