Could you tell me your process in designing Merlin and Charlie, both in aesthetics and personalities? You mentioned in your Q&A post about the design changes so I’m intrigued in your thought process!
Thanks for the ask! :D
My memory is shit so I had to go through old Discord messages for this lmaooo, but it was fun! …When I wasn’t dying due to cringe.
For those who don’t know, these two are Tales of Arcadia’s Merlin, and Tales of Arcadia’s Charlie! Aka the two that started all this.
Merlin:
Back when The King of the Nameless was still a ToA fanfiction, (titled Emerald Embers), I didn’t have plans to change Merlin that much at first, besides giving him a long white ponytail (inspired by his concept art), some earrings, and the outfit that @tenyai drew in some storyboard explorations!
After some time passed, I decided to make him look more intimidating to better fit his role as someone who’s been through war for most of his life. I was inspired by this concept art! I thought he looked really cool, and it’s still my favorite storyboard version of him.
A few months later my Artbreeder era started when I wanted to make him myself. We don’t talk about that.
Eventually, I got a design commissioned!
By this point, I’d had the idea to depict him with darker skin, but he didn’t have a defined race (I accepted @aaronwaltke’s headcanon/idea of him being so old nationalities weren’t a thing yet.)
Time passed, and I went on my unintentional but helpful hiatus for several months before coming back.
Once I started revisiting the yet to be retitled Emerald Embers, I had the idea to redesign Merlin again.
I had watched this TikTok, and afterwards, for some reason, got curious and decided to look up if locs with white hair exist (they do, of course, I was just making sure I wasn’t being stupid).
The idea was also partly from me realizing that Merlin being ambiguously brown without a defined race wasn’t… good, even with his “age”. The trope of characters without a defined race is really common, and a bit problematic, so it would be cool to have a clearly Black protagonist. I was already getting heavily attached to the concept when I approached my boyfriend with it, and I tried to convince him to tell me redesigning him again was a bad idea, but I don’t think I would’ve listened even if he had told me lol.
I also remembered Once Upon A Time’s Merlin, who’s Black, and that helped convince me more!
About a week later, I was making Picrews while planning to commission someone eventually!
I finally approached his original artist after searching for one a bit, because I saw one of their posts on Reddit and loved their art style!
After a few renditions, Merlin had a set design at last!
Or… so I thought, lol. I’d wanted Merlin to have an undercut on every side of his head, like an au of Adora where she has the hairstyle, and his locs actually going halfway down his back. I basically gaslighted myself into forgetting that when his first artist drew it short. 💀 Maybe he started growing it out and shaved the rest of his head after he turned immortal or something lol.
Anyways, got into contact with his current design’s artist. While looking up references for his body type (even though I had one already, so I don’t know why I did that lol), I found his current body type and was like “Perfect”.
And his hair is actually longer than I’d planned! :D Fully down, I think it would reach his knees or possibly longer.
Then him being a transgender man grabbed me by the throat, and I eventually came up with a design for how he looked when he found Charlie!
He was physically twelve at this point, but chronologically sixty-four. (Almost thirteen and sixty-five lol. He transitioned when he was sixteen physically, chronologically eighty.)
So, in a summary, Merlin has gone from cisgender white ➡️ cisgender ambiguously brown skinned (glad I changed that lol) ➡️ cisgender Black ➡️ transgender Black.
He’s changed so much lol.
And something I find funny about DR!Merlin's design vs TKN Merlin: the latter Merlin is just. ONE inch taller now. 6'8" compared to 6'7".
Also I’ll end this with the point that technically, his appearance is never described in original Arthurian text, so he can look like whatever I want him to. ;)
Charlie:
Finally onto the best boy!!
After getting my first adoptable, a dragon named Mantis, I looked at ToA Charlie again and just went “😬”
Alongside him being a little bit too humanoid for my taste, (and his neck proportions taking me out, lol) his wings being leathery with holes in them made me annoyed because they logically should have repaired themselves; as long as a bat has proper rest and nutrition, tears in their wings can heal on their own without medical attention. With as many holes as he has, he obviously shouldn’t be able to fly.
