Character Design

Examples of Historical Finnish Clothing

After deciding on the theme of my set, and looking into the characters I’d like to work on, the next step was to decide on the designs of the 3D printed sculpture and the 3D portraits. I chose five characters for symmetry, one in front as the physical sculpture and four in the back as the 3D portraits. I started by looking at inspiration from old paintings, especially Akseli Gallen-Kallela and the artist’s name. For Ukko-Ilmarinen it was easy to find sculptures and paintings of how the original artist saw him, but for the rest, there weren’t any visual guides to help me so for those I was able to use my own imagination quite a bit.

I went and had a look at Finland’s Museovirasto, which is an online database for historical archaeological finds relating to Finnish history. I was particularly interested in the clothing and accessories, as I wanted to include as much realistic Finnish history in the 3D pieces as I possibly could. So dressing the characters in historically inspired outfits was a good place to start.

Items, photos and drawings between 1500-1939 – Museovirasto

As seen above, Finnish people dressed in different colours and patterns. The ancient Finns wore modest and comfortable clothes that allowed them to work and move with ease. Everyday outfits were light in colour and plain in style. The more colourful designs were reserved for special occasions. These colourful textures are still seen today in the Finnish traditional formal dresses and outfits. There are also a lot of different interesting symbols and geometric shapes on accessories and items. These swirly patterns are something I’d like to include in my designs as well.

Character Design Process

To start designing my characters I took inspiration from the original tales, and old paintings as well as my own personal interpretation of them by searching Pinterest with keywords I associated with them.

Vetehinen – Water God

Since there are no paintings or descriptions of this character I went to Pinterest with a vague idea in my mind of how Vetehinen could potentially look like. When trying to imagine a dark, scary water creature one usually starts to think of dark mermaids and bottomless bodies of water. That was also the first thing that came to my mind and so I started looking for inspiration based on that. I knew based on the myths that Vetehinen would possibly be a humanoid character, as at least on land it would appear as a beautiful female sitting on a rock and luring people into the water after her. The fun part was thinking about what it would look like underwater or during it would attack its prey. I wanted my version of Vetehinen to be able to transform based on its surroundings and to be able to be both extremely creepy and inviting at the same time.

There came the idea of a 360-degree view of the sculpture so that the viewer too could experience the metamorphosis of the character just by looking at the sculpture from different angles. At first glance, they would see a calm and inviting woman sitting on the bank of the small island by the lake, but by walking behind the sculpture they’d see the reality of the character and the scary predator side of it.

To further explain this I made very quick mock-ups in Blender and then drew on them to show what I mean by that.

The initial idea is a foundation for the character design process to follow, before I’ll be fully satisfied with the story and feel I’m hoping to achieve. From there I made a few more very quick thumbnails for the feel of the character and added some accessories based on the historical clothes found in the Finnish Handiwork Museum collection. I liked the idea of Vetehinen being a mixture of a mermaid/fish and a human woman and that she would be playing her kantele (traditional Finnish plucked string instrument) as she lured people to drown like a siren.

Kuutar – Goddess of the Moon

Picture from the Russian translation of Kalevala – Nikolai Kochergin, 2015

I could find only one picture of Kuutar in the Russian translation of Kalevala, by Nikolai Kochergin, where she can be seen weaving the threads on top of a rainbow with her traditional loom, as Väinämöinen approaches her from the right. The scenery around her has been pictured in the poem though;

People’s destinies are woven in the heavens under the rainbow, at the top of the world pillar or the world tree. Here, the maiden weaves the silver threads of life into a golden cloth. As a result, the silver threads create a picture of all life, the whole of people’s interwoven destinies. When the maiden accidentally cuts the thread of life, her tears flow into three rivers, three hills and three birches growing on top of them. On the top of the birch, three cuckoos sing as a sign of fate for a person whose silver thread has broken. (Alhonen, 2020)

This already gives me some indication as to what the scene around her could possibly look like. Since the visual of her character is only a white outline in Kochergin’s painting, I once again went to Pinterest to get some more inspiration as to what she could look like in my version. I searched for Goddess of Moon and found several inspiring paintings I’ll be using whilst I design her myself.

