Brave Ancients design yapping pt . 1
time to get annoying about my swapped ancients and their designs!! just like with the beasts, ill be talking about why i put these guys where i did and the inspirations from both their original designs and their current ones!
first off, lets do a little side by side comparison.
crazy right? its amazing what studying styles and being friends with summerdoddles does to a man.
In my original post, a lot of confusion came from the fact that I changed the Soul Jams for some of the characters. one arguement was that Wizard should have had the Light of Truth, with it being a part of the Virtue of Knowledge, but I feel as if Perseverance fit him so much better.
with the changes i made to the lights, its important to note that i didnt change them completely. Passion and Determination stem from the same thought process and feeling, same with Resolution and Perseverance (though one is about the ending/solution, the other is the journey towards it).
however, i did want wiz to be half of Knowledge, I just didn't want him to be Truth. and my response to that dilemma? its my damn au and i get to do what i want <33
the reason i made these changes was to have their Lights fit their characters better. im very firm about not doing 1:1 swaps and having flexibility in my story. i wasnt going to change the characters to fit the lights, so we did it the other way around. this was something i had in mind from the very start.
i originally wasn't going to draw at all this was all purely going to be written. i had issues with trying to do multiple things at once and was doing my best to stick to a single medium. i failed that shit tho i love drawing when i have the energy for it.
bea, my beta reader and my Opinion Boy who i constantly throw balls at, was actually the first person to bring up drawing them. which got me talking about how i was viewing them, specifically with St. Brave looking like Ovenwanderer from Crumble and Strawberry being Shiningberry from TOA.
these were the original designs for wiz and berry, drawn by bea, which i used as inspo for my original designs.
after they started those, i decided to actually put thought into them and came up with this list! you can tell even my og designs sort of veered off from this.
moving on to specific characters! lets start with our favorite narrative haunter, Saint Brave!
my main issue with gingerbrave, as well as berry and wiz, was that i was trying to make common cookies into ancients, so i had to think about what that entailed. with the reveal of Ovenwanderer, i found it a bit easier, but i was hesitant to make him look too much like him.
i kept the white icing and the scar, but outside of that i wanted to make something unique. why is the soul jam of freedom pink/red? because i said so.
i actually based more of his original design off the gajinka gingerbrave design i have! my most precious boy. i couldnt for the life of me figure out an outfit, so i went with what i knew.
this combo led the the first gb design! but later on i was a bit... unhappy with it. Every canon GB across the CR IP has a strange thing about wearing clothes, and because of that they shirt and pants began to grate on me.
so now, we have this beautiful boy.
the first thing i changed about him was the shape of his hair. it was difficult for others drawing him and for ME. I WAS IN THE TRENCHES. so i made the shape a lot more simple, but still kept his little antenna because <33 its cute <33
i was actually inspired by @summerdoddle's AJ!Gingerbrave, who had an outfit similar to Ovenwanderer's, and lead me to redesigning my GB just to give him a cooler outfit.
but it felt like copying, which i hate doing! so i still kept some things from his original outfit, like cuffs and collar, and gave him white accents on his little boots. its overed by the cape, but on his chest is another V-shaped red line and his second skull button.
the pink wrapping on GB's hand is another call back to my regular gb design. i tended to draw him with a bite taken out of his hand/missing fingers. this is due to him being bitten by the Shadow Witch before he escaped. its a headcanon i've always had and something i transferred over to HBAN as well.
the pink wrapping is to cover the bite mark, and also a connection to HBAN!White Lily Cookie, who got those same wrappings as a gift from Custard after her green ones were burned away after Chapter 10! (another thing that was sort of vagued by my less descriptive writing in early chapters. i stated he gave her "bandages")
speaking of custard, lets more onto him! i tried multiple things with custard because i wasn't sure exactly what i wanted to do with him. i thought, since he was going to be older, he'd be a bit more serious. i was gen fighting for my life trying to find a pose and expression for him. this guy...
i honestly cooked with this design. unlike with gingerbrave, i had never drawn custard outside of doddles and a comic i never posted. i had absolutely nothing to go on!!
so since i cooked so hard, his design didn't really change much! i gave him warmer colors and a more drawn in pose to capture his more solemn nature. i also took some inspo from @princessblue135's designs on him, giving a little orange vest!! i also gave him his original crown back and added a whipped cream fluff to his cape.
next up is Wizard Cookie, who went through a few changes before i settled on anything.
a lot of his original design has references to Stardust Cookie, especially his original scarf being from Stardust's cape and the sprinkles in his hair being from both Stardust and Moonlight as well. The design on his robes is also supposed to mimic the City of Wizards.
A fun non-moon thing is actually his staff. if you thought the shape looked familiar, that's because its based off of Millennial Tree Cookie's horns!
the reason for that is 1. because i wanted to, 2. because as a student of Moonlight Cookie, I think he'd have a heavy respect for the other Guardians, especially MTC, and would want to represent that respect.
Wiz's new design is ALSO inspired by PB's designs. PB my goat. i drew his design in a gajinka form not too long ago as well.
tumblr only allows 30 pics a post so i'll save the girls for part two!