Ruth @cheesecakeguy88 - Tumblr Blog

I absolutely love your drag au!!!! This is somewhat related, but what's your process when it comes to designing them? I'd love to see how you work the choices you make to both be esthetically pleasing and making sense for the character 🙂‍↕️

Hello dearest anon! I’m going to be very upfront by saying you have opened the flood gates, I’m going to make this post have a below the cut because I have a LOT to talk about, and honestly I’ve been itching to just kind of talk about the making of drag out! So the very long winded explanation is below!

(Also disclaimer I am using non canon pronouns on like… all of these boxers I am very aware of it do not correct me)

I want to start with a little background I promise this will explain a bit of my process please walk with me.

I’ve had a special interest in drag since… high school? I know saying that makes me sound so old but it’s genuinely been such a long interest of mine, and it’s not just the reality tv portion of it, while that is a good chunk, I truthfully love everything about drag and all it has to offer, especially the makeup and clothing.

Every fandom I have hit has had a drag au made of it and I knew punch out was BOUND to get one when I got into it, did I think I would get this dedicated? No, but I don’t regret it in the slightest. So drag out was not my first rodeo when it came to making drag designs. However it’s probably the furtherest I’ve ever gotten with a drag au.

I don’t know whether to go through every character or just kind of explain a general process, so might just go by pairs??? Maybe?? Idk I just know this post is going to be LONG. I get very excited about this stuff.

Okay I’ll actually explain now thank you

Jolene was my first experiment, and honestly if it wasn’t for her drag out might not of been a thing. I know that’s weird to say but I literally just kept thinking about joe in this big stupid hat. If it wasn’t for that hat idk where we’d be. Jolene was one of the queens I just kind of threw something at the wall until it stuck. She actually had a first iteration before I started the actual drag out you guys saw, the hat was still there but I just hated how the anatomy came out, so I ditched it and started drawing the first Jolene. And I’m going to be upfront when I say for some reason I was .. SO stingy when making the first designs of drag out. Everyone was way too similar to the canon design and I think that’s was limiting me a lot, so I do think a second round of designs was needed. Jolene’s main inspiration comes from general french fashion, I was thinking about drag race France at the time (this show will come up again for a queen you do not expect) and I loved the just.. love they had for their garments? Another factor in Jolene’s design was the fact she makes all of her own outfits, so I wanted to design something she would make and wear. Considering the fact I needed to have a reason for her losing lipsyncs so much, I made the dress long so it would be hard for her to lipsync. Most other things for her I made on a whim, this actually goes for a lot of other queens.

Disco doll was actually “disco queen” for a bit, but I came to my friends and told them I didn’t like the repetitiveness of “disco queen / Queen hippo” and I asked for help on a different name. One of my friends (shout out Ambs) said “disco doll?” And it immediately wired something in my brain of transfem disco kid and from there history was made.

Dollie’s contender inspiration comes from a drag race contestant, Kenya Pleaser. She had this stunning one piece disco suit that was this baby blue (teal? I don’t have a photo yet while I’m writing this, it’ll be on the photos I add after lmao) kind of color, and it immediately reminded me of Dollie. Meanwhile her crown defense was just… disco kids title defense. I’ll eventually end up redoing that one as I got lazy, however for now thats just what it is. Dollies disco aesthetic made a lot of her drag style really easy to come up with, so I didn’t struggle much with her.

Kaiserin gave me some trouble for a while, Germany isn’t very represented with drag race (with only 1 main season), so I had to get a little creative. However I would rather DIE than put her in that yellow dress. Look, I love Kaiser, that is my husband, however the yellow dress blue boots a wig that isn’t styled and NO MAKEUP? No. Not in my house. Thankfully I was able to find a queen that suited my needs and that was metamorkid from drag race Germany. The stripes were kind of the main factor I was going for. Truthfully I didn’t care much for the original pants suit thing, so when I redid her I ended up giving her a skirt and finally did her boots justice. Along with that, her wigs are VERY important to her. I immediately knew I wanted her title defense hair to be that long slick braid, and honestly I didn’t do it justice in the promo, it should be way longer. I always had a thought it would drag across the floor behind her it was so long, because hair seems to be so crucial to Kaiser in the original game, I wanted that to translate to drag out as well.

Queen hippo was probably the most “fuck it” of them all. I just kind of started drawing and saw where it took me. And again I’m going to shout out Kenya pleaser from season 18, her promo look helped me a TON with getting queen hippos outfit right. With Queen hippo I was moreso worried about her face than anything. Hippo is terrifying to draw, what’s even more scary is if you get it wrong, because then he looks uncanny. However I like to think I pulled it off. I don’t really know the process for hippo, the only really crucial part about her contender is the star on her stomach, in reference to her boxers, because in drag you’d never be able to see those. So instead you just “hit” ????? The star on her stomach and the bottom half of her outfit falls. Which causes her performance to get messed up. With crown defense, the most sturdy part of a drag look is usually the corset, I’ve dealt with some THICK corsets in my life and let me tell you those things are hard to get undone, just like the sewer cover in title defense. I needed something dumb like that to translate to drag so a grey corset it was, it ties in the back with a ribbon, making it a bit flimsy (thanks Jolene), which is how it comes undone like the manhole cover.

