Nehellenia of the Two-Six
The contours of her character have always been very clear to me. Nehellenia would be close to Serenity, as close as Chibi-Usa and Hotaru in the Sailor Moon series.
But because of that, I really wanted their Gathering pieces to reflect a trade-off between them. I didn’t go that direction with their outfits because of other considerations, namely a reflection of their pantheon, or at least a primary representative of that pantheon. That plainly left color.
I already established with Anzushiro and Hime that the Two-Six have a different hair color than their pantheon form. Anzushiro is Dark Magician Girl with white hair. Hime is Euphemia li Britannia with red hair. So, I knew different hair color was something Serenity and Nehellenia would have.
I then considered one or the other with golden blonde hair while the other had silver hair. Issues came up with that. I was concerned about how much like Sailor Moon Serenity would look with blonde hair – which should be significantly since their similarity in appearance was a plot point. It’s just as bad if she’s in silver, because that then gets to Chibi Usa’s “real” mom, Neo Queen Serenity, who did have silver hair. Getting into explaining all that away would be a pain, particularly since I try so hard to keep the Sailor Moon story separated for obvious complicating reasons. No such bar exists for Nehellenia, however, so it would be perfectly acceptable for her. Silver and gold, as well as black, are Nehellenia’s main colors anyway, so moving the around on her design would make sense.
But silver itself has a problem. Silvery hair is only barely distinguishable from white hair. Anzushiro already has white hair. It wouldn’t be totally unacceptable for her to have silver hair, but it would not be a primary choice.
There was also the consideration of whether to change her hair color at all, for the concern of breaking the thematic line that rests behind her character. Nehellenia is in one regard a retelling of the Princess Kaguya story, which I support by including Houraisan Kaguya in her pantheon. Princess Kaguya is a representation of the Yamato Nadeshiko concept in Japan, which, among other traits, looks for a woman with long, black, hair. But, there are other characters that could represent that concept. Namely, Nue represents a somewhat corrupted version. Either way, that opens up the potential to be a little loose with the potentials.
I wanted to go with pink. It came from an idea I pre-planned for Eve and Lilith. The inspiration those twos’ relation derives from is out of Yami to Boushi to Hon no Tabibito, where Eve and Lilith are sisters. The idea I go with is that Lilith is so fond of Eve that she tries to mimic Eve from time to time. I go with the idea that Eve started sporting blonde hair so as to not stand out when she was first exploring the mortal worlds. So, Lilith changed her hair to blonde too. For her Gathering project, it’ll go the other way; Eve (C.C.) will have blonde hair, Lilith will have green.
It’s not terribly different from what I did with Rini and Anzu too, the idea there being that Rini’s natural hair color is pink, and as twins, Anzu’s was too, until she began to awaken to her heritage and it turned blonde. Thus, Anzu with pink hair is her harkening back to her old self.
I wanted to do the same for Nehellenia and Serenity. At first, that was what I went with; Nehellenia with pink hair, and that looked completely fine, to the point it almost looked natural for her to have pink hair. But that also seemed kinda plain. So, I went back to a rarely used gimmick for me regarding hair and tried to give her a sort of multi-tone hair style, where her hair transitions from her normal black at the top of her head, down to Rini’s pink at the ends. I tried two versions of this; one with pure black and the other with “not” black.
These three total options each “work” in a sense, but none seemed quite right. Particularly in this image, you have the issue with this particular bow and its color. With her hair pink, the bow ends up looking black rather than dark green. With the pure black option, the bow stands out the best in contrast. With the “not” black, the dark grey color ends up looking like it’s tinted green.
Flipping it the other way had better results – the top of her head pink, the ends of her hair black. I initially thought this would look much worse than it did, but the trick there was to have enough of a buffer. If I left the black part too narrow a band, it would end up looking little else than her hair having been dirtied by dragging on the floor, like she was some child who went playing in the mud and got her hair filthy or something. The other benefit of going pink to black instead of black to pink is that it now conveys pink as her true hair color more readily, whereas the other way it looked more like she had dyed her hair pink and the dye was washing out, or her hair had grown out, without her reapplying any dye.
Still, something seemed just a bit off, so I went with one more element and added streaks. I wanted a streak of hair to just add to the already present tricolor pattern/motif that was developing for her design. I went with orange because it didn’t stand out too much from her pink hair, was a good reminder of her divine-beast affiliation, and was a bit of a red herring given the one she is sharing this image with.
I also did a small change to Nehellenia’s hairstyle for this piece. For whatever reason, the idea of a character with hair dragging across the ground as she walks irks me. I know already the fantasy aspect of a lot of things about these characters, least of all having hair so long in such a rainbow of colors. But taking it that little extra step is bothersome. So, I made a small change, which is to put her hair in a ponytail. Now, in reality a simple ponytail would likely make little more sense than letting hair that long stay loose. Thinking so, I considered shortening it even further.
