Hey everybody, it's LavenderTowne
and today I'm starting a new series in which I take a book that I love that has been turned into a movie and
I'm going back into the text of the book and seeing how the characters were originally described because in
Movie adaptations obviously a lot of changes have to be made. I'm going to try to make them as close to the text description
As I can and today we are going to be doing Harry Potter
You may be like that's not Harry Potter, but it is this is just the Japanese copy. So long story short
That's what this new series is about. I'm calling it "By the Book" because it's going to decide how these characters designs turn out
So let's go!
Okay, so I want to get started with Harry Potter's book description first
Now there's a few details about him that are repeatedly described over and over
Those being his jet-black untidy heir that he inherited from his father. His mother's green eyes
they're also described as almond-shaped in a couple different places and
Obviously the lightning bolt scar from when Voldemort first attacked him in the start of his life
He's described as skinny and small for his age, obviously because he hasn't been treated very well by the Dursley's
He's had a really poor quality of life in childhood
He's described with a thin face and knobbly knees again these both kind of indicate that he is
Underweight and that kind of thing
Later in the books. He's described as almost the height of his father and tall by other characters in the book and
He basically starts growing normally and once he gets a better quality of life
but I think I'm going to be basing most of the characters on their earlier descriptions just because I have to
Pick and also there's going to be some characters who
Obviously if they like... die later, it's best to start early
So I'm going to have all the characters be based sort of roughly around
Between the second book and the fourth book. I would don't think I'll go any further than that. Obviously. He
also has the around glasses
And yeah, apparently JK rowling was quoted as saying when he first she first pictured Harry Potter
She saw him as "...a scrawny black-haired bespectacled boy...". So these are the main things that we're focusing on
So the first outfit I'm drawing him in is actually how he's originally described and that is in
Dudley's nasty old hand-me-downs that don't fit I thought this would really feature how small and scrawny he is
It's kind of hard to show how small a character is when they're not compared with other characters
So I thought that having him in Dudley's old clothes like he was often in
Before his life at Hogwarts would be a good way to do that. And you may notice that his robes are actually pure black
They don't have the red stripe. Well, that's because in the book there is no red stripe
There's no description of the cloaks being how specific I also gave him. The little pointed hat that's described in the book
Even though I know they don't wear that that often
I just think it's kind of a cute detail and they really didn't show it very often in the movies
So I thought I'd add it in
So you can see the two versions that I have drawn
In their final form and I have a little checklist here of things that I wanted to hit
The only one I think I kind of failed at was the thin face. It's really tough for me
To draw thin faced characters. I really tried my best but um, I'm not giving myself full points because of that
Now let's look at how he was shown in the movie and see what differences there are
Here is Harry in a few different
stages of his life this first one is from the first movie and
This one over here is from a little bit later when he's more of a teen. His face is not super narrow
I would say he's actually got kind of a soft face, especially with his hair like this his whole head seems very like around
Famously his eyes are not green. They are actually blue and I think they greened him up a little bit in this promotional picture
But if when you're watching the movie his eyes are completely blue.
He also has round eyes rather than almond shape and one of the main things that bothered me about
How they styled Harry, the hair. I don't think
First of all, it's brown like this is this is brown
Second of all,
None of these give off that like crazy
untidy appearance
that's so often described the Dursley's would like cut all of his hair off and like by the next day would have like
*Poof!* Grown back like all puffy and crazy again. Also Daniel Radcliffe has a pretty thicc neck which makes him look more
Healthy and less like scrawny and dying within he was described. I do think that the eyebrows are good, though
I feel like Harry if he has crazy jet-black bushy hair. He  probably has pretty dark eyebrows as well
I'm Hermione Granger. And, you are?
Okay, so now we're on to Hermione and I'll start again with how she's described in the book
so she's described as having lots of bushy brown hair brown eyes a bossy sort of voice and
as a child rather large front teeth
she's never described as being particularly interested in her appearance except for two occasions the Yule Ball and
the wedding of Fleur and Bill Weasley.
So I will be actually doing two versions of her just like Harry. One version which is her traditional self,
basically her as she would just go to school on a regular day and
in first year I'm aiming for and then the second one is her Yule Ball
appearance because actually I was a little bothered by their Yule Ball version of Hermione.
I feel like she was not how she was described in the book really at all. And I think they went a little too overboard.
Generally, I think that the movie version of Hermione is a little bit too glamorous and I'll talk obviously about that
more later when we're looking at the actress pictures.
But, here I'm really trying to focus on the key things that we hear about Hermione over and over again in the text
So as far as Canon things that we know about her appearance, her hair is long
It's brown its bushy and she wears it like a mane
It's described as a mane more than once I believe so that means we're looking for some
horizontal volume!
