Drawing a Super
The text you are about to read is experimental in nature. This will be a first for me and maybe the only of its kind. If you know me and my writing, you have a general idea of my writing style and what I like to talk about, from poetry, TV shows, video games, and movies to the superhero and sci-fi genre (a slice of nerd culture) to sustainability and the future of fashion. The following post will stray away from the path I had laid ahead in the past, yet it will still feel like it is mine. I am still going to express my thoughts about fashion, and this time, I chose the superhero genre as my companion once more. But now, I won’t do research, highlight an interesting garment or accessory, or apply my sense of style to create a mood board look. No, I will let my creativity take hold. And if this is your first time learning about me, welcome to this weird new experiment of mine.
Publicly, I have only displayed my appreciation towards fashion in the written manner through the several posts in this blog, and I have enjoyed doing so for some time. Still, I have noticed that from time to time, MODA releases certain series like Andrew Chang’s Lookbooks and the yearly Designer Profiles that provide a spotlight to the personal skills and perspectives of MODA members that reside not only on the textual and metatextual but also on the visual as another method of communication. Despite the brevity of photography and sketches, such media can transmit ideas in so many poignant ways within one immediate space that they can recreate the argumentative power of most texts published in the blog. So, if you let me, I would like to move out of my comfort zone and show you, for the first time, my debatable 2D fashion drawing skills.
I usually don’t promote my drawings in digital environments like social media and blogs, yet because part of the reason I joined MODA was due to my love for fashion, conceptually, visually, and practically (drawing, not sewing; I have never tried), and since I have been here for more than six months, I decided that I could trust the people who work and read the blog to engage with my “artistic expression” in an appreciative or at least constructive manner. I have been drawing fashion croquis and illustrations for almost four years now, but I always really put attention into the sketching and digital illustrating process only during school breaks, so my evolution has been relatively slow. Still, I am proud of my latest illustration, and because I want to try something new on the blog, I would like to show you and explain to you how I come up with my own Super character. I have always entertained the idea of conceptualizing a comic book-worthy superhero/supervillain, down to their looks and story, so one day, when I felt inspired and I found time for myself, I decided to sit down and start the process, even if one step at a time. So, without further ado, here is Dark Cygnet.
Warning: Firstly, if you don’t care about superhero stuff and me going full-on comic book nerd, I appreciate that you clicked on this article, and I appreciate it even more if you took at least a minute of your day to check out what I designed. Secondly, you may have a better experience if you turn your screen brightness all the way up, move into a room without much direct light, and remove any filter you may have added to your screen, if only for just a minute. I drew Dark Cygnet with different shades of black, and the darker detailings may be lost if you don’t follow my suggestions.
Dark Cygnet without arm coverage. Image Via Me
Dark Cygnet with arm coverage. Image Via Me
And there she is (in two versions). Considering my evolution and the time I spent designing her, I loved the final product. Still, art is subjective, and I am a bit biased to myself. I know that I did not draw something that demonstrated an understanding of shading, lighting, or texture. I know that it may look less embellished than many fashion drawings from other people on the internet (and from people who work for MODA). You could even say that it looks too monotone and simplistic, even with the subtle details I spread throughout the costume. Or you may actually enjoy the piece as it is. Thank you either way. One day I may achieve a higher level of skill, but right now, this is what I got, and I am content with it. Drawing fashion is a passion of mine, so I will not stop trying to evolve my capabilities as an “artist,” even if it is only a hobby. Now that the swan is out of the lake (is this a good pun?), let me talk about my creative process before telling you who Dark Cygnet is. (If you don’t care about it, skip ahead. Don’t feel pressured to read the BTS details if you just want to get to the cool part).
I started conceptualizing Dark Cygnet in July 2020, a period in which the world was going through uncertainty and gloom. Like many, I sought a glint of light through entertainment, and for about a month, I decided to get to know more of DC Comics and Marvel’s superhero stories from their past comics and TV shows. I read and watched so much that my brain started to sizzle with ideas about new characters and storylines, and I began to annotate them on my phone as a way to further interact with these worlds being created in my mind. Then, one day, after I watched Black Swan, I started to ask myself if there were famous superheroes or villains with a ballet motif, and to my surprise, there were none (Black Widow knows how to dance ballet, but that has not been something of prominence in her stories for some time). I further researched if there were any super characters with a swan as part of their main traits, and I discovered that even if yes (DC’s Silver Swan and Black Swan and Marvel’s Black Swan), none of them had anything to do with the ballet or were too famous for fans to care. So, for about an hour, I decided to brainstorm ideas about a hero/villain inspired by Swan Lake, and when I was done, I knew that the next step was to transform the immaterial into visual.
