Hidden Bits in the Character Designs

Design was something that was important for me in my novel. One of the interesting things with putting together The Bewitching was when I had to come up with a website and the graphics for the characters. Pulling off a dark website is difficult enough. The character graphics and design were even more of a challenge. One of the things I wanted to do when designing the character graphics was to incorporate some of the spiritual things I had read about colors and symbols. Like the book itself, I attempted to mix the fantasy with some real world things.

In designing the graphics for each character I decided to use bright colors to contrast the dark colors of the website. I also wanted those colors to have meaning. For those who know a bit about colors, and how they relate to the spiritual world, you may notice that the colors used are representative of the characters emotional. In the case of one of the characters, the color used represents their material or wealth in the first book.

The colors weren’t too difficult to figure out. I did try to take into account the negative and positive meanings of them, usually leaning with the positive meanings for most of the characters. The symbols on the other hand were not as simple. They’ve changed meaning so much over time or as different groups have picked them up. For instance, people might be surprised to find out that christians and catholics garner a lot of their symbols from the Wiccans. The Wiccan’s are not much different in their approach to religion than the indians with their stories of nature and nature like gods. Even symbols like the Swastika have changed meaning over time. Where we usually associate the Swastika with evil or the Nazis, it actually originated as a symbol of peace in Australia. One particular symbol I used, while resembling others from history, is quite new. It has been adopted by different groups as though it does have a history older than it is.

There is so much contradicting information on symbols that I wouldn’t be surprised if this particular symbol appeared before then or with a different meaning. With the colors, I attempted to research the origins and meanings. I then matched them to the characters. I found some additional meanings to them later on that oddly enough more strongly coincide with the characters. I also attempted to keep them based off of Wiccan/Pagan, or Celtic lore which also seem to crossover quite a bit and borrow from one another.

I may change those symbols and their design over time as I write more of the next few books to coincide with the growth of the characters. In the meantime, I’m going to leave it up to the reader to see if they can figure out the meanings of the design on their own. I’d love to hear what you all think each symbol or color mean based on your own beliefs. Who knows, maybe someone will come up with something I can incorporate into the design for later stories.

A Special thanks to Madison Rockwell, Anne and Alice Pickard, and Les Belbot for allowing me to use their pictures in my design which so closely resembled my idea of the character’s looks. Also a special mention to Toby, pictured as Tobias, who sadly passed away recently. Our best wishes and prayers our with him upon the Rainbow Bridge.

Hidden Bits in the Character Designs