Good day!
In the following days I will be developing concept art of a character that fits into a specific story. This story is about a gang member idealized by me, but in relation to a text about a 1960's gang. After some research and a lot of reading about oldschool gangs, I found out that there are plenty of them to choose from, from the Indian mafia to the Japanese Yakuza...a miriad of options.
I have decided to go for a small story about a predominat Irish gang from the 1850's in New York, more specifically in Manhattan, called "Dead Rabbits".
This gang had it's arch enemy, the "Roach Guards", and they were constantly fighting each other at the Five Points, Manhattan. Althought my story is not about these gang fights between them, it is important to refer it, since they had similiar symbols that identified and diferentiated their gangs: the "Roach Guards" used a blue stripe in their pants, while the "Dead Rabbits" whore a red stripe. There is another symbolic object that the "Dead Rabbits" whore during riots, which is an emblem of a dead rabbit impaled on a spike.
Later on, in 1857, confrontations took place in Manhattan streets between the "Dead Rabbits" and the "Bowery Boys", another Irish gang that tormented the streets at the time. This fight was about political and ideological confrontations, because the "Dead Rabbits" where suporters of the Democrats and their representant in New York, Mayor Fernando Wood, while the "Bowery Boys" supported the Republicans and opposed Wood.
My chosen story is about a small fight between these two gangs, in which the "Dead Rabbits" fought "Bowery Boys", that escalated into a city wide gang war, with several other parties involved, among them the weakened Municipal and Metropolitan Polices. This conflict is know as "Dead Rabbits Riot".
I am now going to develop ideas for a character that would belong to the "Dead Rabbits" and could have participated in this fight, by drawing a character concept, with three accessories referent to this character.
That's all folks! For now.