Strangely enough, that led me to think about another addition to Nehellenia’s pantheon – Marianne vi Britannia. Does Marianne fit Nehellenia’s theme? I think so. Beyond similar physical appearances, you have two characters who suffered a feeling of rejection and loneliness that drove them to do terrible things. Nehellenia’s actions are certainly depicted more as purely selfish evil, whereas Marianne’s are more likened to misguided but well-meaning. That distinction works for me, however, as I had already set forth the idea in Nehellenia’s backstory that she was more misunderstood, needy, and gullible, than outright selfishly evil.
In any event, I decided to use Marianne’s hairstyle to augment Nehellenia’s. They have similar wavy patterns to them, and images of Marianne with her hair in a bow are exactly what I was looking for. I shortened her hair a little more than I initially thought to, but not a ton. I mean, I did shorten it by what probably amounts to a full twelve inches relative to what it really should be, but when it still looks like your hair might still reach the ground, I don’t know that lopping off a foot translates to much. Marianne also has a similar hairstyle that opts to use a crown braid instead of a ribbon, but I chose the ribbon option because I thought the braid wouldn’t work well with the hair buns Nehellenia has, and I wasn’t about to get rid of them.
The exact image I used as a reference is by an artist that goes by the name “Nardack”. I really like their work, and use an original character they created for one of my stories (I also name a flying city in that story “Nardack Hive Complex”). Nardack’s piece featuring Black Lady and Nehellenia is probably my favorite Nehellenia image I’ve come across on the net. Nardack does something slightly different with her hair, having little spurts of it curling away from the main body. At first I was going to replicate that too, but I think I like the seamless flow of the original Naoko Takeuchi artwork better. It was a tough call, but I went that route.
For colors of the dress, I chose the green of Nehellenia’s official outfit, in place of the light pink of Featherine’s dress. I kept the same basic colors from Featherine’s dress for the triband, but darkened their shade so they would match the now darker coloring of the base dress. I swapped the spot for the blue and green purely for stylistic sake. The sash is the cream color of the outer portion around Nehellenia’s dress. The string tie is the same red and white as on Featherine’s sash.
I decided to add a translucent piece on the arms and upper torso, like Black Lady wears with her dress. The color I chose is based on the cape Nehellenia ordinarily wears. It’s the same color, just made more translucent. Because I did that part, I went back and added the choker and bracelets. This helps the whole ensemble more resemble Black Lady’s better, which was also part of the plan.
That about sums up this image. I was supposed to post a walkthrough yesterday of Nehellenia's story in my Book of the Shadows, but that plan didn't work out. I should be able to get it finished up today, however. It's fairly detailed and lengthy, so I'll probably split it up into a couple pieces. Until then, take it easy.
But because of that, I really wanted their Gathering pieces to reflect a trade-off between them. I didn’t go that direction with their outfits because of other considerations, namely a reflection of their pantheon, or at least a primary representative of that pantheon. That plainly left color.
I already established with Anzushiro and Hime that the Two-Six have a different hair color than their pantheon form. Anzushiro is Dark Magician Girl with white hair. Hime is Euphemia li Britannia with red hair. So, I knew different hair color was something Serenity and Nehellenia would have.
I then considered one or the other with golden blonde hair while the other had silver hair. Issues came up with that. I was concerned about how much like Sailor Moon Serenity would look with blonde hair – which should be significantly since their similarity in appearance was a plot point. It’s just as bad if she’s in silver, because that then gets to Chibi Usa’s “real” mom, Neo Queen Serenity, who did have silver hair. Getting into explaining all that away would be a pain, particularly since I try so hard to keep the Sailor Moon story separated for obvious complicating reasons. No such bar exists for Nehellenia, however, so it would be perfectly acceptable for her. Silver and gold, as well as black, are Nehellenia’s main colors anyway, so moving the around on her design would make sense.
But silver itself has a problem. Silvery hair is only barely distinguishable from white hair. Anzushiro already has white hair. It wouldn’t be totally unacceptable for her to have silver hair, but it would not be a primary choice.
There was also the consideration of whether to change her hair color at all, for the concern of breaking the thematic line that rests behind her character. Nehellenia is in one regard a retelling of the Princess Kaguya story, which I support by including Houraisan Kaguya in her pantheon. Princess Kaguya is a representation of the Yamato Nadeshiko concept in Japan, which, among other traits, looks for a woman with long, black, hair. But, there are other characters that could represent that concept. Namely, Nue represents a somewhat corrupted version. Either way, that opens up the potential to be a little loose with the potentials.
I wanted to go with pink. It came from an idea I pre-planned for Eve and Lilith. The inspiration those twos’ relation derives from is out of Yami to Boushi to Hon no Tabibito, where Eve and Lilith are sisters. The idea I go with is that Lilith is so fond of Eve that she tries to mimic Eve from time to time. I go with the idea that Eve started sporting blonde hair so as to not stand out when she was first exploring the mortal worlds. So, Lilith changed her hair to blonde too. For her Gathering project, it’ll go the other way; Eve (C.C.) will have blonde hair, Lilith will have green.
