Rahkshi Fashion

I've finally finished. After nearly two months of on and off work, I've finished both my Rahkshi fashion panels.

My original intent didn't quite look like this in my mind. It all started out as a simple day dream of what if Pearllight dressed up as a Rahkshi to keep the creatures calm while she was around them. This lead to the interesting concept of Rahkshi themed fashion. The original concept in my mind started out as a helmet idea for humans, with a costume made of mostly cloth and the accessory being the elemental staff of each creature. After that inspiration, I set out to make two fashion panels based off of the six main Rahkshi; as I worked though the idea itself decided to go its own way, and instead of fabric costumes with Rahkshi helmets, I ended up drawing full blown Rahkshi armor for women. It's still fashion in a sense, but it seems the idea became more then that too; it ended up becoming both fashion, and the concept of what Rahkshi might look like if they were human, and female.

I'll give details of inspiration on the suits further down, but first a few things about the panels. The first
panel contains all the brightly colored Rahkshi; being fear, poison, and disintegration. Since I was warming up to sketching on the first panel, the positions aren't as interesting as the second, which to me is a shame because I love the bright colors. Turahk was the first to be drawn, which is why the costume looks different from the rest of them. I was sort of working with the concept still, so the shoes and armor ended up with a slightly different style; but once I made Lerahk I settled with a more stable design.
    
The second panel contains the earth tone Rahkshi; being fragmentation, anger, and absorption. Notice the drawings became a little more expressive in positions, and the models became meatier and more hardy compared to the first panel. I started gaining a better feel for sketching after I finished drawing Guurahk; and gained the right idea of what the second panel would be like. My main intention was to make Panrahk a hardy, well built model that consisted weight to it. Reason being is because I researched the different Rahkshi as I drew, and Panrahk is said to be extremely heavy, so I made the model appear hardy, and settled with that look for the last two.
 
  A little note on color placement in the panels; I purposely split the colors so they were in appealing order. With the first panel, I put Lerahk in the middle so that the green would split up the contrast of red and blue. If Turahk and Guurahk were side by side, they would have clashed, and Lerahk would look out of place on the edge, so I put green in the middle to help pull it all together. Same goes for the second panel; I purposely placed Kurahk in the middle, being that anger is the lightest and the other two are in dark shades. So I put Panrahk and Vorahk on either side of Kurahk, to balance out the light/dark contrast. Another thing I did as a specialty for the middle panels was give the models hair. Lerahk having black pigtails, and Kurahk having flowing hair that goes all over, expressing her anger.
  
 Each character has a face and body language that helps slightly express each element. Fear has a face that expresses evil pleasure in frightening beings, poison smirks as she clouds the ground with toxin, disintegration half smiles with a face that implies she'll destroy you for fun like she's destroying the rock in her hand that crumbles to the ground as dust, fragmentation has a softer face that's more concentrated as she cracks the earth beneath her feet with an expression that says *come and get me*; anger has a scowling face and hair that floats in her rage, her fingers tensing into an open hand fist like she wants to tear your heart out, and absorption has a face of smugness from being pleased with the new Toa energy she holds in her hand.

 The costumes are based off both the set versions, and the movie versions of Rahkshi. The set versions were used as reference for the classic helmet design and the added element staffs. The suits themselves though were inspired by the movie versions; being that their structures were more organic in base, made designing easier when it came to applying the concept to a human. A large majority of the Rahkshi fashion panels were inspired and based off the images below.

     

The final inspiration for my Rahkshi fashion was this cyberpunk costume with its astounding LED computer chip spine. The spine to the costume reminded me of Rahkshi the very minute I saw it. And this costume shows that it would be very possible to pull off Rahkshi fashion for cos-play if you can afford it. It's truly an illuminating idea, in more then one sense... ^_^ The cos-player herself has a DA, and here's link to her page http://melell.deviantart.com/ for more great photos.

Hope you enjoyed the process explanation and art. Happy imagining. ^.~