It’s hard to believe that I started working on Janna about this time last year in preparation for PAX East 2013! Not only is she a character that I love (my most played champion at the time), but she let me express my inner girlishness, and she was a very satisfying build for me as I incorporated a lot of my own design ideas. I’ll write this article in two parts, so this section will go over some of the bigger design and material choices I faced and the second part will address construction.
I know that a lot of costumers that see a character they want to make start by finding all kinds of references (official art, screen shots, fan art, in-game models), and they spot differences in color, style, patterns, and overall design. To a lot of people, 100% accuracy is the top priority for their design choices, but I say it doesn’t need to be. My Janna costume is not 100% accurate to her in-game model or splash art, but I think it demonstrates how you can take multiple versions of the same character design and create your own vision. In the end, this is how I interpret Janna and I express my vision through my design choices, materials, and collaboration with photographers and I like it.
I started with collecting picture references that included design elements that I liked, and thinking through what elements and characteristics I associated with Janna. To me, the first five words that come to mind in describing Janna are: ethereal, wind, mage, delicate, and elegance. I kept these words in mind as I looked through reference images and made design choices. In this case, my top two references ended up being the North American and Chinese splash art.
I particularly liked the flowing skirt, hip area armor, leg armor, crown, and staff from the Chinese artwork but I wasn’t such a big fan of the chest piece, gloves, or hair color. For those design elements, I pulled my inspiration from the North American artwork because I liked them better and the intricacies they displayed seemed to fit better with the elements I liked from the Chinese art.
The next big decision I made was to make the chest, hip, and leg pieces into armor. I got the armor vibe because of the way it felt in the artwork and to maintain a level of consistency throughout the costume. To me, they look like solid pieces with intricate raised details.
This was especially evident in the chest piece of the North American artwork because of the way the shadows are drawn. The chest piece looks like it sticks out a little from her torso at the bottom point, indicating it is a solid, stiff piece. Plus, though Janna is a beautiful, ethereal, sexy elf mage, she is going into battle so some form of armor makes sense to me.
When I was choosing the materials for the armor, I had a few limitations to keep in mind. I needed something that was sturdy enough to withstand a lot of travel, but also that I could work with in my living room with the tools I already had. I ended up choosing three different kinds of thermoplastics: worbla, wonderflex, and friendly plastic. I had experience working with wonderflex and friendly plastic from my Orianna costume, and I wanted to try working with worbla (especially for compound curves). I will go more in depth of how I used these materials for constructing the armor pieces in part two of this article.
The next step was determining a fabric choice, especially since I decided to go with the big flowing skirt design. Since Janna is a wind mage, I knew immediately that whatever fabric I would choose had to be super light and probably sheer, so when I found a chiffon at the fabric store, I knew it was right!
Additionally, while I was scouting for fabrics, I stumbled upon a beautiful embroidered organza and I made an entirely original design choice: the main skirt would be made up of two layers of fabric. It would give additional body to the skirt while keeping it light and airy, and it would add some subtle detail.
The final big decision I had to make would be how to make the staff. I knew that I wanted to make her staff to look more elegant and delicate than it does in either splash art because it fit better with her character and the design I was aiming for. With that said, I generally liked the shape and feel of the staff in the Chinese artwork. I also worked under the assumption that the top of the staff is smaller than in the artwork in reality because of perspective, so I used it as a base reference and planned to scale it down a little.
Since Janna is a wind and weather mage, I particularly liked the idea that the chill of the winds that she controls would freeze the rain in the clouds and build up on her staff as ice. With ice in mind, I decided I would use the same clear plastic-hot glue technique I used for Sejuani, but I also had some ideas on how to improve upon the technique to make the piece sturdier.
This is just a brief look into how I go about making design choices, especially when there are multiple references to pull from. I try my best to keep in mind the character I’m trying to create and to think through why I make my decisions for materials and aesthetic. At the end of the day, a costume should look the way YOU like.
This concludes part one of this article series. In part two I’ll go into more about the costume construction. Thanks for reading!