#silverwing series

[northern-ghost-13]

my own shade design!

[felicanfooli]

Guess who rediscovered an old show that I probably haven't watched (and never finished) in over a decade :)

I was planning on drawing a more accurate bat furry oc, but while looking for references, I came across some screenshots of the Silverwing tv series. So, of course, I had to make a little brown batsona

[sapphic-suchoripterus]

I know its easy to harp on the Silverwing 2003 cartoon for its edgy Gargoyle-ish art direction and some of the stranger adaptation decisions, but honestly considering it was a Teletoon production I think we actually really lucked out with what we got. The animal violence may not have been at the level of the book, but it was still pretty high up there for a PG rated cartoon.

I do take issue with emphasizing the Spectral bats as 'Barbaric Savages from South America with Spanish-speaking accents", but that was also an issue of the book.

I also wish they had adapted Sunwing too so that Orestes' introduction would be more in-line with the series, but I think if they were really only going to make the first book into the miniseries, it wasn't a bad choice, definitely gave dimension to the Owl kingdom.

I greatly appreciate that the only difference between male and female bats is beard hair. That they can all have similar yet diverse body and face shapes regardless of gender.

I get the intention of Ursa and the wolves as a way to incorporate the politics of the Beast Kingdom, something we barely get a sniff of aside from the Rats in the book series. The idea of the wolves as purely war profiteers I think was a good idea, added to the larger world.

One thing I do miss about the books was the immersive point of view switch of Shade and Goth, their inner thoughts and rationalization made them very interesting characters and unfortunately with the lack of time spent with that in the cartoon, it leaves them both a little bit flat as characters in comparison.

The music rocks in this show. Feels dynamic and appropriate for the tone. Maybe a little indulgent at times, but I'm totally fine with that. Much better than leaving it lacking.

I also enjoy the turmoil of the Silverwing colony, with Chinook learning not to be an asshole, Frieda struggling to maintain order against Bathsheba, but I'll admit it gets a little too dramatic for the sake of it... with Bathsheba wrestling the leadership away and eventually selling out the whole colony.

As a whole I think it works as its own thing. And thankfully not leaden down with too much corporate focus group garbage thrown in. (Like a lot of other book series adaptations I read as a kid...) Not bad at all on the rewatch, and it absolutely still fulfills my childhood animal fantasy story creative mind. I love it.

Also Throbb getting a stick shoved in his mouth still makes me laugh.

[flittermousing]

one of the books ever

[chase-the-freakin-stars]

did some...idk...screenshot recolors...? just for fun to see what these guys would look like if they were actually semi-book-accurate (shade esp., though i couldn’t help letting goth and throbb keep their iconic colorful mullets). very interesting to do

[echosong-87]

Finally doodled Shade… he a smol bean

:3

Again….. bored…. And i am moving…. So posts will be spacey

Bonus!!!… Ruby’s spooky eyes!

See ya later

[blitzy-arts]

Another re-draw of this frame from Silverwing!

Art by me.

[justawfulxmenart]

In the YA Animal Fantasy genre of the 00′s there are your Warrior Cats, your Guardians of Ga’hoole and your David Clement-Davies series.

Then there’s Silverwing. Holy fucking hell, there’s Silverwing. The Silverwing series doesn’t stand out to me in that is groundbreaking or particularly poignant or a valid commentary of society or what have you. What makes it stand out is that it’s So. Fucking. Weird.

Like, ok. There’s a blood feud between the bats and the owls. The bats are under penalty of death if they look at the SUN. And the owls and manipulate fire. Also some scary cannibal bat fuckers are running amok being creepy and murdery and the owls are now waging genocide on the bats because they’ve been framed.

And that’s the first BOOK!

Things that also happen in the series: Canada is at war with Brazil. Humans use bats and owls as bio warfare against one another. There is a BAT HELL. Antagonists make pact with ancient Death God who wants to come to the world of the living and turn everyone into zombies.

It’s a great read for Halloween.

Here’s some characters. I LOVE Bats. So it was a joy to portray each of the characters based on their respective species. 

Art is mine. Characters belong to Kenneth Oppel bless his soul.