#historyofthedreamers

[wolfoftonight]

Oh boy. Here we go. Wolf. The original Wolf used a staff, with a power combo that allowed him to ‘freeze fire’. Very impossible, but hey, it was like an instant sword. His colour was regular blue instead of the ice blue he has today, and he was also very chaos focused. That was eventually changed as I figured out my own personality more, and eventually translated into Killamari.

The next drawing was based off the idea of ‘frozen fire’. Originally we only had it used to create swords, but eventually I came up with the idea of using it to make armour. Since the flames he creates don’t hurt him, he sets himself on fire and then freezes it. So yeah. That’s the reason for all the spiky stuff. It’s ice.

Now the next one was actually part of a full drawing I did at one point, which turned out to be the first ever drawing based off the ‘linked twins’ idea. But yeah, apparently cat tail.

And then we finally see the first of a more constant style of Wolf. Drawn back when I still couldn’t outfit characters, at least we also see the first version of his sword. It was based off the frozen fire sword, hence the flames around it. This is also the first appearance of the stripe in his hair, which I think was actually started when I made a mistake in my inking.

Here we finally have Wolf in what can be termed “modern day” version. Or close to it. I actually finished this character reference, but it’s also old, and the powers no longer match up. Hence why you haven’t seen it before. In fact, the writing portion has been completely rewritten. None of those weaknesses apply anymore. (except maybe the waffle one). And more than half of the powers are wrong.

Next is a drawing actually done when when Katherine was first come up with. We don’t see much change here, except for the appearance of the ever-changing shoe and a more condensed hairstyle.

Then we have a full I did to redraw his sword. So this was when we’d worked more on the idea of Soulkeys, as can be seen by the necklace string still being attached to the sword and wrapped around his wrist. It’s also the first appearance of pockets.

I have a couple more recent drawings of Wolf, but this one has a lot of story development behind it. Wolf now has two different appearances, young and current, with the main difference between them being that young Wolf wears his hair in a short ponytail, wields a staff instead of his Soulkey or fists, and wears his necklace on top of his shirt.

[wolfoftonight]

So, Katherine. Her original sketch was done a couple months before, but her actual creation process wasn’t really started until after Ffinli was being created. And at that point she was being finished because Ffinli was being made into a Dreamer. But her original design was actually to act as a counterpart to Soulfire, being another powerful mage, except focused more around light and being an enchantress. You’ll notice her original design was very star-centric, with a circlet and no ponytail.

The next drawing I did of her was several months later, but still before I reworked her powers. The drawing was actually a sketch I started for a reference of her, but never finished because a) I hadn’t fully worked out her appearance and b) I later changed her powers to be illusion focused. However, you will notice that she has the base of what would become her outfit.

The next drawing was done while I was figuring out her storyline in Undertale, specifically what colour of Soul she’d be. Due to spoilers, I did erase and crop a few things. You’ll notice that her outfit is more fleshed out though.

The next one you’ve seen before, and I promise this will be the last time. However, there were some important outfit details here. First of all, colour. Second, her boots were revamped. And third, her belt and mage robes were given a bit more detail and made more interesting so her outfit wasn’t completely flat colours.

Now, this next one you’ll notice something very very different. In deciding on her powers as a Dreamer, we also decided that, based on the outfit tastes of the creator, that she probably wouldn’t be wearing such fancy mage robes during her entire time as a Dreamer. And thus was born the idea that her robes are merely an illusion, and the outfit you see in this drawing is what she’s actually wearing.

This last drawing was done in reference to her Undertale arc, but was more of a practice in her battle tactics (also the first appearance of the stick). So around this time, her outfit hasn’t changed much, but we’ve worked a lot more on her personality, her battle tactics, her role, and her abilities. I won’t spoil things though, since her story is actually supposed to be worked over the summer. So that’s something to look forward to.

[wolfoftonight]

And then we have Dark. So funny story, originally I defined his appearance as ‘having thick eyebrows’. Cause other than that, he was supposed to look like essentially a human version of Wolf. The original concept in Dark’s introduction to the storyline was that they were twins (which we are) but due to the Dreamer process, their souls were linked. So yeah.

I didn’t really draw Dark again until at least a year later, when the twin connection idea had been mostly scrapped. So at this point, Dark had become an actual Dreamer, but we decided to keep the “no-magic” idea. So instead Dark is tech-based, which I had some fun with in this drawing.

