Character Design and Thoughts

Semester one

The design process of Vetehinen started during semester one, with some initial sketches and ideas as to how she could be. I had already settled down the idea of using epoxy resin and 3D printing, so what was left was how the piece would appear visually. In the myth, Vetehinen doesn’t really have a shape or form, but there are tales of her appearing as a beautiful female who lured people to drown. There is no information why this was, except the myth that she would’ve been the first person ever to drown in a body of water. More of this is in my previous post about the myths here.

During semester one I also researched Finnish clothes and accessories and from those, I came up with the initial design of her seen below. The blog post about historical clothes can be found here. I had somewhat decided that she would appear mythical, yet beautiful, and be wearing some of the accessories of the higher status to appear more approachable. Her ears and skin tone would give her away as being a mythical creature.

Thoughts and Reasons

Then came semester two and with that new ideas. During the winter break, I had thought about things and reasons why I wanted to work on this project, to begin with, and felt like there wasn’t much connection between my work and me and especially Vetehinen’s story felt very one-dimensional and lacking. Since I was already going to work with resin, why not take it to the next level? As Vetehinen lived in the water, it would make sense for her to have a tail so that she could swim around with ease. I was hesitant to go down this route before, as I didn’t just want to make her an evil mermaid or a siren. Instead, to connect with the character and the setting a bit more I walked down memory lane and thought about my own childhood.

I and my sister spent the majority of our childhood summers on our grandparents’ boat. Our parents would drive us to Hanko where the boat was anchored and then spend the next weeks fishing, gathering mushrooms, swimming, playing and exploring the nature around us. We would mostly stay where we were “parked”, but every now and then we would successfully coax our grandparents to lift the anchor and sail further away out to the sea and nearby islands. These trips were extremely fun, as we would get to make believe as we were explorers beaching an unmapped island and see if we could find any treasure. My grandpa especially was very keen on playing along.

During these summer trips to the boat (named Alexandra the Second, my sister’s middle name is after the previous sailboat Aleksanda the First) we would learn a lot about the nature around us and how to use it to our advantage, but mindfully, as not to disturb or destroy. To Finnish people, nature is very important, so this type of childhood would have been very normal. After growing up spending summers at summer cottages (mökki) or boats like my grandpa’s is a way of life that many continue during adulthood as well.

My grandpa taught me a lot of things and only now in my later life, I’m truly able to appreciate it. I enjoy being out in nature tremendously, and whilst I love living in Scotland, I still occasionally miss the Finnish landscapes and the sense of peace and quiet an early morning out in the woods brings me. I love the fresh smell in the air after the rain and the streaks of light of an afternoon sun when it showers down on the forest floor. Even now I’m drawn to the waterline as I moved to Broughty Ferry, every day getting to enjoy the view of Tay and I often find myself thinking of my grandpa.

My grandpa passed away 1,5 years ago, not able to see me graduate from my undergrad course which I was devastated about. He was always my biggest fan and the one who encouraged me to apply to a university abroad. I’d like to believe that he is still proud of me and the work I’ve done after he’s gone. So in a small way for me to connect with Finland with my program of study is thanks to him and the need to remember him by picking Finnish nature as the backdrop of my work. It’s crucial for Finnish mythology as well, but part of it is also for my grandpa and his love for the scenery as well. I’d like for the viewers of my work to feel like they are stepping into the story and scenery, and experiencing the thrilling presence of the myths as well as the calming and rich Finnish nature around them. In a nutshell, that is the feeling I get when I look at a very good romantic painting. The feeling of being sucked into the moment and the scenery, and is what I hope that my work would be able to convey.

I’m lucky that I’m pretty much glued to my camera 24/7 so I’ve taken quite a lot of photos over the years. I mostly take photos of people and animals, but I’ve also taken a lot of photos of nature as well. These photos in the above gallery are all taken about 60 miles radius of where I grew up, with a few wintery exceptions from Lapland. Thankfully I’ve really focused on some close-ups too, as this will make my life so much easier when I’m thinking about modelling the vegetation around my subjects. As I can’t just take off and go on a research adventure to Finland, this is the next closest thing I have in hand. I also have quite a few videos I’ve taken admiring nature, so I can also use those as references.

The only thing I’m missing is sounds. My intention is to apply sound to the exhibition area so that when visitors step into my space they’ll be instantly surrounded by the sounds of Finnish nature. My first thought would be to take my recorder and record the sounds and ambience myself, but since I’m not in Finland and won’t be there for at least until next Christmas I’m facing a bit of an issue. I have a solution in mind, which I will be discussing in this post here.

Quick watercolour studies of the most common Finnish plants and trees both close to water and inland.

Vetehinen evolving

Now that I have established some key points as to why I’m going down this route, the next step is to implement all this knowledge into my final design of Vetehinen and her scene. I wanted to keep some of the elements of my initial ideas in the final design but decided to remove the small island and change the design of Vetehinen herself in the process too. As I was thinking of how the Degree Show layout would be, I came up with an idea and a layout of how the 3D printed sculpture would be on a plinth in the middle and the other visual pieces on the walls. I wanted to use the resin to my advantage, so by removing the island and placing the character into the water directly I could use the waterline as a border between two worlds. Above the surface would be a humanoid character offering something in hopes to lure the viewer closer and then below the surface there would be a dark and murky world with skeletons on the bottom to indicate the previous viewers who weren’t careful enough. I now entertained myself again with the idea of a mermaid type of creature, but to make it less obvious I wanted to make sure my design wouldn’t be happy and chirpy like The Little Mermaid.