It’s not terribly different from what I did with Rini and Anzu too, the idea there being that Rini’s natural hair color is pink, and as twins, Anzu’s was too, until she began to awaken to her heritage and it turned blonde. Thus, Anzu with pink hair is her harkening back to her old self.
I wanted to do the same for Nehellenia and Serenity. At first, that was what I went with; Nehellenia with pink hair, and that looked completely fine, to the point it almost looked natural for her to have pink hair. But that also seemed kinda plain. So, I went back to a rarely used gimmick for me regarding hair and tried to give her a sort of multi-tone hair style, where her hair transitions from her normal black at the top of her head, down to Rini’s pink at the ends. I tried two versions of this; one with pure black and the other with “not” black.
These three total options each “work” in a sense, but none seemed quite right. Particularly in this image, you have the issue with this particular bow and its color. With her hair pink, the bow ends up looking black rather than dark green. With the pure black option, the bow stands out the best in contrast. With the “not” black, the dark grey color ends up looking like it’s tinted green.
Flipping it the other way had better results – the top of her head pink, the ends of her hair black. I initially thought this would look much worse than it did, but the trick there was to have enough of a buffer. If I left the black part too narrow a band, it would end up looking little else than her hair having been dirtied by dragging on the floor, like she was some child who went playing in the mud and got her hair filthy or something. The other benefit of going pink to black instead of black to pink is that it now conveys pink as her true hair color more readily, whereas the other way it looked more like she had dyed her hair pink and the dye was washing out, or her hair had grown out, without her reapplying any dye.
Still, something seemed just a bit off, so I went with one more element and added streaks. I wanted a streak of hair to just add to the already present tricolor pattern/motif that was developing for her design. I went with orange because it didn’t stand out too much from her pink hair, was a good reminder of her divine-beast affiliation, and was a bit of a red herring given the one she is sharing this image with.
I also did a small change to Nehellenia’s hairstyle for this piece. For whatever reason, the idea of a character with hair dragging across the ground as she walks irks me. I know already the fantasy aspect of a lot of things about these characters, least of all having hair so long in such a rainbow of colors. But taking it that little extra step is bothersome. So, I made a small change, which is to put her hair in a ponytail. Now, in reality a simple ponytail would likely make little more sense than letting hair that long stay loose. Thinking so, I considered shortening it even further.
Strangely enough, that led me to think about another addition to Nehellenia’s pantheon – Marianne vi Britannia. Does Marianne fit Nehellenia’s theme? I think so. Beyond similar physical appearances, you have two characters who suffered a feeling of rejection and loneliness that drove them to do terrible things. Nehellenia’s actions are certainly depicted more as purely selfish evil, whereas Marianne’s are more likened to misguided but well-meaning. That distinction works for me, however, as I had already set forth the idea in Nehellenia’s backstory that she was more misunderstood, needy, and gullible, than outright selfishly evil.
In any event, I decided to use Marianne’s hairstyle to augment Nehellenia’s. They have similar wavy patterns to them, and images of Marianne with her hair in a bow are exactly what I was looking for. I shortened her hair a little more than I initially thought to, but not a ton. I mean, I did shorten it by what probably amounts to a full twelve inches relative to what it really should be, but when it still looks like your hair might still reach the ground, I don’t know that lopping off a foot translates to much. Marianne also has a similar hairstyle that opts to use a crown braid instead of a ribbon, but I chose the ribbon option because I thought the braid wouldn’t work well with the hair buns Nehellenia has, and I wasn’t about to get rid of them.
The exact image I used as a reference is by an artist that goes by the name “Nardack”. I really like their work, and use an original character they created for one of my stories (I also name a flying city in that story “Nardack Hive Complex”). Nardack’s piece featuring Black Lady and Nehellenia is probably my favorite Nehellenia image I’ve come across on the net. Nardack does something slightly different with her hair, having little spurts of it curling away from the main body. At first I was going to replicate that too, but I think I like the seamless flow of the original Naoko Takeuchi artwork better. It was a tough call, but I went that route.
For colors of the dress, I chose the green of Nehellenia’s official outfit, in place of the light pink of Featherine’s dress. I kept the same basic colors from Featherine’s dress for the triband, but darkened their shade so they would match the now darker coloring of the base dress. I swapped the spot for the blue and green purely for stylistic sake. The sash is the cream color of the outer portion around Nehellenia’s dress. The string tie is the same red and white as on Featherine’s sash.
I decided to add a translucent piece on the arms and upper torso, like Black Lady wears with her dress. The color I chose is based on the cape Nehellenia ordinarily wears. It’s the same color, just made more translucent. Because I did that part, I went back and added the choker and bracelets. This helps the whole ensemble more resemble Black Lady’s better, which was also part of the plan.
That about sums up this image. I was supposed to post a walkthrough yesterday of Nehellenia's story in my Book of the Shadows, but that plan didn't work out. I should be able to get it finished up today, however. It's fairly detailed and lengthy, so I'll probably split it up into a couple pieces. Until then, take it easy.
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