FERN REF SHEET
Baffled me that i hadn’t made a prior proper one of these yet so here you go (bonus me gushing about my design for him because I’ve put so much thought into him you have No Idea)
Anyonw can use anything from this design if they want or just the whole thing 1:1 i dont really care you dont even need to credit me if you do
design stuff + few other small drawings for reference under cut
So unlike with my Ej refs i didnt number these ones because i forgot so we're rawdogging this one
My BIGGEST thing that i try to emphasize when i draw fern is his different body type/general shapes. In the show, we already can tell fern is much thinner than finn, hence why his hood stands out more and his hips are more prominent. Here I added a few things as well- a square torso, longer limbs, and bigger hands/feet. I've always associated longer limbs and a smaller torso with more nimble and precise characters.... something that I like to think fern leans more into for combat compared to finn. Also, his limbs being really long but wider at the ends is also partly in reference to tree stumps and roots. Another thing with this shape is that he sorta reminds me of a daddy long legs lol (not REALLY a spider- not even an arachnid- but i like to associate him with arthropods)
You might have also noticed the more prominent tufts on some of his joints. Those are actually there in the show, I just made them stand out more. Mostly just because it's fun to draw, but this is ALSO done because... tarantula......... tarantulas are very "fluffy". However, also like the tarantula, fern is by NO MEANS soft. At all. That fluff of his is made of grass just like the rest of him and if you were ever the type to play with grass a lot as a kid then you know how badly that stuff can cut you. Also very itchy. Not called grass blades for nothing. On top of that, I also really like to incorporate the number 3 a lot in his design. 3 tuft strands, 3 prongs on his hat tie (getting to that), 3 hand didgets (getting to that also). This is sort of meant to reference the fact that Fern is. a little complex. He isnt finn and he isnt the GD, hes his own thing. However, his "ingredients" are still there and a part of him- making his form. So you have the 1st one for finn, the 2nd one for the GD, and the 3d for Fern. Oh also the chest tuft is because dogs also have that and hes Big Dog Core to me (saying that as a guy who had 5 great danes once). For my adult design of him for my rewrite (...and also how i draw FC fern but i dont like him very much) the tuft gets bigger and makes his chest look more prominent. again NOT SOFT HES NOT SOFT (looks at my 2 mutuals who saw my fc design and said that theyd pet him) HE WILL CUT YOU
On the topic of the hat tie, He has a hat tie! See with Finn i draw his hat a little more detaile dbecause ngl i didnt know his hat was even supposed to be a bear until it was outright stated in the show and i think thats stupid So i made it actually resemble a bear. I gave it a nose (because they got the hat form skinning an actual bear and you keep the nose when you skin things) and made the ears rounder. With fern, his hat isnt any longer meant to represent a bear. It's its own thing. But i still wanted it to be detailed, so hat tie it is! This also works because, unlike with skin, a normal hat doesnt just hold itself together and a tie is needed. Also also, i REALLY like the idea of it being more of a bonnet actually... Not for any good reason admittedly i just associate that sort of thing with nature lol. The nubs on his hat are really fun for me too. I like to draw little swirls on the tops because not ONLY do i think swirls would be a good motif for fern but ALSO because i think the little nubs are formed like hay rolls. i'm not really. sure. if thats something a lot of people are familiar with. Ill get a photo
^^^ hay rolls
me and my countryboy life. anyway
So i like to think that his hat nubs are basically these but smaller, hence the swirl.
This also sorta ties into the cylinders that make up a ot of his shapes! Ofc from any given side he looks like a square, but his torso is actually ALSO a cylinder like this. just a silly thing.. hes sorta built like a scarecrow to me (both in build shape and composition).
