Character Sketch: Glamis

Here is the first look at a supporting character from my novel. This guy's name is Glamis Gryme. He is the chief advisor to the king with the title of Counsellor.

What is not generally known to the public of this Christian kingdom is that Glamis is actually a wizard. He is forced to keep his magical abilities a secret for political reasons. As the chief advisor, Glamis is clearly the true power behind the throne handling most of the decision-making for the kingdom's affairs.

Serving the king, however, is not his true priority. He has a secret agenda that he considers to be in service to the greater good.

Glamis is impatient by nature with little tolerance for those he perceives as intellectually inferior to him and for any who may hold prejudices against wizards.

Visually, in designing Glamis, I wanted to stay away from the stereotypical appearance of wizards. The long robes, pointy hats and long grey beards of characters like Merlin and Gandalf were all things I did not want to see on Glamis.

So he got a short beard, with only a touch of grey on the chin. And instead of flowing robes, he wears complicated, multi-layered garments as might be seen on members of royal courts. And I made the decision that his color palette would be a range of purple, spanning from near-black to lavender highlights. Mostly, the hues are subdued, deep violets. In the book, I usually describe them as wine-colored.

When I drew the above sketch, I didn't mean for him to look so much like General Zod (Terrance Stamp) from "SUPERMAN II", but that's exactly what happened. I decided that was okay, but realized I didn't have a firm idea on exactly what the outfit would look like, so I started looking at period movies for ideas.

Even though the historical era might not quite match up to my story, I found what I was looking for in Geoffrey Rush's character from the movie "ELIZABETH".

So this image here is something I cobbled together in Photoshop. That's Terrance Stamp's head (as General Zod) on Geoffrey Rush's body (from ELIZABETH). I doubt the Shakespearean collar would be a part of Glamis' look, but the broad shoulder pieces falling off similar to robes, the various layers and textures, and the jewelry all fit well with the design I have in my head.

Working in prose, I don't really have to get this detailed with my character designs. But by doing this, I assure myself that I'm writing consistently from a concrete visual design. This eliminates having to constantly look up my previous descriptions for the sake of consistency.