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Thursday, July 3, 2014

Hellenica Characters: Xenophon

Last week I introduced you to Brasidas, the refined product of militaristic Sparta. This week, I'm introducing Xenophon from nearby Athens, who's much more scholar than soldier.


Xenophon still has some tough lessons to learn about combat, but until then, we wanted to make sure his enthusiasm for war shines through. He comes over-prepared for any encounter with his bag of scrolls and manuscripts detailing the tactics of his idols, and even a scytale!

To take it even further, we opted to replace his spear with his helmet and yet another bag of reference materials, as if he's just grabbed his things in a rush to make it out to the battlefield.


At this point, we were still trying to figure out the right facial expression for Xenophon. We wanted him to look enthusiastic and hopeful, not cocksure, so to that end we tried to round out the eyes and eyebrows and open up the smile a bit.

  

In parallel with the search for the right face, YDY cleaned up the image and worked out the colors. The traditional colors for Greek soldiers were white and a dark, royal blue. We thought the first rev strayed a bit too far from the source material. We've also been trying to stick to natural hair colors, so we had to nix the blue hair.

The other detail we had to work on was the shield. While we technically used the iconic Athena owl image at first, we just didn't think it looked great on his shield. We asked our artist to tie in the Greek colors and try out their own take on the owl, and I think the result speaks for itself!


Let us know what you think!

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