I'm planning to do a BIG series of Kwami swaps (80 additional designs, plz wish me luck 🙏) but first I needed some basics of my design principles for each character and Kwami, so here are all the designs I'm working with::
To make the 80 designs more manageable, my plan is to work by the Miraculous first, for example I'll do all of the bee & all of the snake designs rather than all of Chloe & all of Luka's designs, that way I'm working in slightly smaller batches of designs & I can keep them unique enough from one another
And if anyone is curious, here's my chart for organizing the swaps and also the hero names:
(and I'm allowing comments on the document if you have any thoughts or alternate names (bc I'm not sold on ALL of them) so plz feel free to do so)
P.S. I don't intend on doing anything with this in terms of a story or lore, or even full illustrations, it's just something I've wanted to do for a long time
The Kwamis! Some of these came easier than others, but since Angelic Layer has no magic involved, all the kwamis became human~ They won't be very prevalent, they're mostly here to fill in background character roles - shop clerks, MCs Tournament Directors, fans - so they won't have a whole lot of speaking roles (aside from, you know, the MCs who're there to commentate on the fights lol). But I thought I'd give them all a nice nod in the story somewhere.
As expected, Tikki and Plagg are the main MCs. Marinette and Adrien's fights will be going on concurrently so Tikki will be commentating Marinette's fights while Plagg commentates on Adrien's. They'll have the most dialogue of the kwamis, so I do want them to have unique ways of discussing what they're seeing.
Pollen will be working directly for the Bourgeois'. As a VIP with a direct relationship with the international director of Angelic Layer, Chloe has her own private practice layer in her home and Pollen is in charge of it's upkeep and maintenance. She matches Armand the Bulter's levels of competence.
Trixx is a Rena Rouge mega fan. They've been following Alya's blog for as long as they can remember and are mega stoked that Alya moved to their city. When Alya starts to doubt herself, it's Trixx's voice that can be heard cheering her on to not give up.
Nooroo and Duusu are servants in the Agreste Estate. Unknown to Adrien, they are fully aware of his sneaking around to play and the two do what they can to make excuses and deflect Nathalie when Adrien isn't where he's supposed to be. They're rooting him on from the shadows!
Wayzz is the adult son of Marianne and Fu. He brings them to Angelic Layer fights against his will because the two really enjoy them. The two seem to be really invested in Ladybug and Chat Noir's career (and the behind the scenes shenanigans that they secretly spy on).
Longg is Kagami's bodyguard. Like Nooroo and Duusu, they are fully aware of what Kagami is doing behind her mother's back and feigns ignorance when Kagami pulls something..."sneaky" to get to a fight secretly.
Here's where we get into some existing jobs from the show:
Orikko and Kaalki are the "Layer Hot Girls (and boy)". lol I just thought it was funny that Angelic Layer even has them.
Mullo is the sales clerk at the Princess Piffle store (the store where you can buy your Angel and all the accessories). All of them lol. Mullo and her many many sisters who look just like her.
Barkk and Fluff take similar but still different roles (the uniforms are ALMOST the same but there are some tiny differences). So Barkk is the receptionist at the Practice Ring (literally you pay to reserve a mini-layer to practice on) while Fluff is the waitress/cashier at the cafeteria at the Tournament Center.
(and back to making shit up lol)
Daizzi is a nurse where Rose goes to the hospital and she has segmental localized vitiligo. Rose is particularly close to Daizzi since she helps Rose make her donations to the hospital.
Sass is the backstage directory, aka, the guy who makes things run. He has an earpiece that has the same diamond pattern as his pants on it! The anime does show one person who helps backstage, but I wanted to have a little fun with Sass's look and tie in to him being "in charge" of the kwamis.
Ziggy works at Socqueline's family art supply shop, which is frequented by Angelic Layer players who are on a bit of a budget. They love talking with the customers about their angels, though mostly the design part.
Stompp is Ivan's foster mother and Roarr his foster sister (Stompp's bio-daughter). I actually didn't think of what kind of job this outfit would be good for, but I think she'd make a good security guard - usually working at rock concerts, which she bonds with Ivan over, but she's also been hired for Angelic Layer tournaments. Sometimes sore losers get a little...violent.
Roarr falls in love with Juleka's Angel Purple Tigress immediately thanks to her pre-existing love of tigers in general. She's even bold enough to proclaim her love to Juleka herself!
Xuppu is Ondine's sibling and a fan of King Monkey, though they'll go out of their way to make fun of Kim himself. Secretly, they're very invested in Kim's career and get very upset on his behalf when he loses.
The monkey miraculous is already based on Sun Wukong, so I tried to figure out how to incorporate that in the design. Wukong’s iconic elements are the Jingu-Quan golden band (金箍圈) and the Ruyi-Jingu-Bang staff (如意金箍棒), however both of those are already parts of the miraculous; so it’d feel strange if the Kwami wore mini-replicas. I decided to style the hair strands like the Phoenix-Crown, and added the Fiery-Golden Gaze (火眼金睛) that sees truth.
I used Shenlong (神龍) as inspiration; a Celestial Dragon (usually dark blue/black) that can command winds, rainfall, and thunderstorms. The mystical pearl that Shenlong carries is a tool for controlling the weather— I colored it gold, as I thought it’d look better with the color palette. Something interesting I learned while researching, was the phrase “Shenlong falls into disgrace” (神龍失勢) which is a metaphor for a capable person losing status/power. Apparently this saying arose from a cultural shift after the fall of dynasties in China, and the focus shifted from appeasing nature to human resilience.
So Zoe yesterday was sharing her frustrations with chosen colors for the Zodiac kwamis, and just how uncolorful they are as a whole (having a lot of browns and greys), which spiraled into a little bit of a rabbit hole on odd kwami designs and choices on how they were handled (just a little).
And on the topic was me being so baffled for Longg's colors.
Like I do think another red kwami was needed, but why the one related to weather? And specifically elements of air, lightning, and water. Shouldn't Longg have colors that reflect those elements? As usually those aren't tied to red. Elementally red's usually tied to fire. But that's the one element he's canonly not tied to. There's also the issue that he's red and black, which Tikki already is. At least mix up the 2nd color to red so Longg and Tikki don't compete as red-black kwamis. Dragon's kinda tied to yellow so he could've been red and yellow.
Anyway, given what he's tied to, Longg could've been all blue, the sky is blue, water is blue, air is usually a light blue in media, and sometimes lightning is portrayed as a pale blue.
Or, what could've been more fun, Longg could've had colors that better reflected those 3 elements, being blue with gold and white accents.
I still don't like the party cone horns, but I do think that this could've been more visually interesting, and better reflect the power.
