#circus ask

[circus-clangen]

omggg what breeds are the chicks?? 👀 couple of them look just like some easter eggers we hatched last month, so fuckin cute

Yesss one is an Easter egger!

Dusty, after Dusty Springfield 💖

The rest of these goobers are Artemis and Louis Vuitton the americaunas, Lark the black Australorp, and Lady Calliope Henningway the English Orpington 💖

[t-the-ring-master]

From your imagination..how do you think that Spy x family might end? It doesn't really matter if it isn't accurate..*just curious*

(I think that it may end with Yor's and Loid's secret identity being exposed to each other in a humorous situation and then them realising that they had left Anya at home alone)

I agree with their identities being exposed tbh.

But I could also see them both quitting and never finding out as well.

I actually see a lot of ways.

It’s obvious that Anya and Damian are probably going to end a cannon couple, so perhaps Anya joins the spy organization and gets married to Damian, with or without his knowledge. Or maybe he even joins with her.

As an angst writer, I could also see them all splitting ways, maybe when Anya is older and they all collectively care too much about one another. Loid got too attached and fell for Yor and loved Anya too much he never reported them, or Yor let him go and Anya just left. Maybe Loid loves them so much he continues to protect them as if they were his true family without them knowing.

Maybe they become a real family and leave everything or Yor and Anya become spies as well, or Yor starts working for the organization as an assassin there as well.

Believe it or not, one thing I never do, even as an angst writer unless specifically asked, is make a family abusive or toxic. Maybe it’s because my healthy childhood and I have good parents, but I never got when people decided a character would become harmful to his or her family when finding something out. A lot of people have headcannons that depict Loid as such. That he would just abandon his family or rid of them the second he found out their identities, or finished his mission. In my eyes he’s obviously the happiest he’s been in a while. He shows emotion, can’t really say no to the girls even if it involves the mission and has to reason with himself and trick himself to believe the thing they are asking benefits the mission in any way. The girl’s obviously mean a lot to him because I don’t think he’d go so far for just anyone. I can see it for Anya because a child is needed, but with Yor it’s literally just a marriage of convenience, but he treats her just the same.

I honestly think they are gonna be revealed and it’s gonna be a doozy. Where Anya is worried she’ll be abandoned again and have her past revealed for the abuse and cruelty she endured. By that time I think Loid loved her so much that he wants to protect her more and Yor the same when he finds out why she went into the business of killing. We’ll find out why Loid can’t leave them because of his own past and how much he’s got attached. And maybe get a glimpse of them as a somewhat normal family with Anya becoming a scholar with Damian and Becky.

These are just my ideas and thoughts, so I wouldn’t take them too seriously.

[circus-clangen]

WAIT RINGSTAR ADOPTED MONKEYPAW??? That’s so sweet

[circus-clangen]

Can we have the sprites of all the cats we know rn.. pretty pls

Here's everyone who has been formally introduced so far, + Marquee even though he hasn't been formally introduced (so its okay if you're seeing this and dont know who he is)

[circus-clangen]

im so obsessed with the way you draw paws,, how do you even do that,,, <- kind of a genuine question, whats your process for drawing paws, if youre willing to share?

YAY I love making stupid tutorials 💖 also DISCLAIMER im FAR into uncanny territory and ultimately a human artist so everything I know is based on human hands, do NOT take this as an anatomical study

[circus-clangen]

binged circusclan on a whim and it reminded me just how much i love circuses so thank you for that. that aside i was wondering what your inspirations were for circusclan? stuff like media, aesthetics, what you were aiming for, etc

Always love to hear when someone else has the circus bug 🎪 I could genuinely write an entire essay on what exactly appeals to me about the whole circus genre and aesthetic, BUT aside from that, a lot of my initial inspiration was a different cast of characters and story I have already. It started as more of a circus themed story

But then due to the flow and needs of the story turned into more of a cabaret type thing

SO I basically was left with this whole circus shell that I had taken the guts out of to rehome, and that shell is eventually what Circusclan grew into. As far as different medias, really the only media I've pulled directly from are the Mystery Case Files point and click adventure games, specifically the Ravenhearst and Madame Fate's Carnival ones.

You can see this influence most clearly in moon 20, which are directly made to mimic gameplay of a kind

TLDR, I really like circuses for a whole bunch of convoluted reasons, I really like mystery games, and I really like puzzles! The latter two, especially when a part of the circus theme, better suit having an audience, which is why I hadn't ever really explored them before. When this platform was so receptive to the concept of Circsuclan, I kind of took it and ran!

[circus-clangen]

Can u tell us about ur process woth designing Candy and Peanut?

