#since the fact they were pokemon were borderline irrelevent

[squidslugs-art]

anybody else up completely redesigning the cast of one of their stories to make it original and not a pokemon universe based one

no? just me? shame

(tawny | nutmeg | hibiscus sarsaparilla | firecracker | stripes clawin | glare | arkea)

thoughts and philosphys behind their design changes and such below the cut!

tawny: borderline unchanged! besides a little bit of change to his ear markings and removal of all plusle association. and thank god because fuck those plus tails man. but his design is so strong i couldnt really change a whole lot - thank you 2020 wheat for making such a good design!

tawnys scars however got a HEAVY redesign them make them look more intense. those lame scratches from before did not come from a dragon. added a bit more spread out to his neck too for a big bite mark across the back of his neck. i kept his usual trouble with opening that eye over because i think its iconic and much more interesting than just keeping it closed or removing it

also he limps now. he broke his leg in the attack too and didnt rest it properly so it didnt heal properly. i decided against giving that a visual indicator because i dont think it would really have one logically - this isnt a cinderpelt situation, he broke it by landing at a poor angle and then didnt let it heal properly, so it wouldnt really be scratched up or be twisted in any way.

nutmeg/lewis: a name change to match some new lore about rabbits (naming them after stuff they'd know about instead of human names) and also because as much as i liked the name lewis, it felt very strange having it stand out as the super different name in the family

otherwise? also borderline unchanged besides a few new and recoloured markings to make them a little more unique from his brother. they arent twins or anything man. nothing else to say about it really, hes literally the same guy as before basically.

hibiscus: a complete design overhaul, although using the philosphy of her old design; she still looks like shes related to her kids without looking like a carbon copy like the old design. i wanted her to appear as Parent with only a few shared traits with her kids instead of all of them. you can see what they inherited from her and what they didnt instead of them being borderline clones of hibiscus

i leaned heavier into the pinks and making her lighter than her children (sunnyside warren is mostly dark coated rabbits, so shes on the lighter side for them) and i tried to inspire a bit of a flower motif with her face marking, relating back to her name. i wanted to actually make her look a bit like the flower in general

continues to be the only character in shattered glass with an accessory! i couldnt remove it. its iconic. and i made her future scars a little more obvious on her, although the design pictured is where she is early-story

sarsaparilla/elsa: a name change again for the reasons spoken of in nutmegs section, and also because of the unfortunate frozen association. i did not name them (they are from a very old rp and was the child of a character who was not mine)

a COMPLETE overhaul pretty much, going from poochyena to a jackalope of all things, making them the only fantasy animal in the story, although jackalopes are not regarded as such in universe (instead being considered a rare mutation of normal rabbits and are treated like and called rabbits). i thought it was fun as it makes their role as the soothsayer of the warren more standout in their design by giving them a very unique trait. im sure this special treatment given to them because of it implies nothing.

this was because becoming a xenofiction story, the implication of going 1-1 with their pokemon species and making them a wolf of some sort felt... contridictary with their role, so i completely overhauled them from a young-ish wolf to a elderly jackalope, old and wise and full of wisdom and future visions, for sure. i managed to keep a little bit of that old design intact with their markings and colours though, as a little nod to poochyena my friend poochyena

firecracker/jenga: so the backstory around sunnyside warren, the home of all of the rabbits we've seen so far, is that they struck a deal with stoats that moved into the area to stop them from hunting them. these stoats are firecrackers parents.

previously a mightyena/braxian hybrid, i wanted to go a completely different route for jenga. i dont know why i gravitated to the stoat family, it just slotted in... perfectly. they had been slated to have been a childhood friend of tawny and nutmeg before drawing away after nutmegs death and ultimately going missing entirely, i felt like slotting them into the role of the future guardian of the warren kept the reason for them to interact with the siblings since theyre of similar age while providing inheritant conflict that would keep them further apart when they get a bit older despite their shared experiences.

so! a changed name for a new stoat name custom (named after more human concepts) and basically the exact same colours with a different set of markings to give that firecracker name good reason. i think they came out SUPER solid and cute i love it sooo much

fun fact: i initially planned for it to have the black as a base with white and orange markings, but after colouring the rabbits first i realized that white would look nice as a contrast against the darker coats of the warren, and i think that was a good call.

stripes: OH BOY. the hardest of all the designs in here to figure out. ve was the only one i hadnt settled on a species on when i started sketching these about a month ago and i still didnt until about a week ago - i initially planned on vem being a pegasus, and playing around with the exact design of pegasi in the universe (they were going to be quite bulky and designed for mountain environments, and their wings were going to be more for gliding than flying), but in the end i felt this didnt suit xem, even if this meant ditching the wings from their design for reasons ill get into in arkeas section

i knew i wanted her to be big, and i didnt want to make xem a predator of some sort, so i was kind of stuck with either monkey, marsupial or large herbivore. i am NOT drawing a monkey and i couldnt think of a marsupial that really fit vem, so after much messing around i settled on mountain goat.

