This was already posted on Patreon but I wanted to post it here too for audio drama Sunday after a few weeks. Long story short, I've been working with concept artist, Max Portugal, to come up with character designs for the ANA leads (and some of the more prominent side characters)!
Of course, this remains an audio show: imagine/draw the characters however you want, I left it up for interpretation on purpose, there are no wrong answers, etc, etc. But that being said, it's still fun to get art made! I basically gave him some light design notes and let him run wild!
Left to right that's Sig, Bea, Happy, Lady Isadora, Luxe, and Oliver. Design notes/commentary under the cut!
Top of the lineup, we have Sig. I'm Black so I almost always picture the main characters of the things that I write as Black. Specifically, I picture him as being mixed (Black and white) but I don't think real world racial distinctions mean that much in Solegard besides which colors work best for your skin tone and how much sunscreen you need to avoid a burn. For his build, we went with the idea that, at a glance, he looks like he could be a stereotypical hero type but, in reality, he just Looks Like That. Like, in Sleeping Beauty Aurora was blessed with beauty. Sig was blessed with looking dashing but that doesn't actually translate into being good at cardio. (He also prob has some of that Peeta Mellark natural baker buffness haha.) So it's just really clear that if he was interested in being a hero, he def could be. He just Really Doesn't Want To.
Next up is our girl Bea! Bea, I always picture with short brown hair like her actress because they are so similar in personality, haha. I like that it's a little all over the place just like her. The embroidered jeans and funky colors with the shirt and jacket were all Max and they match her loud personality super well. She is, as always, holding her laptop and you can see her Toad House medallion on her right lapel.
Happy! I thought Happy was going to be the biggest design challenge because, based on how people react to him in the show, he has to look passingly human at a first glance, but also obviously inhuman at a second glance. He also has the most canon physical description in the show with a grand total of 2 features: inky black eyes and his Business Babe hat. But Max killed it with a solution that was so simple that it almost made me mad I didn't think of it: just make his skin tone inhuman and point his ears. Easy. That, plus a powerful build and dark palate really brings the whole look together. And the pop of pink from the hat is the cherry on top.
Isadora is next and the star of the show here is the armor. Sig mentions in her first episode that she has impressive armor as captain of the Queensguard and Max ran with it. The cream and gold color palate with the marigold pauldrons and filigree down the cuirass? Love. With the color scheme, it made sense to also make her blonde so that it all matches and I love the ombre. As a side note, that length of hair is so impractical for her job but it's fiiiiiiine, she's a protagonist. In the same way that Ana has Princess Hair (tm) that always looks amazing no matter how disheveled she should be, Isadora's hair never gets in the way and just flares out dramatically while in combat. You can see a scar going through her right eyebrow (one of several I'm sure) and she has her blessed sword. I especially like how stoic and all business she is here. Sig is making pies so good he's able to get this person to willingly participate in sitcom shenanigans. Their friendship is so funny to me.
Shrouded under the assassin's hood we have Luxe! For this one, Max had the cover of Mazed and Confused to look at which features a bit of Luxe. I always imagine fae to be beautiful but in an angular and unnatural way and that's the note I gave both Sunny (our cover artist) and Max. Similarly to Happy, she has an unnatural skin tone and you can't see her ears under the hood, but they're pointed. Her outfit has leaf-like veins because, as a fae, I think she's connected to nature. You'll remember that in Mazed and Confused when she does the whole As The World Falls Down ballroom scene, she glamours outfits made of flowers onto the gang.
And finally, Oliver. I feel like this one speaks for itself. Look at his little glasses. Have you ever seen a cat that was more clearly fantasy-British? No notes.
Anyway, I'm not planning on doing anything specific with these designs this second buuuuut it's nice to have them in the back pocket for the future!
Ever wonder what would happen if Ash didn't stay with Kukui at first during Sun and Moon?
No?
Well I did!
Here's a fic all about that in the perspective of all the other students getting really close to figuring it out but not actually getting to that conclusion until the end. Mix in some headcanons of culture there and the fact that they aren't used to the journey life style so therefore don't understand why Ash would not be living with his mom and you get this just a little above 10k word work.
Maybe i take making character themed playlists too seriously cause they got me out here making homemade Vin diagrams
Anyway I have one for Danny Phantom (Danny Fenton listens to different music but that is a whole other can of worms) and Ben Tennyson because I can’t just not make one for both. The Danny one is longer jsut simply because it’s been around longer if you can imagine.
I got an iPad and I just wanted to draw something small to test it out, normally I use my computer and a drawing tablet so it's definitely a different feel lol
This may have taken 4 hours to finish (and I totally didn't cut out one of the people... not at all...) but I'm really happy with how it turned out. It started as just your standard anatomy practice but I had to go and reach for the stars I guess.
