Design: [The Princess of Love] : Sun-Queen Selendis (Patreon)
Content
Hello there,
After Cadance, who didn't need much rework, here's the Sun-Queen Selendis, the main antagonist of the story. (Pic 1)
At the very first stage of the project, in 2014 - 2015, Selendis wasn't supposed to have a big role (Pic 2). She was just a ruler of a small independant land of unicorns located in the very south of Equestria (before the full map was shown for the needs of the 2017 movie).
The concept was "if the Earth ponies have regular towns and pegasi live on clouds, how would like a fully unicorn city?"
I wanted to use the Cadance story I planned to explore that. It was about Sombra returning, and stuff like that (I don't really remember to be honest).
But it turned out that the concept became interesting enough that a former artist who worked with us, Mister Saugrenu, asked for more about her, stating that the concept of those unicorns was too elaborate to stay in the background, that we should explore even more about it. He insisted that we should rather focus on her. Personally. I wasn't sure I could write something about her, but I did a go, since I was glad to hear that the concept seemed to be liked.
Therefore, while at the very beginning Selendis was just a background character, she became the main antagonist of the new versions of the story.
Now she became the vilain, she needed a more fiting design. Unfortunately, at that time, none of us had real knowledge of chara-design, so we just tried to pick elements from other characters and mixed them together, hoping that something good would happen, but with no success. (Pic 3-6 (made by me, Light262, Mister Saugrenu, and me again)
Entering JaDeDJynX who had real skills in such job. She at first made just a quick draft (Pic 7). Unfortunately, it wasn't enough to work with despite our tries (Pic 8 made by Spirale). So, JaDeDJynX was asked to design her completely with the information I gave her (Scorpion tail/mane, tattooes, colours, ...) (Pic 9)
Selendis was finally there!
Then few pictures made by another friends, Shira-Hedgie (Pic 10), and Moekin (Pic 11) to see how she'd look in another style.
Selendis looked amazing to us. But despite their tattooes and gems, she and her daughter Aurora (who was designed around the same time) didn't look "magic" enough. That's why, after few tries, we gave her dark glowy eyes. (Pic 12)
After that, I figured that she's supposed to be the Sun-Queen but her colours aren't "sun" related. So, I tried to change her colours a bit, just to see. Everybody, including me, prefered the former one. It's maybe not "sun" but it's "moon" and her name is "Selendis" after all (which is a reference to Selene, goddess of the moon). It keeps an ironic layer that way.
I show you that because the colours I got became Appolonia's finale colours palet (before that, she was purple). (Pic 13)
Then, I asked to a 3D modeler, V747, to have something we could use, just in case. (Pic 14)
And then, it's just me toying with her, to have a better grasp on her body language. (Pic 15-17)
Finally, the last picture is a recent slight redesign by Adrea, our current chara-designer, who has mainly changed the colour of her dress to look more royal. (Pic 18)