#back in college I knew this one girl like Emma who was 1/4 asian but didn't look it a t a l l

[nattikay]

Sooooo I’m not sure if anyone would be interested in actually reading something like this, but I was looking through some of my older Miraculous art and seeing how the designs of my future AU characters have subtly evolved over time, so I wanted to make a post about designing these characters and how/why I made the decisions that I did! 

So first off, the birth order! I was originally intending to have the kids born in the order that they’re listed in the Stormy Weather episode:

...unfortunately, instead of actually looking at the episode to be sure, I just went off memory; I remembered Emma being the second but accidentally mixed up Hugo and Louis. By the time I realized this, the characters were already too cemented in my head to switch them back. ^^” Oh well.

In addition to the above, in my ~10 years of experience with next gen fics/art/OCs (I know, I have a problem), I’ve noticed that a pretty large fraction of the time folks opt for their OTP’s firstborn to be a daughter over a son. Nothing wrong with this, of course (heck, I’m a firstborn daughter myself haha), it’s just so disproportionately common that I thought making Hugo the firstborn instead of Emma might make my version stand out a bit more. ^^

Now with the siblings’ order decided, on to the designs! Starting with our oldest, 

Hugo!

Black hair and green eyes seems to be the most popular design for an Adrienette kid, and for good reason! It’s an appealing combo on its own in addition to using traits from both parents for the most notable genetic features in characters: hair and eyes. 

I also wanted to give Hugo some of his own flair though. I think the best next gen characters are recognizable as their parents’ offspring BUT can still stand on their own as unique individuals. One way to help do this is, when available, to draw on extended family rather than only their parents. 

Hugo’s strongest example of this (at least as a kid) is his slicked-back hairstyle, which was somewhat inspired by Gabriel’s. The slicked-back style seemed to fit his nerdy personality, but because he is a child and not nearly as uptight as his grandfather, Hugo’s hair is much messier than Gabriel’s, and he often has pieces falling out in the front. 

Admittedly I’m not super great at conveying the slicked idea from the front view, but you can see it a bit better in profile:

Hugo more than either of his siblings also takes after the Dupain side of the family, which isn’t super noticeable as a kid but becomes much more so as he grows up and develops the broad shoulders and strong upper body of Tom and Rolland. He’s not quite as enormous as Tom but is easily the strongest sibling (Louis, meanwhile, is a lanky little noodle like Adrien and Gabriel).

Going along with that, Hugo’s personality has loosened up a bit over time. While I do still draw him in his tucked-in button-up, I’ve also started drawing him in looser styles a bit more, because after all, he is just a goofy kid! This has included anything from using shorts instead of long pants to sometimes wearing just regular ol’ t-shirts instead of his nice button up (on which I rarely actually draw the plaid pattern I initially designed him with because wow it takes forever).

Funnily enough, this is a bit of the opposite of what happened to Adrien. My first sketches of adult!Adrien from this AU all have his shirt untucked, even whilst teaching, but now I almost always draw it neatly tucked in:

...interesting, interesting.

Anyways, while Hugo is still very much a little nerd who does quite well in school and LOVES learning about space and astronomy, he’s also a little more goofy and active than he was when I first created him. He’s probably the most athletic of his siblings (though really none of them are exactly jocks) and while he’s not particularly interested in organized competitive sports, he loves a good game of catch or tag. :)

While people in real life obvious wear any color they want, with my OCs I tend to pick a general palette and stick to it though all (or at least most) outfits, for consistency and easy recognizability. Hugo’s palette is mostly greens (for Chat Noir of course! ;) ), dark blues, and warm browns.

Now, onwards to 

Emma!

I decided to make my version of Emma blonde for two reasons: one, it appears to be so in the screencap shown at the beginning of the post, and while Marinette’s imaginations do not necessarily have to dictate how you design your versions of the kiddos, I liked having the consistency.

...plus then some years later Frozer rolled around and showed a blonde (imaginary) Emma again, so like 

...validation ;)

(by complete coincidence they’re even accurate to the color schemes I use kashdfgjsddsafjdf)

And the second is just that, again, most (not all, of course, but a lot) of the other Emmas I’ve seen in the fandom have been dark-haired, so again I thought it’d help mine stand out a bit.

