If there's one thing I know about this family, it's that any gays who watch this show just love Pear Butter and Bright Mac. I think I heard a bunch of covers of their songs throughout the years.
Also, never have I ever seen a horse more butch coded than Applejack, good gods!
On an artistic note, I hated drawing Granny Smith. I am still figuring out how to play with body proportions to achieve different horse body types, and old people were already hard for me to do as humans. Old horses are nightmarish to draw! I had to basically copy the canon design of Granny Smith and just... gave it texture, I guess.
I am never drawing an elderly character from this show ever again.
im gonna go more in depth for exemplum and parable's redesigns in this post -- it'll be under the cut!
DISCLAIMER!!! this is NOT to bash CS.MT or their designs at all! this is all something i did for fun and nostalgia/love of the AU.
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when first sketching out some design ideas for the two, i had long forgotten they were redesigned by CS.MT themselves in 2021! these designs are a HUGE upgrade from the old ones, but i do think they could be better from a character design standpoint.
this is the two parable designs by CS.MT side by side. the one on the right is absolutely a huge improvement, and honestly, the one i have the least changes to.
in my redesign, i brought back the original crow elements the first one had, since he's meant to be based off one. i gave him back his black wings with lighter speckles, along with the addition of crow feet/legs! i thought it was pretty cool that his 2021 design has bird feet, but they're chicken feet, not crow feet. which, doesn't make much sense when considering the animal he's supposed to be based off of. it also appears that his legs have two sections, instead of three? i can't exactly tell with the pants, but i tried to make it more obvious his legs are three bones instead of two.
i also have an issue with the piece of fabric covering his tail feathers. the tail feathers are very important for flying, allowing birds to keep balance and steer themselves in the air. so, draping a thick fabric over it doesn't make sense to me. i kept the drapery around his waist, just removing the back fabric.
i decided to change up their other clothing a bit as well! i made the browns more saturated, which is just a personal preference, since i love warmer colors. i added back the swirls in his original design onto his pants, since i thought they were really cute and added visual interest! i also gave him a belt with the colors of their vials, just to add more color to his design. honestly i couldn't find a way to properly include his vials being on them without it looking funky, so i imagine he would keep them at their nest to be safe.
i also added pockets to the belt for them to collect shiny things! crows love shiny things, so i think parable would collect them and bring them back to the nest he shares with the crows.
that's really all i have to say for parable -- other parts should be self explanatory!
now, moving on to exemplum. his design is the one i had the most issues with.
the 2021 design is definitely an improvement in aesthetics, pose, and general outfit design -- however, the character design itself does not convey what it should.
exemplum is meant to be based off a moon jellyfish, a vibrant blue sea creature. he's also meant to live in the water, for the majority of his life. neither the first or second design convey that very well with the dry-land clothes, however, i do think the first design is better in a way.
the colors & shape language of the clothes say "jellyfish guy who lives in the sea" more than his new clothes. i like the way the top poncho (?) piece of clothing resembles the jellyfish's dome, while the strings trail out like it's stingers. the swirls also remind me of ocean waves, as well as the wavy eyelight and eye strings. in comparison, the newer design feels a lot more bland, and the only thing that could possibly tell you he's meant to be a jellyfish creature living in the sea is the arm strings—which, if you know about error sans, could come across as anything but jellyfish stingers! this is not a good thing, unless that was possibly the point of the design? though, i don't think it was.
this is my redesign of him!
first thing that i HAD to change was the arm strings. i made them into actual jellyfish stingers, with long frills and shorter strings at the top (in reference to the moon jellyfish itself!). i switched his eyelight back to the swirly one, as well as his eye strings.
moving on to the clothes, these desperately needed a massive overhaul. exemplum lives in the sea, meaning he would NOT wear a lot of fabric, since there's no need to & it would be a huge inconvenience while swimming around. i removed the bandages too, since those didn't make any sense to me either. i gave him a pair of loose-fabric pants that he stitched together himself instead, as well as a rope belt and some gold chains for decoration. i added back the vibrant blues and swirls of his old design onto his pants, to resemble the ocean waves. since i removed his scarf, i instead put the "assasin" symbol as a tattoo on his sternum!
i also changed up the colors of his bones a little, making them more purple-pinkish to mesh together better. i made the colors much more vibrant than his 2021 design, because i think they look really cool with underwater creature designs! they're meant to serve as a warning to other creatures as well, to not mess with him, similar to how poisonous animals are typically brightly colored.
to top this off, i gave him spotted turtle feet! they are semi-aquatic guys that can live on both land and sea, so i thought that would make sense for exemplum instead of having normal skeleton feet. plus, if parable gets animalistic feet, i think exemplum should as well :-) just for fun, i gave him a turtle tail, too.
here are the two redesigns side-by-side!! if you have any thoughts to add, feel free to!! i'm very happy with how these came out.
literally how do you guys get your lines so smooth when you do this
CW:MENTIONS OF SH!!!!