Now the next drawing pretty much set Dark’s appearance/outfit for the rest of time. As can be seen by the list, this was supposed to be Dark’s reference sheet, but as with Wolf’s, it’s now old and outdated. For example, he does not have music-based magic. That was added because we couldn’t figure out his third ability, and wanted to try and make him a bit more on level with the rest of the Dreamers, but later on decided it subtracted from his character. The powerful Dreamer part is from the idea that being a Dreamer was an ability in and of itself, which had something to do with creation and stuff. We cancelled that upon reflecting on the original concept of Dreamers.

The next drawing is actually the first appearance of the single lock of hair that’s part of Dark’s hairstyle. In previous drawings, he simply didn’t have any bangs, but we we redid that to add a bit more interest. (the idea came from when the creator kept complaining about how that one lock wouldn’t stay out of his face). This was also from when Dark was still around the same height as Wolf, due to the twin idea (I also got taller since this drawing, so....). 

This last one is pretty much his current appearance. He does wear different coloured shirts (similar to Wolf), and the jeans actually fade in colour over time (useful for determining the section of the timeline). But yeah, this is pretty much a drawing of the beginning of Dark’s arc, which I plan to work on throughout drawing everyone else’s stories. The headset does change forms, and he normally wears it as a small bluetooth earpiece.

[wolfoftonight]

So.....who here knows of Emerald? ....yeah, no, it’s fine. I’ve never really talked about Emerald. He is a Dreamer, and yes, he is actually fairly important to the plot. However, he just really isn’t present in much of the story.

Emerald was one of the 5 original Dreamers. He was ice based, and was also the first Dreamer to be listed as having a power that wasn’t a magic. However, due to reworking the magic system, he may not have that anymore. As apparently all of the Originals had special weapons, he had a gem sword that I apparently failed at drawing. It was supposed to be very shiny, that much I remember.

Now the second drawing is far more recent, dating to just last fall. I was trying to come up with something unique for his style of clothing, and I think I may have gone a bit too medieval. The look is interesting though. His ice powers were worked majorly into his appearance, what with the floating shards, his sword, and his sleeves. I’ve kept the same style of cloak though.

I know there isn’t a third drawing here, but that’s because there actually was a more recent drawing of Emerald I know I did, but apparently lost. In it, I reworked his powers and his appearance to be more Pokemon based, since that was the main thing I remember the creator being interested in. Put simply, I replaced his nature magic with the ability to make Pokeballs.

[wolfoftonight]

So the first two drawings of Ffinli were technically developed around the same time, but their still some noticeable differences. The first drawing here is one of the sketches that I did when developing his powers, specifically his summoning abilities. All I really had for his design at the time was boots, a trenchcoat, and long hair.

The second drawing was actually one I started for Ffinli’s reference page, but simply never finished. It’s actually a pretty good drawing. Here, I added the visor, and also doodled a bit with his other abilities and his tech.

The next one you’ll see on Katherine’s history as well. I did the drawing about a year ago as a Valentine’s drawing, mainly because they’re the only Dreamers in a relationship. Anyways, this is also the first time Ffinli appears in full colour.

The next drawing was mostly done to practice with his tech, but also because I wanted to try drawing him in normal clothes (I don’t like the jumpsuit). This is also the first time we actually see his Soulkey. The boots get a nice close up as well as a revamp, so they aren’t plain boots anymore. And I also adjusted his face a bit, making him look older than he originally did (he’s the third oldest Dreamer). The final thing changed in this drawing is the colour of his visor, as I recoloured the glass so that it actually looks like it exists.

The last one here is from when I was doodling Souls, as previously mentioned on Mal’s History. Ffinli’s original concept had been based around lightning, but it sort of never made it into his appearance.

[wolfoftonight]

Alrighty, here’s another one of the Originals, Mal. In her original design notes, I found out that we apparently used her real name, so I erased it. She also apparently was designed with silver hair. I’d completely forgotten about that when I started her non-stickfigure designs. She also had dual swords, which is another thing that never even crossed my mind until looking through her original notes. Whoops. I guess because everyone needed a weapon?

[NEW] So uh....I didn’t find this one until later, but I guess this was my first attempt at creating a non-stickfigure version of Mal? It’s....pretty bad, but I guess it set the precedent for Mal wearing dresses/skirts.

