Dzikan
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Alice pt.2 progress update!
🕑 Added 2025-03-01 17:01:14 +0000 UTCHello my Sweethearts!
First of all, Congratulations on the first day of Spring! We made it through winter and it’s already a great accomplishment in itself. If your inside world is cold, having cold outside is making it worse. A very hard time. But changes in weather also may bring changes inside the mind. That’s why once again, Congratulations on the first day of Spring!
Today I’m here to share a fresh progress update of Alice Madness Returns pt.2. I’d say this time I’m sharing more emotional shots compared to the previous time. One image is closer to the game, the other one is closer to the concept we had in mind. Which one is which I’ll leave for you to decide.
Production fact.
As you noticed from all the images I shared so far, Alice has two weapons: Vorpal blade and Hobby Horse. I’ve talked about the horse weapon, but didn’t talk about the blade.
First of all, I love blade weapons in games, in particular swords. No other weapon doesn’t have such simplistic, but at the same time meaning behind compared to sword. Maybe the Spear, but it’s not about the most effective weapon throughout human history.
The design of the sword can tell you more about the hero of the story, his character, status and how he approaches obstacles.
If the weapon in the original poem appeared to me more like a traditional sword, in games it appears as a big chef’s knife covered with a beautiful pattern and blood.
I have an idea why it was the choice for the design. First,Big Knife looks dangerous. Simple and straight, the tool of slashing and cutting. Usually a weapon of choice of many killers in mass media. And also the option of self defense, when nothing is left.
Second, Alice in games had a very hard life full of loss and betrayal, to the point where living and breathing can be unbearable. And a simple kitchen knife might be one of the options to end it all.
Basically design of the Vorpal blade shows her poor mental state, desire to get back at her enemies and maybe herself too.
I love the thought put behind its design and how brilliantly simple it is.
There were two options for us. Make a blade from a real knife as the base or make it from eva material from scratch.
The real knife would look awesome on set and in photos. We could play with light reflection and overall it would give a more dangerous vibe to shots. BUT. It would be dangerous for the model. Anything could happen and we decided not to take a risk.
Interestingly it’s easier to use big swords on set. You have certain limitations with posing and in itself it works as a safeguard. )
Also the pattern on the blade would look awful if we just drew it on top.
That's why in the end our blade was fully crafted from the eva material and painted. This way our Vorpal blade has more details, “character” and we could adjust its size to our model’s proportions.
I hope it won’t be a boring read (of course if you read it). And I hope you’ll enjoy images.
Alice project is still in progress, but the pace is good. The next post will be in a way “safe point” and shared before the reward post.
Please have a great weekend and good rest!
Comments
Dzikan
Thank you for sharing some insight on the swords. From one short documentary I just know that shape dictates how it used, just like you explained. ) If I remember correctly Alice didn't use knife properly, just slashing around, so the choice for more curved blade makes sense )
Divine Logic
Lovely work, once again! Sword design has a lot of nuance, both in character design, and the practical design throughout history. Curved blades were more common in cultures that engaged in a lot of horseback combat, for ease of control. Some blades (I think katanas were one) had to be made in a particular way due to challenges with the material. How weapons were used - duelling, against armor, stylized vs. practical, etc. - influences how they were designed, and strong character design takes at least partial note of these when selecting for a character.
Dzikan
It would be definitely interesting to work on characters from universes created by From Software )
DERB
Very nice. Kind of makes me wonder if you could try a Elden Ring character in the future considering how you describe the Vorpal blade like lore.