Again I made two quick thumbnails just to imagine how she and the scene she’s in could look. I wanted her to look otherwordly, but still have recognisable characteristics like traditional dress and jewellery. In the story, she weaves with a big loom, so I’ll need to look into those and see if I can add them to the scene without covering her completely. I could perhaps design a new loom for her, something a bit more “heavenly”.

Ukko-Ilmarinen – God of Sky and Thunder

There is plenty of material to go through when it comes to Ukko-Ilmarinen. Since he’s actually someone that was worshipped in the early days, he has been pictured in the art for a long time. Most recent and consistent in visual appearance artworks are from the times of Kalevala, which is also the look I want to pick for my interpretation of him. Ilmarinen is often pictured as mature, tall, masculine, bearded and stern, usually accompanied by his weapons and tools for forging. He wears humble and plain work clothes, either half-naked without his shirt or fully clothed. There are drawings of him looking a lot like his Greek counterpart Zeus, but I personally prefer him in his Kalevala form as it makes him seem more unique.

God of the skies, Ukko-Ilmarinen rules the elements of the air: clouds, thunder, lightning, wind, storm, calm, rain and snow. Additionally, he forged the firmament and world pillar (Sampo, a magical device that brought riches and good fortune to its holder) that supported the cosmos and set the stars in their proper places. As the god of fire and rain, he was the god of slash-and-burn farmers. He helped seafarers and fishermen as the wind god. As the ruler of the secrets of fire and wind, Ukko-Ilmarinen was the god of blacksmiths. Also, he could have been a fatherly god who was asked for advice on many occasions. He’s believed to reside in the middle of the sky, next to the North Star. Sámi people believe that he wears blue. (Alhonen, 2020)

For Ilmarinen I made some character face sketches and ended up thinking he would be a mixture of old and wise and young and brave. There are so many paintings of him, from both sides of the spectrum so I decided to meet in the middle with my initial design. Again the thumbnail sketches are very quick and less pretty, but they convey the idea of the layout somewhat well.

Ajattara – Forest God

There wasn’t any visual info about Ajattara, except the story that she would be an evil version of the goddess of the forest. Again, I went to Pinterest to search for forest nymphs, dark forest creatures and scary imagery of misty and uninviting forests. I liked the idea of her being part of the forest, with the vegetation actually growing out of her as well as her being almost rooted to the ground like a tree. I found many images of long woodlike fingers and glowing eyes which matched the feeling I had in my head for her. A very spooky character portrait would be her standing in the middle of a dark forest, with only the dark silhouette showing the upper part of her body and menacing eyes glowing as an animal lit with a spotlight in the dark.

Swan of Tuonela

The Swan of Tuonela doesn’t have a huge role in Kalevala, but nevertheless, the swan itself had great importance in the old beliefs when people believed that birds transported the souls of the departed to the Underworld, Tuonela. The reason why the Kalevala version of the swan is so known is because of a tone poem composed by Jean Sibelius in 1895. The musical piece is very well-known not only in Finland but around the world too. It’s a beautiful and almost haunting piece of music. Below it’s being performed by the NHK Symphony Orchestra in 2014.

It’ll take a while to decide how to present the swan in an interesting way while also bringing in the sorrowful feeling of the song on the piece. Since the Swan of Tuonela didn’t have a big story it was my job to create one for it to bring in the feel of romantic art and storytelling.

I was lucky enough to find a few swans swimming about right next door to my house in Broughty Ferry. These young swans were part of a bigger family I had seen a few days before. I sat down by the beach with my dog and did some quick life drawing until we both completely froze and had to get back inside. Later on I did some more sketches in Photoshop and added the black colour too.

References

Alhonen, A. (2020) Perinnetietoa, Taivaannaula. Available at: https://www.taivaannaula.org/perinne/tietoa/ (Accessed: November 9, 2022). PDF Esivanhempien puu – Kirjoituksia itämerensuomalaisesta uskomusperinteestä