Anyways, thought of redesigning him for a bit, but never had any fleshed out concepts of anything since dragon Picrews are unfortunately hard to come by.
Then I got this dragon adoptable!
Apparently about three minutes later, I thought: what if that was the redesign for Charlie? I ran with it, and that’s how this dragon became Charlie! Still ToA at this point, lol.
(Me deciding an adoptable is perfect for a character design, actually, was what happened with Morgana too but we’ll talk about her later.)
Later, I saw an awesome unicorn adoptable and wondered if it was still open, so I contacted Charlie’s second artist! It wasn’t, so I asked if I could get a commission instead since some slots were available.
If I remember right, I asked for him to be in a flying pose, and after a traditional sketch I loved immediately, it was onto digital, then coloring! He got a little bit of a redesign, lol; I love how his colors seem far more vibrant, and how his wings actually look like lava! :D
Somewhere along the line, I decided the swirls and leaves on his leg would be his familiar mark!
Time passed, and The King of the Nameless started coming to life. I asked Reddit for new name suggestions for Charlie because I thought I shouldn't/couldn't keep the same name; got absolutely great suggestions like Fred, Scorch (also fun fact that's referenced in this oneshot lol), and... Jarred. No, I'm not kidding. Gave up on Reddit and Googled male dragon names before going to a generator. That gave me the amazing name Tyson, and hell yeah, I'm absolutely gonna name an ancient dragon after chicken nuggets! (It's actually derived from the Old French word "tison", or "firebrand", but admit it, the chicken nuggets is funnier.) I even thought of naming him Falkor after the dragon in The Neverending Story lol.
But Falkor didn't stick. No matter how hard I tried, my brain refused to latch onto the name, and I always kept internally referring to my dragon as Charlie. I tried to think of more new names, but nothing would come to mind, and at one point the only name I could think of was Adam. Eventually my boyfriend just said "as long as you don't name him Charlemagne from Tales of Arcadia you'll be fine".
So after all that, Charlie he stayed!
Some more time passed, and I got my first commission of Merlin and Charlie in the same picture!
He was unintentionally drawn as pretty small since I forgot to send size references at first lol.
Got two more pieces! He was pretty much consistent size wise for these two.
I started getting a fourth piece of them together, using an incredible sketch I made for the artist to have as a reference that I should post against the final art like this post lol.
And when I got the sketch, Charlie was BIG, far bigger than before.
Debated on it keeping it his new size or not for a little bit until I was like: "fuck it we ball the other arts are in the past and this is present". (Also Merl's hair isn't long in most pieces anyway lol.)
Bro's like. the size of a car now.
Something I thought funny that applies to both of their designs: just like Merlin’s hair got longer and longer (although I wanted it halfway down his back in the first place and forgot) Charlie’s gotten bigger and bigger lol.
Commissioned another piece with Charlie's new size!
Another thing about Charlie's design I find funny: he's bigger than ToA Charlie now.
That concludes the epic saga of their design changes, and now they're both set in stone! They really are. I promise.
Artist credits: @undeadchestnut, @honeyxmonkey, Soberana Art (on Artstation), @cat-gh0ul, NaldThal (on Ko-Fi), @heropaws, @biposi, @honeyxmonkey, @theeio, @azurewildflight
Picrew credits: djarn, romanapologist/hotvanilla, brightgoat
Links to their individual posts, if applicable: ToA Merlin’s concept art (1, 2, 3, 4), Merlin’s original hair (1, 2, 3), ToA Merlin’s medieval outfit, The Original Tiktok, White locs (1, 2, 3), Adora undercut au, Merlin’s original body type, Merlin’s current body type, Current Merlin, Trans Merlin, Mantis the dragon, Original Charlie, Charlie's name fiasco (on Reddit), Forest, Cuddles, Sploot, Embrace, Meadow. (also a few more links throughout the post lol)
Taglist: @gaylightisminetocommand, @the-arson-author-gamer, @honeyxmonkey, @danhengsbestie