xer colours stayed effectly the same, but i converted their "stripes" into sort of a patched classic tabby cat appearance. im not really sure why i did that, honestly i just thought of it randomly and thought it looked good. ve didnt have many markings before so i just started throwing stuff around until something stuck. some early concepts leaned more pink and orange calico markings or doing a cloud theme.

also, a missing leg, because i realized lately that i have a habit of making all my disabled characters anthro animals that fly who have a flight-related disability. while a fun idea to play with (coming up with the way flight aids would work, the ways a flight disability would effect someone in a flight-based society, etc), pegasus!stripes had this instead of the leg at the time, and then i realized my trend and wanted to make it something that was more grounded in real disabilities instead of making them all based in traits we, as humans, dont have.

CLAWIN: ohh. clawin clawin clawin. im so glad i went for a redesign angle on this story purely for him - i love minun, its one of my favourite pokemon, but that yellow looked so FUCK UGLY on him man. this design i did in one take, and i nailed it i think. its such a huge glow up im so proud of how it came out

first, his eyes, which i consider one of his most important traits - i kept over his weird heterochromia, although instead of giving him an unexplained blank red eye (leftover from when clawin was evil and the reincarnation of a dead character), i gave him a broken iris. coming from a concussion he had earlier in life, his vision is blurry in that eye as a result. its a fun way to keep his "strange looking" red eye while it having a reason to exist. not that i minded him having a random evil looking red eye, but i think its more fun to base it in realism.

i especially am fond of making him a hare instead of a rabbit, making him tower above most of the rest of the cast and giving me the option of making the guy ive always written as being very limited in his expressions (its probably autism now instead of being emotionally repressed) a little more creepy factor by leaning into hares really freaky eyes. not seriously or wahtever, but i think it gets weird when he stares at you for too long.

in general tawny and clawin are meant to contrast eachother as characters, and i wanted to match that design-wise too, which i think i finally succeeded with here. tawny being soft, round and sweet looking and clawin being long, lanky and a little scary looking, despite tawny being full of hate and clawin being nice to a fault.

GLARE: just like stripes, just a complete overhaul for them. again, 1-1-ing an umbreon, especially for the character who is romantically involved with clawin, felt strange for their dynamic. i ended up landing on a flying fox for him instead, since it still kept the 1-1 in concept (being a flying fox instead of just a fox) and its a lot more fun to get a little more out there with the species, especially in a story of mostly rabbits. i can see them being awkward going forward in terms of anatomy and interacting with other characters as a result, but i think it was a good choice and made glare, one of the less inspired designs in the cast before, far more visually interesting

i ended up keeping the umbreon yellow around though, although with a leaning into a heavier purple for the base and some new markings. i think it came out really nice in the end, although i did basically make up the markings on the fly instead of keeping any of their old ones (but they were just a normal umbreon, so...)

i did, for some reason, go the lineless fur effect, especially around the mane, something that i spring for occassionally to give "puffball fuzzy" as the texture im going for. i basically did this on vibes too. this whole design was just kind of winging it to completely remake glare from the ground up with little to no reference to their old design really.

ARKEA: ohhh boy. arkeas previous design was as equally as uninspired as glares and i think got thrown out EVEN MORE than glares too. at least glare shares yellow in common in umbreon. you wouldnt guess what pokemon arkea was before if you didnt know already (its an eevee)

i threw everything out but the kitchen sink and decided to add the only BIG carnivore of the series - a komodo dragon! a total overhaul from the previous design, which is what i wanted, with colours and markings inspired by chinese water dragons to finally give them the unique look theyve deserved for YEARS. being the """villain""" figure (not really but thats spoilers), i wanted to make them all big and imposing to contrast on them kind of being a bit pathetic, as the guy whos going around kidnapping and abusing people because they want the rabbit to kill a guy for them and/or teach them how to kill that guy.

being rebuilt from the ground up meant that theres no major philosphy behind their redesign to the new one though - i literally just made a whole new character with 0 relation outside of name really. i picked green because they were the last one i coloured and green was the colour i didnt use at all for the rest of the cast, so i just rolled with it, and thats pretty much it.

anyway if you read this far: thank you for listening to my horrible ramblings, feel free to send any questions you might have about my freaks to my main blog @squidslugs, and let it be known that the flower images i used as background are selected for a reason and if you can figure out what they are they might tell you a little bit about said character. WINK.