Creative Juices: Barrett Halifax (Part 1)
I ’m not an artist and I’m not a storyteller. And yet, throughout my life, drawing characters and thinking up stories for them has been one of my favorite pastimes. This article will go through the entire creative process for a relatively new character: a — fantasy — dwarf by the name of Barrett Halifax.
July 31, 2018
Barrett started out as a doodle of a head. When I first drew him, I didn’t think too much of him. He was just another drawing of a dwarf. I had drawn many dwarves before Barrett. Their status as an exotic fantasy race with a propensity for absurd facial hair made them a great subject for my recreational character designing. Later, when I decided to imagine a high-fantasy story about a squad of dwarves in a dwarvish military, I looked through my many sketches of dwarves and decided to use this sketch as the basis for my dwarvish captain. The thing that stood out about this sketch was probably the fact that, while it was unmistakably dwarvish, it also seemed toned down enough to be plausibly relatable. Originally I named this dwarf Ned: probably after Ned Stark from Game of Thrones — though this name may also have been inspired from Ned Kelly, the famous bushranger.
The countenance on the sketch struck me as being dignified but also earnest. I decided to incorporate these qualities into the personality of the character in order to make him a foil to another famous dwarf: Thorin Oakenshield.
Thorin Oakenshield is the prince of a troupe of dwarves in J.R.R. Tolkien’s famous work The Hobbit. While The Hobbit is a very enjoyable book, it always upset me that the dwarves in the story were only ever played for laughs. This struck me as a huge missed opportunity for a deep and complex character. Thorin Oakenshield had the chance to be a tragic figure but he was undercut in the very beginning of the book by being characterized as vain and self-important. I decided early on that, unlike Thorin, Barrett would be a paragon of stoic virtue and a true tragic hero.
Since Barrett was going to be the captain of a squad of dwarvish soldiers, I decided to come up with an armor design that would serve as a uniform for the company. I didn’t know much what my dwarvish armor would look like. The only thing I knew for sure is that I wanted the armor to be both cool and somewhat based on real-world historical armor. As a huge fan of medieval history, it always upsets me to find outlandish and over-the-top armor in fiction. It always brings me out of the immersive experience to see ginormous pauldrons or chest-plates with insane contours. While I knew my armor would have to be more ornate and interesting, I decided to start off with the sketch to the left as a base. My plan was to build on top of this basic design over time.
September 7, 2018
I’m a huge stickler for sensible anatomical proportions. Once I had a head and body to work off of, I went through great pains to find a head to body ratio which seemed right. I understood that, as a diminutive fantasy creature, the standard 1:7.5 or 1:8 wasn’t going to work for the likes of Barrett. I decided to place the armor and head sketch into a character lineup — similar to the one seen at the bottom of this page — to balance the constraints of creating a character with a head size similar to that of non-dwarf characters, while also ensuring that he was sufficiently short. I ended up going with a 1:5.5 head to body ratio.
When it came time to design the armor a bit more, I decided to use historical and practical armor sets as inspiration. The internet did not disappoint. I eventually stumbled upon this black armor set originally made for Tobias Capwell: the Curator of Arms and Armour at the Wallace Collection in London, England. The armor set to the left is somewhat famous among medieval history buffs. It manages to be an amazingly cool design while remaining entirely practical. Insofar as most myths portray dwarves as master blacksmiths with a keen eye for quality, I figured that this is the kind of armor they would make if they actually existed. The most striking quality of the armor to me was the color scheme. I knew as soon as I saw this armor that Barrett’s armor was going to be black with gold trim.
April 22, 2019
The only issue I had with the Capwell armor was the helmet. While it may have been perfectly fine for Dr.Capwell, it would have obstructed one of the most interesting parts of a dwarf’s character design: the facial hair. I knew I needed a helmet more in the style of a barbute or morion in order to show off Barrett’s voluminous beardage. The actual design for this open-faced helmet was a huge problem for me until I ran into the helmet design (right) from a Fire Emblem game. The helmet in the image to the right is a historical travesty but its general look is excellent. I decided to take the fire emblem helmet and modify it into something slightly more realistic and practical.
Eventually I came up with this helmet (left) as a base to work off of. While in the process of designing it, a really great thought occured to me: since this helmet was to be part a military uniform, what if the plume of the helmet was used to indicate the wearer’s rank? As soon as I had this thought, I launched into a search of ornamental plumes used throughout history. Each time I found a plume that I liked, I did my best to see how it would look on my dwarvish helmet design.
While I enjoyed most of these designs, I decided to go with one of the subtler ones for Barrett since he was only a captain. I was torn between these two:
Eventually I decided to go with the design on the left. With a helmet and plume design in mind, I got started on the colors.