We don't know too much about her clothing. Other than that
She typically likes to wear her school uniform underneath her robes and that makes a lot of sense for her character. (Obviously)
But we don't hear a lot about what the uniform under the ropes looks like so I'm trying to just go with a British private
school kind of look I'm giving her some
knee-high
Argyle socks and Saddleback shoes and a plaid skirt because that's as close as I could think to
What a British school uniform would look like and I'm also giving her the pointed black hat the black robes with no
embellishment to show that she's in Gryffindor because again that was sort of created by the movie and
She's holding Hogwarts of History because it's one of the first books that she ends up talking about
in the next door version of her I tried to make her a little bit taller and look a little bit older because obviously
The Yule ball happens a couple years after her initial
Year at Hogwarts
And her dress in the Yule Ball segment is described as a periwinkle floaty dress
That's all we get, in regards to what it looks like
Her hair has also been turned all silky because she has used a hair potion on it
So here's the final version of Hermione. I'm really sorry you guys didn't get to see the coloring part
I'm legitimately so disappointed! OBS crashed silently, so I just kept working on it and I didn't realize it wasn't recording,
so the whole coloring part just like never got recorded. So yeah, I'm really sorry about that
But um, here's the breakdown of the points. I was trying to hit and me just sort of grading myself based on this
So I gave her brown. Of course, I gave her the bushy hair. I feel like I did a pretty good job of that
I tried to show her large front teeth
I didn't give my full put myself
full points for the school uniform because I didn't know what it actually looked like but I gave her robes and
And I
Tried to make sure that she looks like someone who doesn't spend a lot of time on her hair or makeup except in the Yule
Ball version I even gave her some little moles on her face or something just so that you can see that she's not wearing foundation
Or anything like that. I feel like that would be a nice detail
Okay, so I gave myself five out of the six points of what I thought was the most important about her appearance
Let's see. How the movie adaptations
Stand up. Hermione's hair is a hugely important part of her design. We talked about that earlier
Bushy brown hair. A huge mane of it. This is not a good example of that in any of these pictures
I don't think they did a very good job even with the first year
It looks like a girl who has naturally straight hair and they took a comb and they back combed it
To make it look crazy, especially because her bangs are laying perfectly silky and smooth and straight
She doesn't appear to have makeup on though here, which is good! Later on... She definitely does
This is clearly a full face of natural makeup. Her hair, I would say is like
It clearly took some time to do like these are like
Very intentional like curls. It looks like a curling iron. I think they just really wanted to have a cute,
sort of glamorous, nerd girl rather than what it might actually look like which bothers me
I think they get three points. right? brown eyes school uniform robes. Yep
RONALD WEASLEY!!
So let's talk about how Ron was described in the book
So Ron has fiery red hair and freckles, like all the Weasley's do or almost all of them.
I'm actually not sure if there's an example of Weasley who doesn't have those features.
He also has a long nose and blue eyes and he's described as tall and lanky with big hands and
So these are gonna be the six things that we focus on fire red hair freckles
Tall lanky big hands of feet long nose and blue eyes
All other details, I'll just talk about as I go through it. So character design aside
there are a lot of things about Ron that I was really bothered by in the movie versus the book and
Mainly that eye comes down to his personality now in the book
He's kind of a wisecracking kind of character and he's more socially aware than both Harry and Hermione Harry
Doesn't really know much about the Wizarding World because obviously he's very new to it and the same can be said for Hermione
Generally Hermione is book smart, and then Ron is more like
street smart as far as the these streets of Hogwarts go because he was raised with wizard stuff and
I was always sad in the movies that he's basically just a huge idiot
Like he's he just never knows anything that's coming on
Just generally they took all the positive elements of Ron and gave them to Hermione and then it became a really strange couple
Because they really did take everything that was like cool about him and gave it away to other characters
so I think that Ron generally wore more casual clothes and
Didn't like to wear his uniform as much that was sort of the impression
I got he hates homework. So I imagine him not being super careful with the dress code and that kind of thing
I'm also going him on his red hair and I'm trying to make it a little bit neater than
Hermione's and Harry's because they're both in the messy hair Club and even though I don't think he'd take super good care of it just
To give a little contrast in the trio
I'm trying to get it a little bit less intense of on the messiness scale
Also, you may have noticed already, but the alternate version of Ron that I'm doing is him and his dress robes from the Yule Ball
So here is the checklist next to my version of Ron
I feel like I got a five point five out of six just because I don't think that I fully
Committed to the big hands and feet thing. I kind of forgot about it when I was drawing his feet
so I'm only giving myself half credit for
Okay, so let's take a look at what Ron looked like in the movie and talk about the differences from the book
So right off the bat, especially in the first movie, they did a very good job with his red hair
I mean, it's a little bit more Orange II
But I can respect them for wanting it to look a little more natural. Ron does not have freckles. However
At least none that I could see and his eyes are actually reportedly green though
I didn't notice that detail when I was actually watching the film
He is not long and lanky
He's actually kind of shorter in stockier than even Harry who also was shorter and stockier than he probably should have been
According to the book his hands and feet seemed normal for his size
So it doesn't match necessarily and last but not least
He doesn't seem to have a particularly long nose, especially when he was a little kid
He has a real like cute baby button nose
Okay, so I think they only get one points based on the scale that I decided earlier
So here are the main three finished and together
How do you the guys think I did and how did you picture them in your head?
regardless of how the movie or the book described them
I know when I first read Harry Potter when I was like a tiny tiny kid for some reason I pictured Hagrid super-skinny
Even though they specifically said he wasn't
okay guys that does it for this episode of
By-the-book. I hope you enjoyed it a lot. There is going to be a part two because I could not get all the characters
I wanted to and one of them might be a fellow ravenclaw
Who can see thestrals and maybe owns a pair of spectra specs also?
Please let me know if you have a book series that was turned into a TV show or a movie or anything like that
If you want me to do a by the books episode about that, right?
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