(THESE ARE ALL MY OPINIONS!! IF YOU DONT AGREE AND NEED TO SAY SOMETHING NEGATIVE ABOUT IT, SCROLL!!!)
-Gave him a jacket similar to the one he had in fusion fall  because I really like his design. Overall, I just felt like he was lacking in the outfit department. Also gave him dangly earrings because he needs to serve cunt. 
-Shadow the Hedgehog like glasses because that kid is ABSOLUTELY a Sonic nerd, that and he just reminds me of shadow in general.
-Lots of silver because I don’t know it looks good on him
-Tiny faint freckles because that one scene in operation report was so cute to me 
-Kisses Hoagie. It’s not in the design at all I just wanted to say that.
-It’s also not shown here because of a stupid fuck ass sleeves, but I’ve suffered with self harm through picking my skin for a few years now, and I like sharing this head canon with him just because I want to see him in pain./j
-Tweaked his colors a little bit, because oh my God I love him, but he is such an eyesore
-Little propeller hat because it’s so fucking cute and he’s adorable and I love him.
Gave him gloves too, because how on earth is that kid not cutting himself on all those tools
-Speaking of which!!! (I’m sorry that’s such a bad joke. I am so sorry. I’m a SH victim I can make that joke please)  The reason I gave him self harm scars was just because he’s such a violently serious character that is not taken seriously in the slightest.  I’ve had the specific head canon about him for a while, but I was kind of scared to share it, just because of how people could react, @theamericanwoodcock is the reason I have the confidence to show the specific head cannon in the first place. Gill stay goated hope your doing better.
-literally the only reason I see him as having German decent is because his dad taught him one completely fake German word. 
-oh my god Kuki. I love her so much hi Kuki hi hi hi. 
-I added much more pink to her design because literally why didn’t they give her more pink. It’s literally her favorite color. Why the fuck is she wearing this dark ass green?
- I also gave her more to hint at her nurse activities, like the hat and sleeve patch. There are literally times in the show where I forget she was supposed to be the group nurse and that pisses me off so bad because please, for the love of God, give her something to do other than be the love interest.
-gave her a cute little sweater design because her design is so bland.
-Wallabee I hate him.
-I see people saying he had the best outfits in the show and they are dead wrong. My boy had no drip.
-dies the roots of his hair black and has black earrings because he wants to be edgy.
-Gave him boxing gloves because again nothing about his design screams that he’s the aggressive one of the group.
-Yeah, I didn’t really change much. 
-ABBBYYYYY
-added much more gold her design because she’s a queen and she deserves it
-also gave her a fat backpack because again, her design is lacking. I swear to God Nigel was the only one given a decent outfit I swear.
-just a bunch of little details to make her stand out. She was the last one I did because I did them in order so I kind of got lazy.
-I literally love her character so much but the writers do her so dirty sometimes. She’s so interesting and I love her so much.  she’s literally the one that taught me out of my parents prejudice parenting style. I love her so much she literally stopped me from being a racist twat.
it's been nearly 3 years since my first attempts at these guys it's crazy to see the the improvement since then. Been having them on the brain lately so we'll see where this goes.
*shuffles through dusty pile of Glamrock Kids AU notes*
Alt- No vests + Roxy's Racing Gear she wears for Tournaments
Commissions Open | Kofi Page
(Also have a Pride Sale going on for all of June so check that out)
I have also been making redesigns + new character sheets for the au (yayyy) and have added these new changes to the characters in this update. Do you want the main group's redesigns before or after I decide to drop the next update? Just wondering, because the new character sheets will only appear after the update is done (mainly because I am also introducing a new character in this update that is part of the new character sheets).
Do you want the main group redesigns early?
We want to see the redesigns before the update
Show us the redesigns with the new characters
Voting ended onJul 16
I do hope to have the new update soon once I have the redesigns lined and colored in, but I want your opinion too! there is also a scary amount of you following me so i figured why not ask...
