Becoming a Centaur: Concepting Characters

 So, to move forward with the design of a centaur costume, I want to create a character design. 

Brainstorm

This mess is what I came up with:

Very quick bubble map

Now I'm going to pick some words to put together and make some concepts: 

• Farming - Clydesdale - Draft Horse - Sunflowers
• Circus - Lippazanner - Acrobat - Clowns - Balloons
• Fantasy - Knight - Draft Horse - Sword
• Greek - Unicorn  - Drapery - Nymph - Willow - Blossoms
• Western - Rodeo - Cowgirl - Texas
• Pony Express - Post Office Worker - Wild West
• Gothic - Nightmare Moon - Armor - Pegasus - Unicorn - Vampire
• Medieval Princess - Unicorn Hunt - Unicorn 
• Race - Marathon - Greek 
• Rose - Unicorn - Virgin Mary - St. Teresa the Little Flower 🌸 
• Chariot - Roman Legion - Military Horse
• Police Horse - Mounties

Already we have a lot of ideas here. The ones that are of most interest to me to test out are: 

• Western - Rodeo - Cowgirl - Texas
• Circus Acrobat Clown
• Pony Express Postal Service
• Greek Nymph
• Gothic Nightmare

I need to do some inspiration gathering but in the meantime, I made some rough doodles. 

Rough ideation doodles of some of the concepts

Off the bat, I'm not into making a cosplay of centaur Fluttershy or Nightmare Moon. These would be good centaurs to make but I think I would prefer to make an original character. 

Visual Guides/Inspiration

First, I'm going to make some vision boards or inspiration images. I usually do this by making Pinterest boards. Below are some examples of what I might put into a Pinboard. Some outfits, makeup, hairstyles, color pallets, and accessories will start to form up. From the myriad of images, I will select only a few to be my guiding principles. 

Gothic Makeup, jewelry, and dresses

Nymph Hair, Makeup, Dresses, and leave accessories

While doing this, I found I wasn't very interested in searching for Pony express. I did have some Rodeo images but for now, the Nymph, Gothic, and Circus concepts are really piquing my creative interest. 

Preliminary Design Choices

Again this is a chicken-egg situation. I have some ideas for engineering the costume based on my research that I could apply to these characters. But the design of these characters can also make some of my engineering designs easier. Here's what I mean. 

Circus Centaur

Victorian Circuses and Clown makeup

As mentioned in my previous planning post, one of the ways to prevent a sagging back was to prop the backside up with a post and wheels. As you may see in my inspiration board, unicycles are featured a couple times. Why, doesn't that make a perfect design excuse to have a big wheel and post under the hooves. Heck, the hooves can even be on pedals. So my engineering for a sagging back is solved! 

As for the seam between my butt and the horse body it can be obscured with a tutu design. The bodice will be a vertical striped corset and likely sport some bold colors like yellow and pink. For the legs, I'd have some tulle-trimmed horse leggings on the front and hind legs. 

Now for the horse design or inspiration, I'm thinking of something with a flea-bitten, dapple, or appaloosa pattern. So that would include: Leopard Appaloosa, Andalusians, and Knabstrupper. 

Appaloosa, Andalusian, Knabbstrupper

Further study of the horses will help with designing with color, build of the leg, mane and tail style, and finally if there's feathering. I'm kind of in love with the Knabstrupper's coppery spots. It has no feathering on the legs and nothing odd about the tail. (It doesn't lift it high like an Arabian or Saddlebred. I love horses...for real. Could have designed a centaur based on breed. )

Gothic Centaur

So with the human costumes and designs, we're considering a lot of ruffles and potentially a partial blanket. I intend it to be see-through like cobweb lace and a slight bustle hides the seam between human and horse. I also have a lot of spider motifs. I'm really thinking drow with this one. 

The horse inspiration is a Friesian, which has very long, crimpy manes and tails. They're also 100% black in color which suits our gothic theme. Finally, they have feathering around the hooves, which is nice for puppeteering and hiding feet. Now the long tail can serve a purpose. I recently saw someone's centaur costume that seemed to have an unnaturally dragging tail. However, the back was sturdy and straight. Looking at it, it appeared there was some kind of wheeled pole.  

The benefit is that the tail itself lifts the backend instead of weighing it down and a thick long tail would look right on our Gothic Friesian. 

Nymph Unicorn Centaur

This one might be a bit more trouble. I was looking at mostly gauzy, draping dresses and incorporating flowers into them. It would have a very long wig which could hide more straps and I'm not about to expose myself so the top will have some coverage to hide additional harnesses. But my unicorn designs tend to have long manes, some thick fluffy tails, and feathering on the legs. 

A typical for me unicorn drawing

The human-horse seam poses a bit of a challenge. I might need to think about engineering the design of my horse skin covering to extend into a belt. 

First Draft Designs

The first draft idea started with this: 

This was without any brainstorming or getting inspiration. But with a bit more inspiration we came up with at least 3 pretty cool and unique centaurs. 

My spotty Circus Performer

The gothic spider gal and a forest nymph

I still have to play with colors but all in all, I think any one of these would work to my purpose. I think the issues will be with the price tag. This is an ambitious one which means it could be expensive because I'd have to experiment. 

Of the three, the Unicorn may be the most inexpensive because she doesn't have much in clothing design. The other two have very involved and complicated costumes. They look awesome but it'd be a piece-by-piece process. Personally, I'm in love with the Circus design. But I'm likely going to do the unicorn if I construct this at all. 

Next time I'll share some of my centaur engineering plans. So stay tuned.