Let's talk about Phase One and where I got the inspiration for the very first set of Gender Buddies.
Agender - This one needed to be something not animal-like not for ambiguity, but a sense of unalignment. The original idea was just a rocky little critter who was an Earth type that could camouflage, and it was literally just a rock without the body segments. Then it slowly turned into having the ability camouflage in volcanic areas, but I wasn't sure how that green color would fit in with the design. I went with sulfur and changed the Buddy to a Fire type to better match its environment and balance out the many Earth types yet to be released. The body segments and random other details were added later because it looked a little too plain even for a Level 1 Buddy.
Nonbinary - This was originally a blobby slime creature that would stick to everything and then that idea became a slug that would leave nonbinary-colored slime everywhere - the slime color was changed to one color because it looked better. The sluggy body was meant to be sort of ambiguous, like a liquid but not quite. I wanted it to be flexible. Then as I was actually sketching it out digitally and looking at references to get the slug shape just right, I saw this cute little snail terrarium on Etsy where the plants were inside a clear shell. The liquid-filled clear shell was an obvious choice for design, especially if I were to keep the Water typing. It almost became a Plant type with plants inside the shell, but this set already had two Plant types scheduled for release. If I decide on a variant, like using a recolored nonbinary flag or making it nonbinaryflux or something, I may bring back that idea.
Ambigender - I knew right away that this Buddy would have two bodies merged together, but this slot in the phase was actually supposed to be for Maverique - it would have been a Fire type as well. But I'm having trouble finalizing the design for Maverique, so I replaced that with another Fire type. The color and pattern took some thinking because I wanted it to be seen as two separate critters rather than having a perfect blend between them to show the static nature of the ambigender identity. I made sure to have an obvious split between the two and make sure each half had its own color palette - one blue and one red. I have no idea why I came up with a salamander, but fiery salamanders are a pretty obvious go-to in art and design. The patterns are based on a tiger salamander and a spotted salamander, but the final design ended up looking more like a cartoony dinosaur.
Genderera - This one is based on my redesign of the genderera flag and is a counterpart to gendervir in its design and coloration. The difference is the big flower on the head and the lack of belly color, which is hard to see with its pose. It also has more spots. I really tried not to make it a warm-color replica of the gendervir design. Why I went with a froggy critter is beyond me. It just seemed to look really cute.
Gendervir - This was the first Buddy I ever designed, first on paper and then digitally when I was ready to start the project. I wanted it to have much more foliage on the body and even a leafy tail, which is where the Plant typing came from. Nonbinary was already a Water type, so I didn't end up changing this one's typing to fit the frog look. The tongue and feet webbing almost didn't make it into the final design, and the spots and belly color were a very last-minute addition. Gendervir is an important term for me so I wanted to make this critter before the others and really make the design something unique. The colors are based on my redesign of the gendervir flag.
Neutrois - This sounds bad but I didn't like this one! I knew I wanted it to look robot-like but I didn't know how I wanted the face or details to look. It originally had plain circular eyes and simple round ears, which made it look like a bear almost. Then I started trying to incorporate neutrois symbols into it - you'll notice it has eyes that look like one type of symbol and antennas on the head that look like another. The electrical nature of the critter just made sense, so it's always had the wire tail and magnet since I sketched it out on paper. The mouth looks almost ghoulish so if there's ever a chance to make something like... maybe neutroisfluid, I kind of want it to look like there's a ghost-like thing inside the body, which is hollow. It'd be fun to play around with.
Abinary - For some reason, I was so determined to make this a Light type and it took a while for me to figure out how to make it work. I almost went entirely ambiguous and made it look like some alien creature no one has ever seen before - basically a little fuzzy sprite. It didn't look interesting enough, so I kept adding buggy body parts to try and figure out something that looked cute. Eventually I landed on an aphid, which fits with the word "aphorian" (another word for abinary.) Aphids are known to make honeydew, so I gave it a big honeydew drop on its back. The antennae were going to be pointed forward with glowing balls on the ends, but then I leaned more into the aphid design and changed the antennae accordingly.
Cassgender - When imagining indifference, I simply thought about sleeping. This turned into the idea of sleeping with a teddy bear. I really wanted it to look comfy and cozy and really cutesy, which really works well with how soft the cassgender flag looks. Making it a Lunar type would have been too obvious (since bears are tied to the moon) and I'm lacking in Shadow types, so it made sense to make it a type that reflects the nighttime rather than the moon.
Magigender - Magigender manekineko! That's the lucky cat from Japanese culture that brings fortune and luck. I wanted so badly to make a lucky cat somewhere in this project and thought that the magi- in magigender reminded me of magic, so the manekineko was used here. I imagined it being a Metal type because of gold and silver, so that's the type I went with. Gold and metal works well with the magigender flag. I was determined to write the kanji on the belly myself instead of just finding an image, and I needed a shorter phrase so that I could write it properly. I went with "shine" (or "brilliance") to reflect (heh) the shining quality of metals. The fan in its hand spells "nya", the Japanese word for the sound a cat makes. The fan is one of the few times I added my own color, made to be orange instead of the Japan-flag-red because it fit the palette better. I almost combined the manekineko with the daruma doll, an item Japanese people use to make wishes by painting eyes on it, but I am going to reserve the daruma doll for another Buddy in the future.
Aesthetigender - For aesthetigender, I wanted to actually choose one aesthetic to represent but I didn't want it to be aesthetically pleasing if that makes sense? I really love pastels, and I like music, so I originally chose the city pop aesthetic as a basis (which may not sound familiar to some people, but it's the predecessor to the vaporwave aesthetic.) It needed to be something urban, so I went with both a rat and a pigeon, and I wanted to make it nocturnal. I really wanted the city pop aesthetic to be the main part of this design, but I couldn't pass up the opportunity to make the star into that iconic vaporwave sun. The heart-shaped thingy on the pigeon beak was turned into a cool visor to make it kind of tech-ish. With it being another night-themed critter, I chose for it to be a Shadow type. I almost made it into a tanuki because I was watching Pom Poko when I was sketching it, but I'll save that for another critter design.
Outherine - I've always had a space critter design that is very rodent-like in its design and I wanted to find a spot for it, so I just went with it on a whim. It ties in gerbil and rat body parts with a whimsical space aesthetic on top. The starry eyes made me think of stargazing and I thought it was really cute, so I made it the Stellar type instead of the more obvious Cosmic type. That type comes in the next phase!
Omnigray - As with all Mythical Buddies, this one is a term I coined myself. When thinking of shades of gray, I thought of something kind of cold and stormy. This design was almost a Storm type but I feel that I have too many of those right now, and this was an easy way to introduce the Air type. I thought of mythical creatures that call on storms and landed on the peacock, which is how phoenixes are usually depicted. This one, however, needed to catch followers by surprise. Fire peacocks are just too obvious, so I went to the exact opposite. The idea of ice and storms made it easy to figure out that I wanted this critter to sit on a dark cloud. As a Mythical Buddy, it needed to look majestic and beautiful, so I really leaned into the flowy look of peacock feathers. It has a sort of Elizabethan style to its "dress", which you can see by the feathery collar.
That's all! I think this phase had plenty of healthy stumbling as I figured out how I wanted it to turn out. If I could, I would totally redesign a lot of these Buddies - maybe in the future if I turn this into a huge, long-running project that I dedicate more time to! I'm excited for the next batch of Buddies to be released and there are so many of them that I want to draw RIGHT NOW, but I really need to stay on track and do these in the proper order. Let me know what you thought!
