RESEARCH

The design I chose to go with was heavily influenced by the soviet and post-soviet era cartoons from Russia, which I grew up with. I tried looking into how the female characters dressed, where the shapes cut off and where the colours get placed. I also looked into how the heroines looked like. They tended to have very long lashes on both the top and the bottom of the eye so that was something to keep in mind. They also had small round lips and apperant rosy cheeks, traits often that can also be found on russian dolls. Some of them also had eyebrows that heavily leaned into the nose bridge. Their necks were long and their hands were long and delicate.

In addition to looking at animated examples I tried to also look at real life examples such as traditional Russian clothing and fashion based of of it. I also noticed that the animated heroines tended to resemble the Russian dolls "Matryoshkas". They also had rosy cheeks, small full lips and long eyelashes. One thing to note about these dolls is that they usually have a big rose or other flower painted on their bellies. As such, I incorporated a few of these roses into my design. It added more detail and matched the red theme pretty well.