Visualising the World 1 - The Village

The characters in Caleb's Trial come from a fictional island, somewhere in Northern Europe. It is a fairly small island, about a thousand square kilometres in size. It is set roughly around mid to late 1600's, and has been colonised for about 120 years. We picked this place and time largely because of some of the influences we had. We love the music video to Sigur Rós' Glósóli, and we wanted to create a style of fashion that was similar to that worn by the children in this video. And quite frankly, we just like old stuff like pocket watches.

We looked at some pictures of fashion from around that time frame and place, as well as clothing from other eras (including modern day) that we just thought looked interesting. We incorporated feathers into all the clothing designs as an element that unifies and distinguishes the fashion style. We thought that, like New Zealand, the native animals of the island would be mostly birds, so over the decades birds became a prominent aspect in the culture of the settlers.

There are about a thousand people living on the island, most of whom live in a coastal village. Here the island is run by a governor chosen by blood relation to the royal family which rules whatever motherland they originate from (perhaps Iceland or Norway). It is also here where the island's economy is centered; hunters, fishermen and farmers sell their goods here, seamstress' make clothing (largely from imported materials), there is a doctor's office, educational facilities such as a library, and tradesmen deal with ships that come in from other countries. The main characters in the story are from this village.

Dane



Here are a few rough concepts that we drew to try to nail down a style of fashion before we got into designing the main characters -