Turnarounds - Blog Posts

Part 5/6 - Prince Humperdinck and Count Rugen (The Prince and the Count)

     Part 1 - The Family | 2 - Style | 3 - The Sicilian Assassins | 4 - Buttercup and Westley | 6 - Florin Castle

I loved Chris Sarandon's curls so although I eventually went in the direction of a shorter cut for Humperdinck, I wanted to keep some sort of waviness to his hair. I also wanted to make sure that it was clear that Humperdinck is a hunter and at the same time have an almost wild and animal-like feeling to him so the wavy hair helped bring it to that direction.

In the books Humperdinck is described as "weighed close to 250 pounds, brick hard". Although in the books he is not tall, I did not want the leading antagonists of both the first and back half of the series to BOTH be short (Vizzini and Humperdinck). Felt like I would be sending a not so good message.

For Count Rugen, I went with black so that there would be a transfer of association from Man-in-Black/Dread Pirate Roberts/Secretly Westley in the first part of the series to Count Rugen later on. Diagonal slashes on clothing was a more northern style plus it makes him look even more like death which is in line with the whole Executioner-Grim Reaper direction I wanted to go with him.

Differentiating him from Inigo was also important. So although I went towards a thin direction for both, everything else about them is a contrast. While Inigo was meant to have a flamboyance and a certain “Fencing is life and my passion” feeling, for Count Rugen the idea was that although he is a master Fencer, his purpose is death and fencing is one of the ways he does it kind of thing.

Part 3 - The Sicilian Assassins

      Part 1 - The Family | 2 - Style | 4 - Buttercup and Westley | 5 - The Prince and the Count | 6 - Florin Castle

With Vizzini I was trying to combine the feeling of baby angels from old renaissance paintings, sinister-ish expressions, and ringmaster, plus dash of gaudiness. I made Vizzini prominently red so that there would be a transfer of association from Vizzini in the first half to Humperdinck in the latter half. The colour red and the pawns on his design apart from being on theme for his character can also serve as foreshadowing, that he is not the overarching antagonist.

Sometimes due to Fezzik’s backstory of working in Greenland, people mistake him for being Greenlandic but it was clearly stated that Fezzik is a Turkish wrestler. It was important that his design made it very clear that he was not European. In the books, he is described as hairy, large, and gorilla-like in appearance. By dividing his head into three sections (upper head, cheeks, and mouth-chin) keeping the graphic shape of his head across different angles was made easier. To determine the direction of Fezzik’s overall design the emphasis was established (his arms), inspiration was taken from circus strongmen, then combined with a strong but soft and lovable feeling.

The general direction of Inigo’s features was clear early on, but his head shape did undergo many iterations. His final head shape design has a clear and readable graphic iconography even in different angles. Its iconic integrity is easily maintained but can be difficult to draw, because of that a diagram was made to show how the structure of his head.

It was important to make sure Inigo and the man in black's silhouettes were distinguishable from one another. So I tried to pull their designs in opposite directions. Inigo's leaning towards a more slender swish-flick feel and the man in black's to a larger, billowy, and intimidating direction.