Pinisu was someone I actually didn’t struggle with because I had a direct outfit inspiration. Instead I struggled with her gender 😭, I couldn’t decide whether I wanted her to be a girl or nonbinary so I let my oomfs and irls vote on it on an insta story, and trans girl won. So pinisu became a girl thanks to an instagram story. Anyways, her outfit is based on Kam Hugh’s sailor moon look, who is the other drag race France queen I mentioned earlier. Piston Hondo literally got IN TROUBLE for the manga stuff, so I thought it would be perfect to put her in the sailor moon look. For the white look? I honestly don’t know how I came up with the two huge spiked balls, however it was an absolute BITCH to draw. She probably was the second hardest to draw? (I’ll mention who was the first). Pinisu can be drawn as any popular reference to anime and she definitely dresses up in some reference to her favorite niche anime any chance she gets.

Femme hugger was probably the easiest to draw, she also… came out my favorite?? This was like my second time drawing her and idk how she came out so good but she did. There isn’t any direct inspiration, however I really liked the idea of her being a pageant queen. I could see femme hugger in these big gowns and big hair was an absolute MUST for her design. I think it’s hilarious to have someone with the personality of bear hugger to be in these kinds of pageants, she wins them too. For crown defense? I really liked the inspiration of characters wearing small ALIVE animals around their necks, the squirrel was perfect for that. Does the squirrel have a name?? I’ve been calling her acorn. Most of the little changes (such as the glove and headpieces) were made on a whim, just to try and give a bit more of a difference between the two designs.

Tigress was.. the hardest to draw. Not necessarily design wise but because I decided to draw her THREE TIMES.

She gave me some trouble with the fact that there isn’t much Sikh representation in drag like… at all. Thankfully there was two Canadian queens (priyanka and sanjina dabish queen) that I could use as sort of a guide for what I wanted to do with tigress generally. However I actually got tigress’ dress design from… a TikTok shop dress LMFOAIEJENO. There was this STUNNING deep purple dress that came across my feed and I immediately knew I wanted it to be on her. Of course, I changed the pattern for the Tiger pattern but the silhouette remained pretty much the same.

After everything though I still felt like some sort of gimmick was missing on Tigress, yeah sure I had the headpiece, the tiger get up, but it felt very just “ok that’s all the boxes”, and I really wanted something different, low and behold the answer was right in front of me. Tiger has a SMALLLLLL waist, extremely small, and that’s perfect for drag! Which was the main reason why her waist is so small, and even gets smaller in title defense. If tigress doesn’t have the smallest waist you’ve ever seen that isn’t tigress baby I’m sorry.

Donna had heavy inspirations based in Spain, she was one of the easiest queens to design a concept for because Spanish drag is VERY televised. Drag race espana has 6 seasons and its seventh is going to be airing soon iirc. I took two looks based on the show (and just popular Spanish culture) for Donna. Her contender look is directly based on La Veneno, a famous Spanish singer and actress who is referneced SEVERAL times throughout the show. She has that iconic red look and I knew it was perfect for Donna. For her crown defense, there’s a Spanish drag queen called Carmen (ironic) farella, she won the first season of drag race espana. She has this AMAZING snake look that wrapped around her body, her hand was the snakes head and it’s genuinely one of my favorite looks that has ever been on the runway, however Donna has nothing to do with snakes, so instead I decided to just use a black rose. Directly taken from dons title defense. I contemplated using a different colored rose for a bit, blue white even yellow, however the black rose was used because it means “death and rebirth, a new beginning”, and I thought that was a good touch for the rebranding of crown defense.

Eirinn probably had the messiest inspiration out of all of the queens. I just kind of grabbed from wherever with her. If I had to base it down to just one queen, I’d say discord Adam’s from season 18. She’s a heavily tatted queen and her personality reminded me of Eirinn. The outfit? Was actually from an azealia banks music video 😭, IT WAS PRETTY AND IT REMINDED ME OF EIRINN OKAY. However I have to give a huge shout out to my friend Quinn who is Irish and lives in Ireland, they helped a TON with the tattoo design and making sure Eirinn was up to Ireland approved standards. I’m honestly just glad she looks. Better now. I keep glancing at her original design and cringe just looking at it it’s hideous. One thing though I’d like to mention is that in her title defense she has a carabiner, because I will always be a he him lesbian aran Ryan truther you will not silence me.