Well, it took me six more months until I picked up the project back, but the idea never dropped out of my mind. I sketched my first croquis on paper while watching Brave New World (from experience, using pencil on paper to draw the first sketch is always a more intuitive experience, and I believe that pairing a visual cue with a manual hobby helps my creativity flourish), and after around three episodes (2 hours and a half), I had my first visual concept finalized. As you can see in the image below, I also spent time designing myriad forms of arm-shields that Dark Cygnet could use based on a grand jeté position, but when I tried to translate it to the digital version, the shapes and forms did not match with the overall look I was going for.
Dark Cygnet Sketch. Image Via Me
Then, I moved to the next phase, which was translating my design to the digital medium. My app of choice is called Prêt-à-Template, and yes, it is an app because I have always drawn on tablets (I used to sketch on my mother’s Ipad, but she decided that sharing it with me was too bothersome, but she still liked my fashion drawings enough to give me my own Ipad). That step took me a lot of time, around ten days of watching periods, so about 25 hours of playing with shades of black, creating sharp shapes, piecing together each part of Dark Cygnet’s “uniform,” and detailing her armor.
For some, that may feel like I divagated more than worked because my final product may appear less complicated than it should (I must say, some people can draw beautiful and very complex images in less than one or two day’s worth of work as a hobby or profession, and I applaud their skill). For others, 25 hours translates to a lot of thought and attention put into the design. I will admit, I am generally a person who draws slowly, and that is because I make a lot of mistakes while visualizing shapes, so I have to keep erasing and sketching until I reach the form I want to build upon. Either way, I try putting a lot of focus in creating the best overall look I can under what skills I currently have, and I also sometimes decided to change some details from my original croquis, which takes time and experimentation, but I enjoy spending my free time working on my digital sketches, so no harm, no foul. So yeah, what you saw before is the culmination of a considerable amount of time put into giving partial life to a character I developed almost a year ago. Now, it is finally time for me to tell you who Dark Cygnet is.
Odette Silberhaus is a very reserved, pure, naive, and kind woman and a dedicated and accomplished American ballerina. The Silberhauses, her aristocratic family, come from old money, and she has been running from them since she was a child. Their wealth and cultural interests lead her to start training ballet with several renowned teachers all over Europe from the moment she could walk, yet, due to the dark secret behind their power, her mother*, a decedent of another renowned family* with an unknown past, decided to run away with Odette when she turned 10. She continued to run away from the Silberhauses her whole teenage life with the new identity of Chiara Hoffman, learning different martial art styles worldwide to prepare her for an eventual conflict with them and because discipline and a perfect technique are also necessary for a ballerina to know, dancing being something Odette always loved and continued to enjoy even on the run. She never liked fighting, but Odette understood that the similarities shared between martial arts and ballet were apparent enough for her to accept her mother’s wishes and become a better ballerina. Her mother will eventually die on the run, but her past connections will aid Odette in secretly training both ballet and martial arts with teachers that, unbeknownst to her, are retired secret agents.*
*=unspecified for later purposes (appropriation of already existing characters or creation of new ones).
One day, during a presentation of Swan Lake with her company in a major city*, in which she played both Odile and Odette after years of studying both characters’ choreography and personality, a dream that she worked hard to achieve, a psionic blast from an unnamed supervillain* combined with the magical ultrasonic wail of another supervillain* while fighting a famous superhero* is fired into the theater and hits Odette while she is performing as Odile. The blast causes Odile’s personality to psychically merge with the dancer’s, resulting in Odette losing her own free will and control of her body, being pushed aside in her own psyche due to the character she created for Odile taking over her as the dominant ego, but still being aware of everything her body does and feels.
Unfortunately, the sonic-psionic blast is magical in nature, so it creates a blockade that prevents any known witchcraft and psychic solution from bringing Odette back. Moreover, Odile’s persona cannot be convinced by any superhero or person to become good because she is an already written character that Odette’s psyche made real, meaning that the evil personality will only think and act based on the boundaries created by Swan Lake’s libretto. Odette is on her own inside her mind, while Odile controls her body as a villain that psychically manipulates other people to believe she is their loved one (wife/husband, crush, girlfriend/boyfriend, even an ideal imaginary person) and exploits advantages that come with that (wealth, power, etc.), close to who Odile is in the ballet. However, the Silberhaus family may have had a hand in her creation, and they eventually hire her to become their dark agent/mercenary called Dark Cygnet, promising Odile the rightful position in the oligarchical board that leads the family.
