To create specific daggers for each character I started out with research. I was looking for interesting shapes, textures, and an overall gut feeling of what the dagger seemed to be used for or simply, emotionally, how it made me feel. I found a long and very sleek sword with no cross guard and very minimal decoration, all business and all pointy-end! It was mean looking, just very cold.
From there I went looking for its opposite: beautiful, jeweled, and ceremonial. A dagger that was for someone with no real purpose for it. I found a nice range of daggers at a museum in London called the Wallace Collection. So I grabbed a few images and started my version of photo-bashing mixed with small messy painting sketches to generate some new versions of daggers. Mainly thinking at this point about silhouette and materials.
The snake dagger reference is actually a prop from the 1980s movie Conan the Barbarian, rather than being historic. I wanted to think about it, but be sure to create something separate and new for my story and character. I painted a carved jade center piece of the dagger that physically unites the handle and the blade.
This dagger seemed far removed from the mean and more mission-focused daggers from my research. It’s something beautiful that could be from a museum, but it’s kept for sentimental reasons.