These are some supporting characters in my day-dream story Candy Gravity! Two best friends named Krysal the Pupa and Incher the Caterpillar!
While both of them are explicity in the story as the raincoat-wearing Pupa and super-duper hungry green Caterpillar, over the years I've expanded the designs for their other stages of life as fun scenarios to think about!
Naturally they're part of the vast "Bug" category of people on Planet Reverie. So far I've drawn a few other bug pals like a Butterfly, some Moths, Pupating characters here and there, a silly Centipede obsessed with tidiness, a couple of farmer Beetles, and a worm named Grubert (love that guy)!
Krysal and Incher's primary hangout spot would be in the local park. Picking tasty fruits from the community trees, splashing around in puddles near the pond, and begging to take up teensy odd-jobs from the park's maintenence guy Lotus to get a little pocket money. (Lotus is a pretty pompous and cross guy, but he has a soft spot for Krysal and Incher because they remind him of his siblings from his hometown.)
Although Krysal is still an energy-filled rambunctious kid, being a Pupa they get tuckered out easy and still need to conserve energy for their eventual metamorphosis so they opt to take a lot of breaks to go climb into trees, spin some silk, and just hang around quite literally. When they're up there, Incher will waddle around by himself munching on leaves and dandelions, or perhaps if he's got enough money he'll hit up whatever snack-stand has set up shop in the picnic area!
As a Caterpillar, Krysal was quiet and anxious, but opened up as a Pupa and even went on to become a "social Butterfly" as an adult!
Incher has always had a jaunty step as a Caterpillar and an appetite to match. Once he started Pupating, his energy tanked immensely but still managed to wolf down food like crazy. As a Moth, his appetite leveled out and he took up a culinary career!
If I recall correctly, my initial inspirations for Krysal happened in 2017. Taranza from the Kirby series served as the base idea of a type of insect character, paired alongside a raincoat as an outfit inspired by a character named Rainy Day by @starozoa ! The next year a song called Butterflies by Kacey Musgraves became an earworm for me and I created Krysal's design as a Butterfly at that point.
Incher's concept came out of Gooey from the Kirby series, just being a hungry lil guy of few words following their friend around! I borrowed the general face layout of Gooey. Expanding on the Dark Matter species as a whole, I thought about how in nature, eye mimicry is a thing that exists as a defense mechanism. After seeing a picture of Miracle Matter I wanted to incorporate similar shapes like that all over Incher's head and body!
Got inspired to draw @starozoa 's character Rainy Day being silly with Krysal (and Incher) since they served as inspiration for Krysal's outfit back in the day!
