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Description
The more I've written, Dawn's parents have become much more fleshed out characters than originally envisioned, so it's about time I draft some official designs for them! Let's start with her dad, Stede Hewlett. He's a retired navy surgeon who earned his stripes sailing the troubled waters of the Indian Ocean. He was born and raised in Eagle Crest, but was always the black sheep of the family. He had a very high opinion of himself, and would often get into trouble because he had something to prove, yet never knew what that something was. He ran away as a teenager, seeking a name for himself beyond the middle of nowhere. Eventually that landed him in the service of the US military, who straightened him out. Surgeon wasn't even his first choice of career, but both seeing and spilling that much blood makes a man decide he'd like to devote himself to keeping it inside of people instead. He's made a lot of mistakes, and he wasn't sure he'd be able to atone for all of them, but then his daughter was born. He was overseas when it happened, and while he called home every day, it wasn't until he was discharged and walked in the door to see Dawn himself that his heart burst. Every mistake he'd ever made now made sense, and the way forward was clear.

Stede is witty and mellow, though his smile does hide a troubled soul underneath. When Dawn died in that crash, that mask shattered. He wanted nothing more than the chance to see his daughter smile again, but nothing in his long and brutal life ever indicated that the dead come back. Nothing could prepare him for the way his world was about to flip upside down.

Design notes, my first mental image of Dawn's father was a pretty generic military man, nice and tidy from head to toe. As I've worked on his character, though, I decided that just didn't match the story I wanted to tell. Instead I shifted into more of a if-the-Beatles-went-pirate sort of vibe. Is that oddly specific? Yes, yes it is, but it's a vibe I dig. For the more decorative elements, I took inspiration from Mughal era clothing and jewelry, since his place of service was full to bursting with legends of Mughal gold and lost pirate utopias. He may or may not have collected a few souvenirs he wasn't supposed to-

Speaking of pirates, I wanted to give him a couple weapons that'd lend him more of a swashbuckling aesthetic. The sword was pretty straightforward enough, I mean one should always come equipped with a machete when traversing the coastal jungles of the Indian Ocean after all. Not too difficult to make a few alterations for it to resemble a cutlass. His gun was more of a challenge though. There are surprisingly few artistic takes on a modern flintlock. The closest you get when searching are science-fantasy designs, but most of those are just a bunch of steampunk greebling slapped onto a regular ass colonial gun. There doesn't really seem to be any updated take on the flintlock mechanism in the world of professional gun enthusiasts either. Like okay, fair, the invention of cartridges kinda made flintlocks completely obsolete, so nowadays they're almost exclusively gathering dust in antique collections, but that doesn’t exactly help me. Then I learned that “muzzleloader” is the more professional term for this kind of gun, and at last I had something perfect to reference. The only pistol variety of muzzleloader I could find are made by a company called Connecticut Valley Arms, and that silhouette is exactly the conduit the image in my head was looking for. I'm not a gun girl, but even I can recognize that's one sexy piece of equipment. Taking inspiration from there, I combined it with the sort of superposed rail mechanism found in Ellis-Jennings rifles… you know so Stede can actually fire more than one shot. I think it came out really sleek. Normally I'm not great with drawing firearms, but I'm very proud of this one.

Now the only problem is that after sifting through video footage trying to see how the mechanism of these things work in motion, the YouTube algorithm thinks I'm really into hunting and gun rights- Someone pls save me, it's drowning out all the 3 hour video essay recommendations I could be getting instead.

Description
The more I've written, Dawn's parents have become much more fleshed out characters than originally envisioned, so it's about time I draft some official designs for them! Let's start with her dad, Stede Hewlett. He's a retired navy surgeon who earned his stripes sailing the troubled waters of the Indian Ocean. He was born and raised in Eagle Crest, but was always the black sheep of the family. He had a very high opinion of himself, and would often get into trouble because he had something to prove, yet never knew what that something was. He ran away as a teenager, seeking a name for himself beyond the middle of nowhere. Eventually that landed him in the service of the US military, who straightened him out. Surgeon wasn't even his first choice of career, but both seeing and spilling that much blood makes a man decide he'd like to devote himself to keeping it inside of people instead. He's made a lot of mistakes, and he wasn't sure he'd be able to atone for all of them, but then his daughter was born. He was overseas when it happened, and while he called home every day, it wasn't until he was discharged and walked in the door to see Dawn himself that his heart burst. Every mistake he'd ever made now made sense, and the way forward was clear.

Stede is witty and mellow, though his smile does hide a troubled soul underneath. When Dawn died in that crash, that mask shattered. He wanted nothing more than the chance to see his daughter smile again, but nothing in his long and brutal life ever indicated that the dead come back. Nothing could prepare him for the way his world was about to flip upside down.

Design notes, my first mental image of Dawn's father was a pretty generic military man, nice and tidy from head to toe. As I've worked on his character, though, I decided that just didn't match the story I wanted to tell. Instead I shifted into more of a if-the-Beatles-went-pirate sort of vibe. Is that oddly specific? Yes, yes it is, but it's a vibe I dig. For the more decorative elements, I took inspiration from Mughal era clothing and jewelry, since his place of service was full to bursting with legends of Mughal gold and lost pirate utopias. He may or may not have collected a few souvenirs he wasn't supposed to-

Speaking of pirates, I wanted to give him a couple weapons that'd lend him more of a swashbuckling aesthetic. The sword was pretty straightforward enough, I mean one should always come equipped with a machete when traversing the coastal jungles of the Indian Ocean after all. Not too difficult to make a few alterations for it to resemble a cutlass. His gun was more of a challenge though. There are surprisingly few artistic takes on a modern flintlock. The closest you get when searching are science-fantasy designs, but most of those are just a bunch of steampunk greebling slapped onto a regular ass colonial gun. There doesn't really seem to be any updated take on the flintlock mechanism in the world of professional gun enthusiasts either. Like okay, fair, the invention of cartridges kinda made flintlocks completely obsolete, so nowadays they're almost exclusively gathering dust in antique collections, but that doesn’t exactly help me. Then I learned that “muzzleloader” is the more professional term for this kind of gun, and at last I had something perfect to reference. The only pistol variety of muzzleloader I could find are made by a company called Connecticut Valley Arms, and that silhouette is exactly the conduit the image in my head was looking for. I'm not a gun girl, but even I can recognize that's one sexy piece of equipment. Taking inspiration from there, I combined it with the sort of superposed rail mechanism found in Ellis-Jennings rifles… you know so Stede can actually fire more than one shot. I think it came out really sleek. Normally I'm not great with drawing firearms, but I'm very proud of this one.

Now the only problem is that after sifting through video footage trying to see how the mechanism of these things work in motion, the YouTube algorithm thinks I'm really into hunting and gun rights- Someone pls save me, it's drowning out all the 3 hour video essay recommendations I could be getting instead.