#deadass i was told to basically create modern au moodboards for ibsen plays

[haverkampink]

Borrowing a trick I learned in grad school for costume design--when you feel at all alienated from your characters because they exist in a different time, try to imagine them in the present. What's the same? What changes? How would they act with different social pressures on them, and what does that say about the heart of their personality?

I felt like I was getting in the weeds plotting #untitledregencyfantasyproject and moving the characters around like chesspieces, rather than letting them have some agency to drive the story, so here's a little experiment - drawing the girls as contemporary students (I'm lucky to have loads of reference on a daily basis).

Gwen, a romantic, wears her wispy hair long, , and sports a flirty challis jumpsuit (it's probably floral). I think she'd major in bio specifically to do fieldwork because she wants very badly to have Adventures™. Julia, meanwhile, is an English Lit major who loves being comfortable, and thrifts all her clothes as a point of pride. Her eyes aren't bad enough in URFP to make the concession to glasses quite yet, but her brother wears them, so it's likely that modern opticians would recommend it (especially since her contemporary self would never be far from her laptop).