Creating A Supersede For My Contemporary Realm - Gosia

So before I begin, I know what you are thinking "didn't you just introduce a new character last week?" and you would be right, yes I did but this character is a bit more important than just being a new character, because Gosia is the supersede that will take over from my first characters Evelyn and Fae.

To give you some background into how Gosia first came into being, I need to take you back to around April/May when I realised that Islands fundamentally didn't truly work as a story and I started looking at what would come next for my contemporary world. Initially that concept was called Fragile and then Escaping Reality, where I planned to use a pre-made character to tell the story, but the more I found myself thinking about it the more I realised that I had to create my own character for the story.

Deciding that Islands didn't work left me wondering exactly what to do with Evelyn and Fae now that to all intents and purposes, they became retired with one decision, because they are the start point of everything I have created and they deserve a send off of some kind.
Additionally I get asked frequently about how to write stories and/or become published and there is nothing I would love to see more than someone achieve the same or hopefully better than I have but I'm not one for lying to people about how much work, commitment and self-belief is required to do that.

So that gave me an idea "Why don't I create a supersede for Evelyn and Fae and then use the new character to tell a story about writing stories?".

So the character starts out and is shaped and developed during the story which is about the work that goes into becoming a published author? This would also give me the chance to sign off Evelyn and Fae whilst hopefully writing a story that helps prospective authors too and with that, the idea to create Gosia was born.

My initial idea was to create someone young maybe 21? and try to capture the elements of Evelyn and Fae within them whilst also keeping her very much as her own entity. It has been some time since I have sculpted an adult female lead character and in truth given how important she is to me, it was a project I was more than happy to take considerable time working on.

I decided that i wanted to take the petite aspect from Evelyn, so being quite slender and dainty while taking the chilled presence of Fae, pale skinned and piercing eyes while facially I wanted her to be quite expressive too, where like Isla and Scorpio, you feel what she is thinking rather than just seeing it, finally I decided that I wanted her to be blond haired, as aside from Fae and Paisley, I have no blond haired characters, so I felt like it was time to add another.

For most of May, I sculpted a couple of concepts before settling upon the one I am now unveiling (There's no WIP I'm afraid, I always forget to do them) as it turned out a long time creating much younger characters paid dividends as it was quite easy to get initial concepts, though it did take some practice to sculp her to be adult rather than a child or early teen, even if height wise she would be little larger anyway. I wanted Gosia to be very soft and have gentle lines, partly as I like my contemporary characters to be quite understated in presence.

During June I started creating her skin textures, fair skinned and generally quite soft and delicate in feel but I didn't want her to feel too close to Isla, so I took quite some time on her, especially her face and lips but then I had started working heavily on my fourth book too, so the time I could give to Gosia wasn't truly in abundance anyway.

The final piece of her initial creation was a pair of piercing eyes that are also quite soft in feel, I remember at the start of the year seeing a picture on socials somewhere of a girl from Afghanistan with almost grey eyes and I figured that maybe grey would actually be the perfect eye colour for Gosia, especially when offset against her fair skin and blond hair.

During August I started testing her out properly, posing her and dressing her to feel out where she was before going back in to do some minor alteration to her sculpt and her skin texture before finally rigging her ready for final use.

I like all of my contemporary characters to be a direct reflection of what I see so commonly among so many women that I know, where they don't truly trust or believe in themselves, suffer from low self-esteem and worth and for the most part don't feel attractive nor as if they matter and Gosia is very much of this ilk.

Gosia is sculpted and attired to echo this very much, where she is quite low key and generally would sooner blend into the crowd than be noticed. I won't tell too much more as it's part of the framework for the story where coming to accept herself is a contextual driver too.

I'm pretty pleased with how Gosia has turned out and look forward to unveiling her during the New Year when Escaping Reality will start going out.