#natives!malva

[ohfugecannada]

Here are some concept sketches of Natives!MalVa I forgot to post.

For the face and top half I mostly stayed faithful to @ben-the-hyena’s design with the lion/ape face (leaning more towards lion in my version of the design).

Since the original drawing only showed the head and bust, I decided to do my own interpretation of the body and outfit. When drawing dark crystal chracters or designing ocs (like with my idea for the natives au Raunip equivalent) I tend to look at the art of Brian Froud for inspiration and reference to get a good balance between the character being unique while still feeling like something that would exist in the Dark Crystal universe.

It was here that I ran into a problem as, while I wanted to go for a slightly chubby muscular body, muscular bodies weren’t a very common body type in Froud’s work. Most of the characters drawn by Froud are either very lanky (the gelfling, firies most of his fairies) , potbellied (most of the skeksis) or mega chonkers (Ludo). In the end I modeld MalVa’s body on wrestlers like Brandon Slay and Rulon Gardner. My reasoning was that while using his bow most of the time, MalVa would also become stronger from fights wrangling larger prey.

For the outfit I recreated the top from the original design while adding this long skirt/loincloth type thing and later the red shawl in the final piece. Since MalVa’s story in the Natives AU takes place sometime during the same time as the creation myths comics and the skeksis and Urru of this period canonically dressed like this:

I figured this MMORPG bakini armour type clothing would be pretty fitting.

[ohfugecannada]

@ben-the-hyena @dracocheesecake

Finally! After T H R E E DA M N M O N T H S , I give you my take on natives!MalVa.

I based his face and torso mostly on @ben-the-hyena’s original design. With the rest of the body and some minor tweaks, I took artistic liberties. Like giveing MalVa ape-like feet since I have this headcanon that polydactylism is common with Natives!ursekeks. Some urskeks have a fith finger on thier hand, while others, like MalVa, have opposable thumbs on thier feet.

As for the red cloak I gave him in the second pic, ive got a bit of backstory for that: before, MalVa was on his own hunting in the wilderness and only had a torn up and all black outfit (similar to skekMal’s in that one bit of concept art in the Age of Resistance art book). Then, he ran into a group of other Urskeks who, like him, were either outcasted by or left thier Skeksis/Urru socities (at this point in the timeline, Urskeks weren’t enslaved or treated like animals like in the events of AoR, but were still seen as strange and were discriminated against in some cases). Eventually one of these Urskeks, EketUtt, made and gave the cloak and bracelets to MalVa as a gift. Because he noticed MalVa always wore the same dirty clothes and thoght he’d like make new clean ones for him (he even stitched a couple of leaf shaped beads into it since, ya know, MalVa spends a lot of time outside and likes nature, right?). Dispite EketUtt calling him dirty MalVa was actually pretty touched by this since it was one of the first times in ages that someone showed him genuine kindness and thought of his wellbeing, even if he tried his best not to show it at the time. Even after the urskeks met Aughra, MalVa still wore the red cloak on hunts. But he only ever wears the bracelets when he’s paying Aughra a viset.

[ohfugecannada]

👀❤️

@ben-the-hyena @dracocheesecake

Got a bit of burn out after writing that natives!darkheart thing. But I’m back and working on some natives AU designs, so stay tuned!

[ohfugecannada]

@ben-the-hyena @dracocheesecake

Thought I’d update the progress on some of my Natives AU related stuff.

After some experimentation and several passes on paper with the design of this guy, I finaly got to getting a sketch done on Autodesk sketchbook. Unfortunately, as I was working on the second sketch layer, I whet to check on my refs for two seconds and when I went back into Autodesk, there was nothing but a blank document. Apparently it had something to do with my tablet storage being full and me not saving manually regularly enough. Luckily, I saved a version of this sketch as a photo earlier. It still sucks though since I wanted to get this drawing done without distractions or anything since I spent like, two months on playing around with just concepts. :(

Anyway, I’ll try to get some rest and hopefully I’ll be able to redo the stuff I lost and pick up where I left off! Thanks for all your patience and I hope you guys like what I’m working on once it’s finished! ♥️

[ohfugecannada]

Ok so...