Because of the sonic-psionic blast, Dark Cygnet received enhanced sonic perception and sensitivity, meaning that Odile can feel the vibrations around her (like Toph in Avatar and Daredevil, but she is not blind) to create a map of her surroundings that helps her, among many things, predict her opponent’s moves from the minor vibrations they make by initiating a strike. Also, she is physically enhanced by them, meaning that things like music or any vibrational wave can power up her strength, endurance, agility, balance, and cognitive capabilities. That means that she cannot predict the movement of others when multiple vibrations with high amplitude surround her, but she is still enhanced by them either way. So, there is a lot that can be done with Dark Cygnet in terms of fighting match-ups and dynamics since she can use music to power her up while stalling a fight (remember, she already knows how), and then she can put her visor on to help her increase her chances of predicting her enemy’s movements and winning the conflict.
Now, talking about her costume, Odile decides to create an armor that resembles her Swan Lake costume, but that is protective and looks more menacing. It is made out of a metal synthesized/crafted by the Silberhaus family that absorbs vibrations (like Vibranium) up until a limit of kinetic energy (unlike Vibranium), is very durable, lightweight, and flexible, and redistributes sound energy around Dark Cygnet’s body so she can get little boosts of strength, agility, and all the powers explained before when somebody hits or shoots her with other metals. Odile has a bulletproof headpiece/visor/crown covering almost her whole head, which she uses as a helmet, a vision suppressor to help her focus on the vibrations she senses through her body while fighting because it is made out of a material that cancels them (she also wears an eye cover below it), and a weapon and shield as it is also moldable. Dark Cygnet also has tutu, arm, and boot blades that make her very deadly, mainly when she spins while performing her new martial arts style that combines ballet and the other modalities she learned throughout her life (kong fu, tai chi, krav maga, boxing, karate, judo, maybe capoeira, but this part is still up in the air). And finally, her chest blades are retractable, so Dark Cygnet can detach them from her chest and throw them like knives or batarangs (featherangs?)
Still, if you think that Odile’s motivations are a bit shallow and that may make her a character without much depth, you may have a point. Her goals are not deep since Odile is a supervillain that comes from a preconceived script with little to no development rather than a real person, and she will never learn from her mistakes or understand and care for others’ feelings. However, I planned for this. Odile is not supposed to be a long-lasting persona. She is only part of Odette’s emotional development as an individual. You see, Odette loved superheroes growing up* and they were her escape from her complicated life, from existing under the vigilance and control of the Silberhauses to being constantly on the run with her mother, to having to take care of herself after her death, so Odile, being a character molded by a superhero lover based on the oppositive persona of the White Swan, would be inclined to become a supervillain.
Moreover, Odette created Odile as a character that channels all the negative emotions she felt throughout her life under her family’s constant control and punishment of her thoughts and actions (there is a lot that can be developed here), the desperation, sorrow, and loneliness she felt after her mother’s death, and the unpleasant things that may have happened to her in her ballet company. That amount of negative emotions created this cocoon that imprisons Odette, so the only way for her to break free is for somebody (the superheroes she idolized since she was a child) to trust in Odette’s good side to inspire her to strongly believe in hope, compassion, self-empowerment, and self-worth; to have faith in the person she was and always strived to be. It may take some time, (maybe inserting some twists about her mother’s true motivations and who were the secret agents that trained her can stall Odile’s eventual demise), but her arc would end with Odette becoming Cygnus and embracing Odile as a relevant part of herself, yet one that needs to be kept in check.
That is it. If you made it to the end, thank you. You spent your time reading something I created, and more than ever in this post, you allowed me to write almost 3000 words about something so personal as a supervillain costume I designed and the character’s back story. If you did not read everything and skipped some parts, I am still grateful that you stuck around for at least some time. In the end, this was an experimental idea I had, and I liked sharing part of my imaginative mind with you for the first time in my life. And if you liked what you saw and want to check more of my artistic endeavors, here is the link to my portfolio: Henrique Ankerkrone Caldas. Thank you again.
