How The Witcher explores his own history through fashion, architecture and weapons

If The witcher has grown beyond the first season and expanded to include not only multiple seasons but also prequels, the team behind the visual design also had to expand its ambitions. In particular, it has had to think a lot about the history of the world and how it has influenced the way things like fashion and architecture developed on the continent. That can be as simple as the material used to make swords in a certain time period or as large as a ruin in the main timeline that was once a magnificent structure in the past.

For Andrew Laws, a production and concept designer on the series, all these details are essential to the creation The witcher universe feels like a real, inhabited place. “Often you don’t get to see everything [the details],” he explains. “But I think it has an effect on the final outcome of the final product.”

This became especially important with Blood origin, a prequel set 1,000 years before the main timeline. Laws, who worked on both shows, says the idea of ​​introducing the elven world, which was more prevalent during that period, actually started in season 2, but it became much more pronounced with Blood origin. And it can be seen most clearly in the architecture of the world.

‘By the time we got there Blood origin, there was already the beginning of the language that we wanted to explore more deeply,” explains Laws. “But we also knew that the language was something we would continue to see more of The witcher yourself. You see a lot of that, especially in the Shaerrawedd at the beginning of Season 3. That architectural language has been continuous. From a design standpoint, it’s interesting to look not only at what a ruined civilization is, but what it was like in its heyday. How you see a ruin, and your perception of what it might have looked like, versus what it really was, and what might be missing from the modern view of it.”

Another example is Aretuza, one of the most iconic locations in The witcher universe, a kind of academy for novice magicians. Although you are not really told the history of the building explicitly, you can see it in the design. It is an elven structure that was taken over by humans, who continued to expand and build.

“So there’s an intersection of the two languages,” says Laws. “And that’s one of the things I really liked about Aretuza’s idea: there’s an evolution of the architectural language. The main frame of the building is the elven structure, but within it the human element has introduced its own language. So there is a juxtaposition of the original elven arches versus the more Roman arches in the building’s courtyard. It is fun to play with that evolution.”

The team thought similarly about weapons and armor. Nick Jeffries, a gunsmith on the show, says the guns are in The witcher is generally based on the late medieval period of our world. That includes both the style of equipment and the materials used. As long as they fit within that time frame, “it’s fine,” he says. So when it was time to continue working Blood originhe had to push things back – but with some caveats.

“For the prequel, I pushed the design back while also considering the technology they would have,” he says. That means that while the weapon designs are generally based on the Bronze Age, they were built with steel because elves had access to that technology. “There is certainly a design style from an earlier time, but with the caveat that we used materials and methods that had not yet been invented in our world.”

For Deb Watson, makeup and hair designer on both shows, exploring history in this way was a creative, liberating experience. “It pushed me to be more avant-garde than I would have been in the [main] Witcher world,” she says of working on Blood origin. “We took the rules we learned into ours Witcher world, but then they break, push and think Blood origin like a time before. So we wanted to get the roots of Witcher looks inside Blood origin. As if there had been a blank memory, but certain things had seeped through.”

You also see evolutions throughout the main line Witcher series that take place on a much shorter time scale, as characters can change dramatically from season to season. Most notoriously, from season 2 onwards, the bard Jaskier (Joey Batey) took on a much darker look, sporting new rockstar hair and a red trench coat. While not quite as shocking, season 3 has a similar makeover. Istredd (Royce Pierreson), a mage and archaeologist who used to look quite bookish on the show, now has long wavy hair and an equally wavy coat. And according to Watson, the choice came from the actor himself.

“Halfway through Season 2, Royce had said to me, ‘I’d really like to have longer hair,'” she explains. “And we looked at the story points and the time in the story and talked to them [showrunner Lauren Schmidt Hissrich], and she said there isn’t really enough time in our story to explain that his hair is longer. But he felt like it. So he said, ‘What about Season 3?’ And then of course Season 3 came along, and the first thing he said to me was, ‘So, about that longer hair, Deb.’”

It may seem like a small shift, but like the history steeped in the architecture and the swords, it’s a shift meant to tell the story in a natural, visual way. “There was something about Royce that I always wanted to break with that Season 1 look,” adds costume designer Lucinda Wright. “He was very limited. Now he’s grown up: that’s why he has the flowing coat and the leather pants. He’s grown up.”