So now with hair color established, it’s time for eye color. Most of the blond-haired Adrienette kids you see have blue eyes, for the same reason that a lot of dark-haired ones have green. Which, as said with Hugo, makes sense, since it’s the hair color of one parent and the eye color of the other. So why didn’t I make Emma’s eyes blue, then?

Well, it’s a bit of a silly reason tbh, but the blond-hair-blue-eyes combo reminded me a little too much of Chloe. ^^” Not that it would cause any parentage concerns, of course, since obviously Marinette is the one who gave birth to her, but the visual similarities still made me go like...eh ^^”

So green eyes it was! Which, of course, made her look a heck of a whole lot like her father.

But of course, it’s fine to favor one side of the family, but she’s gotta have SOMETHING from Marinette, right? So what other visual could she inherit to show at least some of her mother’s genes?

✧・ﾟ:* F R E C K L E S ! *:・ﾟ✧

And since Marinette’s freckles are so subtle, I decided to make Emma’s a bit more prominent and easily visible.

Actually her freckles have multiplied quite a bit over the years. She’s always had more than Marinette but it used to be confined to just a few on her cheeks and shoulders. Now drawing her is more like DOTS! DOTS EVERYWHERE! with freckles all over her face, down her neck and arms, and even a few on her legs! It is very much her Thing at this point haha

Freckles everywhere!

As for her hairstyle, the default is a simple headband, but she also sometimes wears it just plain down with no accessories at all (usually when in PJs), or up in pigtails like Marinette’s!

Those are just the main ones though...really she can do pretty much whatever ^^

Emma’s outfit palette took a bit more consideration than her brothers’, since I needed it to match the yellow hair (whereas black, as a neutral, can go with just about anything. So I took a minute looking at her established colors--bright green eyes and golden-blonde hair--trying to think of what theme I could used. 

The grassy green and sunshine yellow ended up reminding me of warm weather, like a spring or summer morning. The easiest color for that would’ve been green, but I was already using greens for Hugo and didn’t want their schemes to look too similar. Ultimately I decided on pinks, because the pink outfit with the yellow hair reminded me of some nice fresh lemonade! Some bright whites and warm creams/off-whites then added to the cheery, springy theme. ^^

Her original outfit design included some small dots on her collar and pant cuffs, not unlike the inside of Marinette’s jacket, but I don’t really include that detail much anymore for the same reason I rarely draw Hugo in his original plaid.

Lastly but not leastly, onwards to 

Louis!

Thus far we’ve had Hugo, who’s a pretty good visual mix of his parents, and Emma, who takes more after her dad. As such, I figured that it’d only be fair if the third and final kid took more after his mom!

So in many ways Louis looks a lot like a mini male Marinette, right down to the subtle freckles. If Hugo has the most Dupain genes and Emma has the most Agreste genes, Louis probably has the most Cheng genes and has the easiest time convincing people that yes, he is actually 1/4 Chinese (absolutely no one believes Emma when she says this lol...she has to show pictures of her family haha).

We can’t completely ignore the Agreste side of the family though, and in Louis’s case is manifests mostly in his hairstyle which is very similar to Adrien’s, as well as his lean and lanky body type as an adult, very similar to Adrien’s and Gabriel’s (unlike Hugo who, again, is stockier like a less-extreme Tom).

His outfit color scheme is light blues and grays with splashes of red. The blues and grays work well for his shyer, more reserved demeanor, while the splashes of red like the t-shirt hidden under his sweater are like his big imagination! (Like his mother and grandfather, Louis is very much into art and design, though his interest tends to be geared more towards characters and stories than fashion).

Not as much to say about him tbh...he’s “evolved” the least from his original concept and is mostly just the cute baby brother ^^”

So yeah, there you have it! That was roughly my thought process for creating/designing my little kiddos ^^ 

Hopefully some of you found this interesting; I enjoy talking about my ideas and stuff so if you ever want to know more or about something else that I do/make, feel free to ask! ^^