The next one is a drawing that I posted in one of my Throwback weeks. I know it was based off the creator of Mal, I’m not certain if it was supposed to be a design for Mal herself.

This is actually the first time I’d drawn Mal with a focus on actually creating her outfit. It was inspired by the song “Centuries” by Fall Out Boy, in which I guess I envisioned Mal in her role as leader/queen. The idea was long and complicated, but I liked the idea of Mal watching an incoming army from on top of a castle wall or something. However, I was drawing her from the back, and thus didn’t fully work out what her outfit looked like.

The next drawing I drew of Mal was also inspired by a song, specifically “Let There Be Light” by Exiark. It was intended to be something more along the lines of Mal using her Soulkey ability, but I stopped before adding the effects for that because I still wasn’t certain what her Soulkey actually did. However, the process of drawing her allowed me to create what would become my best reference for what she looked like and her outfit. Because when I’d drawn her outfit previously, I didn’t fully design it, I had to do a substantial amount of research, and ended up changing her skirt design a couple of times, finally settling on it being made up of hardened leather strips similar to an armoured skirt worn by the Romans. This was also a moment in which her wing design was set into what it currently is, although I’m planning on revamping that in the future.

[NEW] This last drawing I have displayed here (which is not the most recent) is actually from when I was experimenting with how Souls worked. Some things have been changed since then, and I’ll do a post later on explaining that mechanic, but what was kept is that Mal’s magic is represented in thorny vines. So that’s what her aura manifests as, and what some of her other, non nature related abilities manifest as.

[wolfoftonight]

Alright, Soulfire has gotten a bit of attention, but to be honest, there’s a huge gap here. Being one of the original Dreamers created, it is a bit surprising that he doesn’t have more appearances throughout my arting history. But really, the simple answer behind that is that we didn’t know what he really looked like. I certainly never asked. And we didn’t do a lot of the art stuff together, because he was more into writing, and character creation. In fact, at one point I almost changed his character into being a cat, because that was the persona he’d been using for quite some time.

The first drawing was the original character sketch, which were all stickfigures. I’m actually still proud of that one, because of the amount of magic and stuff in it. You can also see the notes we made about his powers, and appearance. The dark elf part was later removed (he looks more like a vampire now tbh) due to clashes with dark skin on dark clothing. You can also see that uh....he had some overpowered magics. The alignment was also changed.

The second drawing I think exists simply because I couldn’t find the original and was trying to show a prospective Dreamer what the process of creation looked like. I’m not really happy with the drawing though. But you can also tell that I simplified things quite a bit, and his lack of filled in powers is probably because I couldn’t remember them at the time.

The Third drawing is actually timeskipped about two years after the first two, you can definitely tell the style improvements XD But anyways, that drawing was actually done based off Soulfire’s control of death ability, and was inspired by the song Afterlife by Fleetfoot. It was for this drawing that Soulfire was first given a human form, as previously he’d only been drawn as a stickfigure. I ended up texting Soulfire’s creator quite a bit while we discussed outfit and appearance, since you know, stickfigures don’t really wear clothes. I had intended to finish this drawing digitally, with colouring and special effects and all that jazz, but never got enough time or a good handle on the programs to do so.

The fourth and final drawing is the character ref that I drew for reaching 100 followers. It was during this drawing that I came up with the idea of each Dreamer using a different language for their magics. Soulfire ended up with Japanese as his spellcasting language (yay!) probably because I knew I’d have to do a lot of it (damn you archmage) and Japanese is the language I’m most familiar with other than English. Now unfortunately, I found out too late that Soulfire’s height was wrong. He’s actually supposed to be 5′7″, and I might need to reword his powers again, so at some point I need to make a new character ref. But altogether, not much changed in the fourth drawing from the third, the only difference being that I reworked the magic appearance, and I also decided that he keeps his hair in a braid instead. Unfortunately, that’s not viewable because of the hood.

[wolfoftonight]

Being the newest Dreamer added, Nikki has only been created for less than a year, and as such, has gone through very few design modifications. The top on is the one I did originally, on the only scrap paper I could find. It’s not great, but it served its purpose as testing out her design.

The second one is the Character Ref I drew for her, as part of reaching 50 followers. Not much changed other than I cleared up the design, fixed her body so she looks as short as she actually is, and added an awesome gradient to her hair.