Lore-related portrait sprites of Fiore, as well as her Mistria appearance for comparison! These show how she looked before she started street performing. Fiore looks very different in Mistria compared to how she looked before, which made living under a new identity and disappearing from the Capital very easy.
Thoughts and reflections on these designs below:
I actually changed her face more than I thought I would in these. My idea was that she wears a lot of stage makeup at the Opera House, which makes her look not like 'herself'. Ironically, the '?????' sprite looks most like the Fiore we know, at least in the face. This period of time is where she becomes more stone-faced. She is about 24 years old in the 'Opera House' sprites, and 26 in the '?????' sprite (she is just shy of 27 years old when she arrives in Mistria).
I chose a more 'romantic' color palette for pre-street performing Fiore because I think it represents her desire for something more. Opera is at heart a very romantic form of theater, so there is irony in performing the concept of romance while never being able to explore it outside of scripted theater. I think the romantic reds pave the way for the smoky ash color, and then the fiery rebirth of her street performance era.
The curls in her hair were a motif I added in her very first design iteration but at the time they were just a design choice. Making the curls have a more symbolic meaning was something I decided when I first drafted her opera house design. Fiore's hair ties heavily into her story. I would say it's the most important part of her design because of what hair can symbolise in storytelling. The way her hair changes throughout her story means many different things and marks significant periods of her life. Fiore's current hairstyle isn't entirely her choice, it's more of an attempt to work with what her hair has become.
