Drawing Aragon- Six the Musical Character Turnarounds

I debated a lot on whether to make blog posts for each individual queen or bunch them up. I was afraid I wouldn't have much to say about each process because I pretty much do them the same way. But I realized I had new challenges each time I worked on a queen, and there's a lot to say about the each character. Anyways, here is my process from sketch to finish!

The cast that I saw in Las Vegas was the Aragon tour cast. So all of these turnarounds are modeled after them! This Aragon is based off of Khalia Wilcoxon. Of course, before drawing each queen I had to look up A LOT of references (for both the person and costumes). This meant looking at theU.S. Tour book, performances on YouTube, and, uh, their Instagram accounts (I am now a certified stalker).

Khalia Wilcoxin as 
Aragon

Each queen is modeled after a famous pop singer. Aragon's "queenspiration" is Beyonce and Shakira! So her character exudes a lot of confidence and sass. Her color is gold, which according to Gabriella Slade represents her Spanish and Catholic roots. Gold also signifies her power and prestige, as she herself was of royal background before she married Henry. The fact that Beyonce often wore gold in her performances adds to the significance of this color. She is the only one that adorns gold metals while all the other queens have silver.

One challenge that definitely came my way was trying to simplify the costume designs. They are so beautifully detailed!! But they needed to be animated so I couldn't get too hung up on it. So when I started drawing Aragon's costume, I tried to get rid of the diamond pattern that was on her skirt. It looked pretty good at first, but when I colored it, it just,,, did not look the same.

That's when I figured that there was no way (lol) to capture the personality of the costume without taking the time to add the details. So from then on, that's what I did! (especially with the sparkly bits, that was pretty crucial). This whole process was trying to balance between simplifying the costume but not taking away their characteristics. Of course, I'm not going to include the details in the animatic, but I just wanted to make the character sheet look nice lol (and will be a reference if I decided to make a rendered illustration). I also had to simplify her accessories. I opted for six spikes for her "crown" and her many layers of chains to be limited to three to four chain links.

I love Aragon's dramatics and stubbornness throughout her performance.

After finishing each character sheet I practiced drawing them with their personalities and moments in the show. I wanted to ensure I had a grasp on their defining features so I could draw the character quickly but also keep them recognizable (shorthanding!).Again, the costume design makes it so easy for me to do this because of their strong silhouette! Aragon's crown and sleeves are definitely what makes her distinguishable.

Next I will cover Anne Boleyn!