Soda originally started as one that I was DREADING. I was lost on her concept and the whole “soda” thing doesn’t really translate well to drag. I mean yeah sure you could take the quote “body shaped like a coke bottle” but you can only run so far with it. However I started to realize that I didn’t have to stick so close to what I was originally going with, and with help from my lovely Russian friend orph, goth soda was born. Russia had a huge goth scene in the early 2000’s, which ended up dying out in the late 2010’s due to the whole shift to the “doomer” thing. However I also believe in showcasing different substyles in drag and soda was the first I was really able to do that with. She probably is my favorite out of everyone I’ve made, she’s like a 35 year old daughter to me. I will admit I got lazy with her title defense and just recolored it (I was finish college at this time) and there are plans in the future to do something with it, however as of now I think gothic soda is probably my magnum opus of drag out.

With duve, there is little to no representation for Turkey with drag. Which absolutely sucks, however during the first round of the designs for drag out, slaysian royale was airing, and literally it was like some higher being handed me what I was looking for. Khianna with a K is a Filipino drag queen, however she had this bull look that was genuinely PERFECT for bull. Bull = bull, simple. Again I got lazy with her crown defense but truthfully, I don’t think duve would change much. I have her really dedicated to the bull aesthetic, and she even based her shows around it. I had some moots decide whether she had eyebrows or not and I genuinely think “brows or no brows for the bull” is one of the funniest things ever. I am very easily entertained. And shout out the friends I have mentioned earlier for giving me the idea of the hair gems.

Super macho mama was the same as Donna in a sense. American drag is so heavily showcased I really didn’t struggle with her, in fact I’m pretty sure I had her concept laid out before I even got started on the world circuit. Lexi Loveletts is an American drag queen from season 17 of rupauls drag race, and she was immediate favorite of mine because of her promo look. Her promo look was just her body covered in glitter, GLITTER. GLITTER WAS THE PROMO LOOK. And it genuinely was one of the best things I have ever seen, and it SCREAMED macho man to me. I genuinely feel like he’d be the type to just throw some glitter on himself and call it a look. So when macho man eventually turned into macho mama, it was set from there. Of course she’s wearing a bikini under the glitter and you can see that in her crown defense, but I really just wanted her to look like the ocean. She’s probably the least changed from her original design because I really feel like it fit so perfectly.

Now Sandwoman was probably the like weirdest to get together. I originally throught I was just going to do some sort of elevated “sleep” look that I’ve seen several queens do on the show, however I had to sit and think about that because it would genuinely be so hard to perform in. And Sandi… has to perform. So I went back n forth and when I originally answered that anon ask about soda, I said I had more substyles planned mainly with bull and Sandi. And I was lowkey lying because I had NOTHING planned for Sandi. However again thanks to TikTok I remember gyaru exists. It’s such a fun subculture that I knew it was perfect for Sandi. The yellow orange and green would look perfect in a gyaru look, so I took it and ran with it. Her crown defense was just kind of an altered look, while I wanted to do a different gyaru substyle that was a lot more edgy, I ended up backing out because I felt like it would’ve been too much to draw over and over again. With every one of these characters I had to have in the back of my mind “I’m going to be drawing them often do not make them super complex”, and truthfully that’s what kept me from doing a LOT of things. Sandi sadly was a part of that.

Also I’d like to mention I am aware that the white isn’t supposed to go in the little eye droops. However this is drag makeup as well, and this is also a 31 year old 6’5 boxer from Philadelphia that I have turned into a lesbian, so.

Dottie and Regina I was lazy with, in all honestly. I truthfully just went “what if they looked like women” and that’s how we got here. I took a little inspiration from rupaul with Dottie, mainly just the track suit get up, and the shape of the hair Dottie has. Meanwhile the only getup that the ref has is the huge breastplate. Which was funny in the original lineup because none of the boxers have no boobs, however that… changed. Now I think we only have one cis man in the whole league. (Shout out femme hugger), so it kind of wore down the second time around.

And my sweet little Mackenzie. I really like little Mac’s design in game, it’s blank, it really gives the feel that he is just some “normal kid” and I kind of wanted that to translate to Mackenzie. Now I will say I did end up going a bit crazy with his hair mainly thanks to tomodaichi life. It has this cute curly ponytail and I couldn’t stop thinking about it for her. And the vitiligo was a split second decision, me and my friends (mentioned before) were talking about how vitiligo showed up on the skin, and the types of patterns it can show up as, and for some reason it just made sense with Mackenzie. While I wanted her to look “blank” like Mac, I did want her to not look boring. So adding smaller details like that was what really helped me put her together.

Okay. Sorry that was a lot. I hope this explains some of the process well! Im writing this before I add the pictures so hopefully the pictures will also do the queens justice in kind of the vibe I was going for. I really appreciate this ask!!

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