Rapunzel Wedding Dress - Process

As "celebration" for finishing my Disney Princess historically accurate wedding dress series (3 years...wheww), I decided to make a process post of how I approach designing these things. I method has changed since I started with Snow White so this mostly applies to the last five princesses.

Final version uploaded on deviantart
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I started this series back in Winter 2011-Spring 2012 and at the time I sketched out all 10 potential dresses. It's mostly to get a rough idea of how the dress may look and what motifs I wanted. Most of the time I abandoned my initial sketch because it just didn't look historically correct.

I then do a ton of research. I usually have an idea of when the time period was and relate it back to the princess' official gowns. For Rapunzel, she didn't have a real time period. Her movie was more magical and generic European than any specific time. I looked for design motifs like puffed sleeves from 1600s Germany, a bit of the late Renaissance, and a tiny bit of Regency fashion. Overall i had a collection of potential design aesthetics on Pinterest.

Once i finished most of my reference gathering, I start finding a pose to place Rapunzel in, along with references for her facial expressions.

I usually trace over a pose to get the feel of "should Rapunzel be in this pose?"

If that doesn't work out, I move onto the other.

Both poses didn't feel right. Like one thing was missing from the other. I ended up combining the two poses. I then pull out my original sketch to see what designs I should add or remove.

The process continues as I test out Rapunzel's facial expressions, along with thinking about how to incorporate the veil. At this point, I've decided to give her the short brown hair and using a long veil like in Tangled Forever After.

In photoshop, I pull out the three dresses I felt related most to Rapunzel and pulling design motifs out of them. I had to keep the puffed sleeves and decided to give her a high waist-ed dress.

Ah yes, the beading and floral designs. I wanted to draw those in but stay true to the designs found in Tangled. So quick google search gave me a close up of what Rapunzel wore on her wedding day.

At this point, I've decided what things I wanted on her dress. Added her princess crown. Added Renaissance sleeves with an extra puffed elbow area. Practicing the Corona sun.

Once my general new sketch is done, I start thinking about the background. Rapunzel married in her (i'm assuming) parents' throne room so it was fitting to include the Corona banner.

Background is done! .....for now....   For the last five princesses, I tried to draw them as on model as i could but i loved the face from my sketch soo much. And it was strange drawing a 3D character but painting it in 2D, at least for me it was :D

The rest of the images down below are my periodical saves (saving a jpeg after finishing a section). They include the sketch, lineart, color blocking, painting, fixing the background, and adding final touches plus my signature.