Absolutely! This goes hand in hand with this ask

So here’s kind of an all-encompassing “how Lynx designs these freaks” guide.

FIRST OF ALL

The name of the character almost always reflects and influences the design of the character. RNG assigned Tigertoe’s kits the names “sandykit” and “nutkit”, so honestly I didn’t have to do ANY thinking to decide what to name them.

I didn’t have to change much from Candy’s sprite as far as colors go, because she ALREADY was just built like a box of conversation hearts

For Peanut, I at first considered desaturating and warming his colors up to make him more peanut colored, but ultimately decided against that. Instead, I interpreted his spots to be like the shape of the indents on a peanut shell

SECONDLY

I know this isn’t always possible but I also pulled a lot from the designs of Candy and Peanuts family members for their designs.

Candy, for example, I wanted to strongly resemble Marquee but with a lot of Trapeze mixed in. Her face shape and eye shape are directly taken from Trapeze, whereas the shape language of her fur and her coloring is directly taken from Marquee.

For Peanut, I wanted him to strongly resemble Tiger and Ringstar…. (🦅), so he has Tiger’s face shape and goatee, as well as shape language, but he has that kind of weaselly hunched lankiness that Ring has.

These are both VERY OUTDATED because I designed them as adults to de-age to kit designs OVER A YEAR AGO but the general shapes and body types hold true… plus you can see me trying to make Peanut beige which I ultimately decided against

THIRDLY

I tend to have a very strong sense of what I want a character to look like, even if I don’t quite know what it is and have to do a ton of drafts to get there.

For candy and peanut, I knew I wanted her to look like she’d experienced nothing but horror and agony since before the womb

And I knew I wanted Peanut to look like this

Very dorky and unserious, so I gave him big ol front teeth and big round mouse ears

And LASTLY,

Design your characters and with what you like and what works for your story! You can see my designs change as my preferences and story needs change!

the designs start off very goofy and bright, because the story started off as a joke and something I did for fun, never intending to share

Once I put Circusclan on tumblr and it started to not only gain attention because become a scarier, more puzzle oriented story, I changed their designs to still be fun and silly and cartoony but also flexible enough to fit in with more serious scenes

And more recently, after deciding I wanted to go FULL scary beginning with moon 20, their designs changed to not only reflect the increasingly serious nature of the story, but also to reflect with some degree of realism the lore of cats who were really sentient enough to make similar stylistic choices to humans. Colors changed to show dying, hair changed to show cutting and styling, and accessories changed to reflect a more practical handmade nature, not to the mention the period the comic is set in.

And… most importantly…

Accept feedback, practice a lot, but ultimately trust yourself! Only you truly know what kind of design you want and what kind of a design fits your story. Don’t sacrifice your favorite design elements just to please others or just because it ‘doesn’t really make sense’. You want people to love your designs because they’re YOUR designs, so take whatever it is that you specifically enjoy about the design process and run with it! Make it your own! Don’t be afraid to really take your time and really pour your heart into a design.

ABOVE ANYTHING, you want your characters, your designs, and your story to be meaningful to YOU. Mess around, try things out, have fun, and all the while you’ll be building a design style that is markedly and distinctly unique and your own.

[circus-clangen]

Oh! Can we see trapeze's mom?

Dad, actually!

His name is Doveskip. Trapeze’s mom wasn’t in the picture for very long, which caused a lot of strife considering that Doveskip was a very well respected advisor figure of Mottledclan.

Mottledclan is somewhere in northern Appalachia, facing both human/city threats and also the threats of the general wilderness. A leader and deputy proved to not be enough to keep the clan safe, so Doveskip was made into a new role of advisor—very old man of the mountain, very “wind in the east storm coming in” as he stares pensively at the skies.

His affair with the mother of his kits was brief and quite scandalous, as she more or less joined the clan to be with him, and then left soon after the kids were born. He received a lot of judgement and scorn for marrying the cat equivalent of a hillbilly, but rather than demand respect for her, he kind of distanced himself from her altogether—a decision that pushed her to leave and formed a rocky relationship between him and his kids, who both ended up leaving the clan for their own reasons.

As a fun bit of trivia, both of his kids had avian names. Being so well respected and such a figurehead of the clan, Doveskip wanted his legacy and authority to be passed down to his kids— Partridgetangle and Thunderbird.

Both cats ended up removing this part of their names— Trapeze changing his to fit in with the circus, and Thunderbird dropping the suffix entirely to just “Thunder”.

Trapeze had the least beef with his dad, I’d say. He was more like Dove in temperament, and so generally could get along with him better. He doesn’t hate him, and mostly doesn’t resent him. He just wishes things could have been different with his mom.