Inkscape Chlora

Prim and proper hairstyle? check. Comically large bun? check. Fashionably nerdy glasses that make you look smarter? check. A blazer doubling as a jacket for the freezing temperatures of the office's computer room? check. A skirt short enough to guarantee that you'll need shorts underneath? checkity check. High heels to assert your dominance? check and mate. All she needs is a clip-on tie and a boatload of coffee to become the ultimate office lady.

Looking back at my Inkscape days, Chlora's has changed the least out of everyone in the group. Chlora has fit the "office lady" archetype since 2018, but I was limited by both my skill with digital art at the time and my skill in digital art. Chlora's modern iteration is less of a redesign and more of an evolution of her original look. Chlora's drawing is by far the most expressive of the main five, and her design here is among the ones I'm the most positive towards. After all, I used this design for her until June of 2020, when I received my iPad and drew Chlora with her hair down as one of four practice drawings on my first day. Her design was only changed twice before then: once for a scene recreation in a music video, and twice for a pose study I did on Pinterest. Once I let her hair down, it stayed that way.

I remember studying the outfits of Kyoko Kirigiri and Celestia Ludenberg from the first Danganronpa game to get Chlora's vest right after this drawing. I know how simple it is, but I've never done office vests/jackets before and I needed a good reference after establishing the concept. She does not have a tie here, which is VERY noticeable when compared to every drawing of her following this. I remember including a tie in her initial sketches, but lack of experience and other details got in the way, preventing me from including it. The main offender was her blouse, which I made tan rather than white. I thought it looked good at the time, but I retracted this sentiment when I drew her in March, making her blouse white and giving her a tan tie that has stuck with her to this day. I modified her tie once more to have the star emblem embroidered into it, which I've only drawn once. I plan to keep it as a part of her design, but I haven't had the chance to draw her in a while.

The main changes I've made that carried over to Chlora's modern iteration are her hairstyle and proportions. I liked giving Chlora a prim and proper bun, but it took up a lot of space and looked disproportionate to her head when I had to make it smaller. Her redesign was made less out of distaste and more out of necessity; I couldn't draw her bun directly behind her when facing forward, so I had to employ a cheated angle to have her bun face the side whenever she was facing forward. I also tried sketching what she would look like with her hair down if her bun was normal size (take my word for it, it did NOT look good). I ultimately decided around March that I was going to phase the bun out and find a good look for her with her hair down. It wasn't until September that I found a good look for her hair and stuck with it. Since Shadow and Aqua had long hair already, I decided to make Chlora's hair long by human standards, but short when compared to the other girls. The other adjustment I made to her hairstyle was to mirror her bangs, making them cover more of her right than her left. This balances out Shadow, whose left eye is entirely covered by her hair and Aqua, whose bangs are evenly parted.

The most notable details for Chlora's design here are that I was AWFUL at proportions three years ago. I had an art book and a posing mannequin, but I barely used them because I had minimal room for books on my desk (two monitors, one being a large laptop, and a small art tablet will easily take up space) and my pose mannequin was so stiff that I could barely pose it without worrying I was going to break it. This meant I drew the body and limbs from memory, which had mixed results. Her left arm looks like it's bent the wrong way, her legs look misshapen, and her bust looks off. Every character I made during this era looks off, proportion-wise, but I notice it the most with Chlora. Maybe it's because I can see her joints more than the other characters. I can't say for sure, but I'll assume that to be the case.

Outside of a few changes, Chlora's design hasn't changed as much as it has evolved. Changes were made to make it easier to draw her going forward, and a lot of what I drew here has carried over to this day: her eyes are the same shape, her eyelashes are the same shape, her glasses are the same size, she still wears high heels, her glasses are the same shape, and her modern palette is dangerously close to her previous version. I know for sure that her eyes, hair, and skin are different compared to her 2019 design (fun fact: the code on Chlora's tablet is actually the hex code I used for her skin tone at the time), but I'd need to use the eyedropper tool for the rest of her palette to spot the differences.

Chlora's 2019 design embodies the saying "if it ain't broke, don't fix it." There was nothing in her design I had to fix, per se, but serendipity painted the picture and made her modern incarnation flexible to any changes in the forseeable future. Change is inevitable, even when you don't realize it.

June 7th, 2019