A couple months back, I was thinking about how various chracters in the Dark Crystal universe would fit into @ben-the-hyena and @dracocheesecake’s natives au. More specifically, the UrSkeks and I thought about the Darkheart.

Now, for those of you who haven’t read the Creation Myths comics (which I recommend you go track down a copy of if your a fan of The Dark Crystal), the Darkheart was an UrSkek who was banished to thra along with the other seventeen other UrSkeks for having “darker natures”. But he still missed his homeworld, and so sang an UrSkek song in order to try and contact his people. Many trine later, at the Second Great Conjunction, he heard the song again from a gelfling song teller named Gyr, who had overheard the song on his seattavels long ago. It reminded darkheart of the pain and sadness he felt for being banished from his homeworld. This, coupled with Raunip calling him and the other UrSkeks out on ther hypocrisy, clauses him to snap and lose his composure during the conjunction. Which in turn causes the Crystal to reject all of the UrSkeks, splitting them into mystics and skeksis.

As you can tell, The Darkheart is a pretty interesting chracter and I wanted to include him in the Natives au. However, since in the Natives AU, the skeksis and mystics aren’t two halves of the UrSkeks, are, as the name of the AU suggests, natives to Thra, and UrSkeks are a hybrid species of Skeksiscand Urru, I spent some time wracking my brain over how Darkheart would fit into the Natives AU.

After some thinking, I came up with, not one, but TWO chracters that are this AU’s Darkheart equivalent.

The first Darkheart is a recurring character archetype of both skeksis and Urru myths, legends and folktales. From which of the two cultures specifically the figure originated from is a topic of much heated debate among the literary historians of Thra. But what is known is that mentions of a figure known as the Darkheart in early texts (referd to in some translations as ‘The Darkened One’, ‘The Poisonous’ or ‘the Heretic’ etc) started some trine after the second conjunction and since then tales of the Darkheart have become quite popular in skeksis and Urru folktales, literature and theatre. Such popularity has resulted in the Darkheart character to find its way into gelfling tales. Even some podling cultures have their own versions.

With the character of the Darkheart being so widespread across mutiple cultural mythologies, there are multiple interpretations and variations of the tale and the chracter itself. (With the version I wrote being just one example of many, many, MANY alternate versions)

In most stories, they’re an antagonistic figure ranging from a simple trickster to an embodiment of pure evil. Some stories don’t focus on the Darkheart as a main chracter but as an minor chracter for heros such as Jara-Jen of gelfling folklore to fight against or out wit. The ultimate fate of the Darkheart is almost never a good one. With them either being slain by a hero, being destroyed by a fault in thier own dastardly plan or, at best, being defeated by the hero who spares thier life and instead makes the darkheart thier slave humble servant to atone for thier villanous existence (the latter ending usually pops up more in tales from skeksis culture)

when it comes to the physical appearance of the Darkheart, there are some recurring features between the diverse range of versions; sharp fangs, tall, elongated body, spiked hair, multiple limbs, a tail and some form of supernatural powers, usually manifesting in the form of a glowing eyes, a hypnotic song, and of corse a literal black heart visible in thier chest. Some scollars have pointed out parallels between the physical characteristics of Urkeks and those of the Darkheart character. Parallels of which I’m sure are a complete and total coincidence and in no way had any part in the perception, oppression and eventual enslavement of UrSkeks by Skeksis and gelfling *cough* *cough*

The second darkheart on the other hand, was a real urskek who lived some time around the first and second conjunction. It’s entirely possible that the Darkheart of myth was very very loosely inspired by this one (somewhat like how Jesus Christ of Christianity was loosely based on a man known as Jesus of Nazareth. Or Robin Hood possibly on a man called Robert Hod of York). Though, obviously they weren’t evil and, In many ways, more similar to the canon Darkheart: they were banished by thier people from thier home, she’s joined by other UrSkeks who were also cast out by thier society for who they were, and they eventually met Aughra during the first conjunction.

But, of course, the story of this Darkheart. Or rather, the story of MalVa,* is probably one for another day... ;)

​*lol get retconned son