Day 29: Redesign a Character
Zira, the overlooked daughter of Kiros
Zira was the child of her pride’s king, she knew that logically, but he had no interest in raising any of his female children. Kiros only cared for his sons, so far he only had one of them though.
Zira’s mother died when she was a cub, during one of Kiros’ raids on a neighbouring pride.
This left her with no family, all except for Shaju. Shaju didn’t have a whole lot of time for Zira, always training, discussing battle tactics with their father, or being sent out with Azibo to sneak around enemy territory. But Zira really looked up to him.
Zira was trained to fight starting from a very young age. So when her beloved brother was killed, she was the one to make the killing blow against Azibo after Kiros’ ordered it.
She was still a juvenile, a few months younger than Mufasa and Taka, but she demanded Kiros’ take her with him to avenge Shaju.
When Taka agrees to work under Kiros he and Zira begin with a rivalry but do end up bonding.
When Kiros died she wasn’t sad, or angry, or even scared per se. No, Zira felt confused. Lost. Her father had killed countless prides, hundreds of lions, there’s no way he could be dead, right?
The rest of Kiros’ pride all died or fled Milele. Completely scattered. But Zira was too shocked to do anything. Mufasa graciously allows her to join the pride. She feels insulted by this, the audacity of this lion to kill her brother and father to then act all innocent and merciful? Pathetic, Kiros wouldn’t let his enemies live. But before she could react violently she saw Scar out of the corner of her eye.
Everyone has left her, except for Scar. Scar who lost his parents, who lost his brother to betrayal. Zira has nothing left, no one to go to, unable to survive on her own, her pride never taught her how to hunt, fighting was always the priority.
She could not survive without a pride. And maybe being stuck here with Scar would make it bearable? She has nothing else to lose, might as well try.
A Zira redesign AND an entire backstory! Though nothing about how she lost a chunk of her ear… Another story for another time.
I would not have been able to draw her without my sketchbook. I have a few pages dedicated to lion king characters and studying the art style + character designs.
So the sketch for this drawing is from 2-3 months ago! It’s a redraw of that one screenshot.
But the real struggle was getting her colours right, I’ve only drawn Zira and Kiros so far but MAN the white lions are difficult to colour-pick for.
