concept art from abandoned project "The Boxer Rebellion"
This is the clothing design concept art for the main character as a sex slave of a Chinese official.
Damn, this is beautiful. To bad it's an abandoned plot sounds like it would have been very interesting. The Boxer rebellion is a fascinating historical event that is rarely talked about in the United States being we (Americans) played a major part in it.
I keep coming back to this picture. I'm really intrigued by the concept. It asks so many questions. Who was this woman? How did she become a sex slave? How does her story end? The imagination reels. To bad we'll probably never find out.
She is a Frech humanitarian aid doctor who came to China to work for the church. She was captured when boxers stormed the local hospital. she was raped and tortured by the boxers then sent to local Qing officials as a gift to strengthen their collaboration.
Thank you for that intriguing back story. A humanitarian acting on the best of intentions ends up a sex slave, lovely. 😍 I do love it when our main characters are innocent and kind people who don't deserve what's happening to them. As much as I love Julia (Objection Overruled) and Jane (Classmates) they're both shitty people and kinda deserve what happens to them. Claire is a kind and good person but there are so many points were she could have walked away and things could have been different that it's kinda her own damn fault she can't escape her situation by the end. I think the closest character you've made to this concept is Sophia "White Pony" (Missing in Shanghai) but, we don't really get a thorough telling of her character and past. It's up to the readers imagination to fill that in. I do hope this concept if not the story makes into a future comic.
I really like the looks of the detailed jade accessory, and having Chinese knot incorporated into the bondage rope is a quite clever design.
Just out of curiosity, why was this project abandoned?
I have received many complaints from Chinese readers since my first comics, "Missing in shanghai," was published. Chinese readers are not happy to see a Chinese gang appeared in my comics and accuse me of discrimination against Chinese people.
I really like chinese and japanese outfits and the way all the people watch it is different, a few number of people always get offended from all the things and have an ideology of making the world change to their fake values, and in this case they put their trauma and hypocrisy in this type of things. All the people can get offended of what they want, but the fact is that it is not racist because you are not generalizing all the asian people and you don’t have the idea of making a bad image of they. Also, if you use something of an specific culture is because you like it and admire it, is in a positive way. Also, the culture of a country isn’t propierty of that place, is something that belongs to all humanity, the capacity of trasmit culture is what has made mandkind reach the advance we have in the present, all this social ideology only search the way to get offended, but most of the people doesn’t get involved into this. And this people that gets offended and insult doesn’t have the right to give an opinion and coerce you when they don’t like your art and also they don’t buy it even when you consider their hypocrisy. This kind of persons think that only the citizens of a place can do something related to it even if it isn’t in a bad way.
I see, that's really too bad.
Though the Boxer Rebellion was very much a multifaceted historical event, I do think there is quite a lot of wiggle room to make it a more balanced story. For starters, the Boxer Rebels actually killed and harmed far more Chinese than the actual foreigners, to the point when the Eight-Nation Alliance invaded China, many Chinese actually chose to aid the foreign soldiers out of their disgust for the Boxers. Even the Qing Imperial Court at the time had enough sense to know that the Boxers were little more than hooligans, and would do far more harm than good in the long run. But factions within the court decided to use the Boxers for their own political maneuvering.
That being said, I do respect your decision to put this on ice, especially during the current social climate. Nevertheless, I do very much wish that you would revisit this some time in the future. As China during the turn of the 20th century, when the east meets the west, and the old gave way to the new, makes a very rich and interesting backdrop for erotic fantasy stories.
I put myself in the list of the people who hope that one day you will be able to pick on with this plot.
I really like stories that can explore different historical periods and different places. I think they are a great opportunity for talented artist to draw beautiful art like this one.