I kept the original idea of the accessories to tie in the Finnish history but changed the layout of the scene entirely. Now instead of sitting on a rock with human legs, Vetehinen was half human half fish. I wanted to contrast the difference between surface and underwater by splitting the character into two species as well as showing that she really did live underwater and was in her element there. Since I was closing in on the mermaid territory, I wanted to make sure that the design choices would draw a line between my design and cutesy children’s stories. To do that, instead of choosing a beautiful and mystical tail I went ahead and picked the tail to be an actual fish, a European Perch to be exact.

European Perch is the official national fish of Finland and I personally have many memories of fishing them. The European Perch has a beautiful striped colouring as well as scary-looking spiky fins. The European Perch is very similar to the zander, only smaller and stockier. The fish is said to be very much an image of an everyday Finn;

“Perches are native to Finland: slow-moving, spiky, crooked-necked creatures that are more sociable when they are young, but when they get older, they withdraw into their own environment to wallow.” (Poutanen, 2012)

Being a national fish wasn’t the only reason why I chose it to become the bottom half of my character, but the fins are something that reminded me of memories I’ve had with them. When I was young and fishing with my grandpa, he would often tell me to be careful with perches as the back fins were sharp to the touch. Even after hearing the warning, I would still get excited when I caught one and grabbed it squarely by the middle. This, of course, caused a wound that was pretty painful and I started bleeding (and crying). Needless to say, I was a bit more careful from there on. So, since the find reminds me of the sharpness of pain and they do look a bit scary as well, I thought that they may be a perfect choice for my design.

After these initial thoughts, I first redrew one of my traditional sketches digitally and from there drew my first attempt at a model sheet. I then showed the idea in class and got some good feedback. It seemed that I was too literal with my attempt of making Vetehinen scary and it would certainly be a basic poor horror movie decision to follow after a fish lady who is holding onto a skull in her hands. So the luring element wasn’t strong enough. Back to the drawing board, it was! I was close, for sure, but still needed to polish the idea a little bit more.

Inspiration from romanticism

I was happy with the core of the idea, scary fish bottom, approachable human top. I just simply needed to make sure that the contrast was big enough to make an impression. So instead of adding barnacles and skulls above the surface, I decided to make Vetehinen look like the beautiful and warm Maiden of Finland, who is the national personification of Finland.

She is depicted as a barefoot young woman with blonde hair and blue eyes dressed in the Finnish national costume or white dress, originally named Aura after the Aura River in Turku. As a symbol, the Finnish Maiden has been used since the 19th century when she was portrayed as a woman wearing a turreted crown and then developed as Finland gained national consciousness and independence. She was portrayed in poetry and fine arts. Her first appearance was that of an older woman, but she gradually grew younger, similar to Svea’s mother in neighbouring Sweden. (Reitala, 1983)

As well as looking into the Maiden of Finland, I also went through some of the images I took at the National Museum of Finland and that of the exhibition of Akseli Gallen-Kallela. The triptych of Aino is very similar to the maiden so I figured it would be quite beneficial to merge these two ladies into one and create a romantic image of the character and how she would appear on the surface. There are also other very similar characters in the paintings I saw, with small details like flower crowns and even our friend European Perches jumping around Aino in the first one. I also looked at some other romantic era portraits of women just to see how their facial features were painted so that my design would have a similar feel.

The final design

From my small research earlier I decided to do some really quick master studies of some romantic portraits of women. I especially studied the facial features and came to the conclusion that well number one, portraits with faces facing forward are pretty hard to find as most romantic paintings celebrated the background so the subjects would be small and within that, and secondly, the portraits that I did find were quite similar with each other. The facial features were constantly soft, rounded and most cases upper class. These soft shapes would be very nice to sculpt though, so I wasn’t co

From there I took these characteristics and blended them with the idea of the Maiden of Finland. I played around with the idea of natural and effortless beauty, who would blend with her surroundings but not get lost in them. I switched the original hat with the flower crown that was seen in one of the Kalevala paintings but kept the ancient jewellery. She needed to appear almost regal so that she would be easier to approach.

The tail was a whole other story. Instead of this warmth and beautiful things it needed to be scary and domineering, but still, look like it belonged to the same body as the upper part of Vetehinen. To do that I decided to decorate the tail a little, just like her torso, as if she would have been happy with the riches she managed to steal from her victims, decorating herself like a magpie.

Finally, I put it all together into one fish-person design and was left with the design below. I played around with the tail designs a little but ended up liking most of the softer and rounded-looking tails, which almost looked like a whole fish itself. Vetehinen now had two very distinct different parts, one human and one fish, which I liked. With the resin in between, the contrast would be very nice.

I showed the final turnaround and design to Sean, who liked the idea very much. He still wanted to challenge me a little more to play around with proportions and shapes before nailing down the coffin and moving on to modelling, so I took the turnarounds I had to Photoshop and did some rough line art sketching on top.

I had a think about different silhouettes based on the original drawing and then made some small adjustments to the tail itself. I wanted to keep the basic shape that I already had but realised that instead of being too strict on the realistic fish part I could emphasise the spiky part and add more to it. It would look pretty neat 3D printed too! From the bottom designs I made, I started leaning towards the third from the left. Perches don’t have any weird antennas coming out of them, but since we’re already deep into the myth category I could add some to my design. After trying out the 3D printing I could leave the tips of the antennas translucent, or paint them with UV paints.

The silhouette and volume of it is pretty spot on still from my original design, so I’ll most likely go with it in the end. Next step, modelling!

References

National Library of Finland, Kansalliskirjasto. The University of Helsinki. Available at: https://www.kansalliskirjasto.fi/en (Accessed: March 12, 2023).

Reitala, A. (1983) Suomi-neito: Suomen kuvallisen henkilöitymän vaiheet. Helsinki: Otava.