His sleeves and pant legs on his shorts (...short legs??) are flared out a little as well. gonna be real with you i know i had a reason for doing this but i forgot. I think it may have originally stemmed from my SUPER old design of him having more triangular those things but eventually as my art improved and i learned how to actually draw those it became softer and less triangular. It's probably just because it makes him look more pointy. In fact i like to make most aspects of his design pointy rather than curved if i can just to show that
HIS HANDS/FEET ok. So you might ask me. you might ask me "why did you remove one of his fingers" and you might ask me "why did you give him an extra toe". I have my reasons. First of all, I gave him an extra toe because CREATURES WITH DIFFERENT NUMBERS OF DIGITS ON THE BACK AND FRONT LEGS MAKE NO SENSE THATS NOT HOW THAT WORKS. So i gave him an extra little digit and removed one on his hands. This happened to work out really well for a few reasons. 1: his tracks look like some cliché dino track, and thats cool. 2: makes him look like a goat (commonly associated with demons [no i dont think fern is a literal demon]) 3: his hands looking like that is really important to me. Not only does it make him look more off putitng (its less accurate to say that hes missing a finger but probably better to saythat its more comparable to if your index and middle fingers fused along with your pinky and ring finger. his fingers didnt literally fuse but if youre able to do that one hand trick then thats closer to what it looks like.) and weird, but it ALSO matches Finns mechanical arm
yeah that’s right we got hand symbolism here.
So finns mechanical arm in the show only has 3 digits. Now, fern MATCHES that arm, which is sort of interesting if you consider that his right arm only has 3 digits because the grass sword ripped it off. More of a symbolic connection than a literal one (fern doesnt literally look like that to match finn) but it's still definitely something to be aware of. Also worth noting, this makes them now mirror one another in a way that isnt particularly shown here lol but for my rewrite, fern also loses an arm. His LEFT arm. And the prosthetic is wooden. Now if they were facing one another like a proper mirror, their missing arms would align, but also not really- because theyre missing opposite arms. Also they can hold hands better because they have the same number of fingers /platonic Oh and while i did say that ferns hands/feet were big to resemble bases of trees theyre also like that because he just Hasnt grown into them yet. his hands are big in general but theyre big on HIM too. When hes an adult he sorta evens out lol (like i said, big dog core. puppies have big paws compared to the rest of themselves)
anyways onto the topic of his hair. So i know we all saw his hair be all pretty and fine and not knotted but lets be real. thats not at all realistic this boy does NOT brush his hair. He's probably even worse about it than finn and we already knows HES really bad about it. #depression. Its ok hes still pretty anyway. Also I honestly dont really have a set flower or flower color I use for him, I just throw in whatever lol It's not super important yet. You may have also noticed with my Handy Dandy Arrow pointing to his head to a certain hair tuft. thats the baby version of the super long one he gets as an adult. little sprout
For his book bag, I actually make it pretty big compared to the rest of him. Not only is this just because the boy has like no torso but it’s Also because it makes him look more spidery. The bag is about the size of his torso if not even a little bigger and thus makes his torso seem bulkier and rounder but still centralized on that one spot. Thus, he looks even more like a weird little freak spider. Love that. The straps on the bags are also triangles usually when i draw them. This was done in his old old design ii had for him a while ago along with the triangle sleeves and short legs, however unlike with those, this never really changed or smoothed out lol it’s still the same. Evolution
For his teeth i have a few of them missing, as seen in the actual show. However, Also as seen in the show, his teeth have grown to become sharper and he has gained a full set of them in this time. What’s fun here is that his canines do actually get longer than the rest of the teeth that grow a bit too. In reference to the fact that my rewrite fern will have fangs that are much longer by default because he’s a weird spider. He’s a spider to me have you gotten that yet (he’s actually also a snake to me but that’s a little harder to show with his base design outside of the occasional forked tongue and hissing he does [the hissing is really great actually because tarantulas also hiss they’re so cutesy])
Lastly as shown on the page are his big eyes. I personally like to see his yellow yes as a sort of occasional transmutation.. Like he had normal eyes 90% of the time. When this happens, it’s a BREAK in the usual art style he is deprecated in. It’s supposed to be weird and off putting and shocking and- after seeing most people with dot eyes and getting used to humanoids having that shape of eye as normal- almost uncanny. He’s weird and uncanny and that’s the POINT. His eyes doing that shows that he’s not just some Green Human. Hes not a human. Close, but not exactly. So i think whenever his eyes do that, they actually straight up expand in their sockets and his pupils and up becoming slits (snake core). He’s so fascinating to me
Bonus: here’s a clear comparison between his design and Finn’s design
Very very very different. Similar but very apart.