April 23, 2019
I decided to add some shine and reflection to the gold parts of the helmet. This did not turn out well. The gold effects I tried to implement were all too disorienting. After way, way too much effort, I decided to ditch my progress on the gold reflection and try again later. I temporarily settled on a gold-yellow base with a tiny bit of shading.
April 25, 2019
I also decided that the cardinal red plumage on the front of the helmet wasn’t doing it for me. I tried out the other plume design but, after imagining Barrett running around with a single feather sticking straight out of the top of his head, I decided the whole thing would just look too silly. I ended up taking some inspiration from the helmet commissioned by the YouTube personality, Lindybiege, and placed the plume holder somewhere on the back of the helm. From there I went on to color Barrett’s face. Early on I knew I wanted him to have raven black hair, but I stumbled on the green eyes quite by accident. The green had a distinct and striking effect on the otherwise subdued design. What’s more, it seemed to go quite well with the yellow.
April 26, 2019
From there I got started on the body armor. I knew I wanted to go black with gold trim. All that remained to be determined was how the gold trim would be applied. Originally I applied the gold quite liberally. To my dismay however, the armor started to take on the semblance of a tacky, art deco interior.
April 29, 2019
I decided to remove all the gold trim that I wasn’t 100% sure about and try again.
This time I tried to come up with a sort of intelligible pattern for how the trim would be applied. I found the result far more agreeable.
As I mentioned before, this character was not always Barrett Halifax. It wasn’t until around this part of development that I came up with and finalized this name. As I was drawing I was listening to a song by Stan Rogers called “Barrett’s Privateers.” I was enjoying the song when it occurred to me that Barrett might be a perfect name for this character. As a name, Barrett is just peculiar and infrequent enough that it might fit applying to a fantasy dwarf character. At the same time, it also seems just ordinary enough that it would be easy to pronounce, easy to say, and maybe even make the character that much more sympathetic to an audience. Lastly, it had a fun spelling: two R's and two T's. All I needed was a last name. I replayed the song in search of a last name and was not disappointed. Eventually Stan Rogers sang the following lyrics: “It's been 6 years since we sailed away and I just made Halifax yesterday.” Halifax! Once again, perfect! Not too long, not too short. Somewhat exotic and somewhat familiar. Easy to say and fun to spell. I did not stop there. I went ahead and looked up the etymology of the names. Once again I was not disappointed. Barrett came from an Old English word meaning quarrelsome. Halifax was said to come from the Old English Haligfeax, which is apparently related to an obscure English legend.
In both cases the etymology seemed perfect. While I don’t envision Barrett being particularly irascible, I believe the contrast between a character’s personality and details such as their name can have a really interesting effect on a way that the audience perceives a character. As far as the savvy audience member is aware, the name could be a foreshadowing, though it may just as easily be a bluff. These sorts of details can give characters greater depth and make it easier for viewers to want to be invested in them.
While the etymology of Halifax is grim, the legend it references harkens back to a setting even more ancient and mysterious than whatever setting Barrett himself might be a part of. The etymology of Halifax feels like the perfect world-building tool to give Barrett the sense of having descended from an ancient line of folk steeped in fable and superstition. The tale of Halifax seems like the kind of thing a person nowadays couldn’t make up and the contrast between the modern mindset and so old a legend might be enough to give a viewer a sense of just how ancient and fantastical the character’s setting truly is.
May 1, 2019
After touching up the contour of one of the legs, I moved into the torso, starting with the gorget. Part way through working on the gorget, I realized that the blackness of Barrett’s hair made it nearly impossible to see the braids which did so much to give a genuine feel of exotic dwarvishness to his design. I decided to use reflection to bring out the shape of the braid and make it more distinct. While the result was certainly an improvement, I’m still not quite happy with it. I will definitely have to practice more with color value, shading, and reflection in the future. While my original plan was to make the gorget black with a little bit of gold trim around the edges, I noticed that it happened to make it very difficult to distinguish Barrett’s beard. What with Barrett being a dwarf, I decided to make the whole gorget gold in order to contrast with Barrett’s beard.
May 4, 2019
With the broad strokes of the armor’s design complete, it was time for the tedium. With no small amount of struggle, I eventually made Barrett’s right arm and finished the base color for his torso armor. In the process I determined that the gorget put too much gold by Barrett’s neck so I decided to reduce it in size.
May 6, 2019
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The last thing I was able to do before temporarily losing access to a Cintiq was fix up elements of the arm, and add a bit more lineart to the torso armor. As soon as I get access to a tablet again, I look forward to putting some gold ornamentation on the breast-plate, and finishing Barrett’s troublesome gauntlets. From there I will supplement his character design with some expressions, a simplistic background, and an illustration of his weapons and other effects. It’s going to be a whole lot of fun and I simply can’t wait.
In the meantime, be sure to look out for Creative Juices: Barrett Halifax (Part 2). I’m really enjoying making this character and I can’t wait to either play as him in a TTRPG, or incorporate him into a story or video game.
