#thats a warrior cats refrence

[kandidandi]

you........ chief of the cable clan

my name? cablestar...

[maealderxb]

Shadowsight and his SIMGA life

[exocynraku]

How do you come up with your names and designs, I need help coming up with better names.

names are usually based off of appearance, family members, personality or just words that i like! with appearance, i usually use names of animals or plants. rosytiger got their name because of their reddish fur and tabby markings. batmane was named after their, well, mane, and the fact theyre blind (like a bat). doeflutter was named after their deer like spots and the word "flutter" reminds me of fluttershy from mlp, who shares a similar-ish yellow colour to doeflutter. glisteningscale is named after their light (glistening) scale-like markings. family members is a bit different as i haven't done a cat named after one for a while. closest one i've gotten to was snowwatcher being named after skywatcher! when i name cats after their parents family i usually just look at their immediate family on the warriors wiki and pick out a prefix/suffix i think fits and when it comes to personality, goslingdash and spiderspinner work as examples. in my drawing for goslingdash, they're fiesty and running around, which fits the suffix "dash". spiderspinner on the other hand was partially named after the fact theyre meant to be a med cat, and i just thought it sounded cool. spiders spin webs, and med cats use those webs to heal cats! idk if that makes sense, but it makes sense in my head it's hard to explain my thought process, i apologize, but when you do this many hypokits, it gets kinda easy, lol! i also try to make my names as creative as i possibly can, avoiding prefixes & suffixes used alot in canon. ESPECIALLY when it comes to suffixes. pelt... fur... tail... claw... EW!!!!!

a good way to find cool words (especially action words) that are cooler is literally just to look up "other ways to say {word}" or "{word} synonyms" are there'll probably be SOMETHING interesting! and if i get REALLY desparate, i go and find a warrior cats name generator (usually my own) and just mess around with it for a while and see if anything fun pops up! when it comes to designs, well, that ones WAY harder to explain. OBVIOUSLY i reference the parents, but i always try to add a little spin. when i used to do hypokits, i'd directly refernce my designs for the parents, but nowadays i'm way too lazy to do that and either refrence how i see the character in my head (since ive drawn all the characters i have a pretty good idea for how most of them look unless its a horrendously obscure character) or look them up on the wiki. i look at the parents patterning. okay, they're both tabbies. their kit will be a tabby too. a tortie and some sort of spots? okay, a very veyr very spotty tortie. i don't think this is how it works in real life, but i dont care!!!! lol :] i also try to combine the colours of the parents. on spiderspinner, rainwhisker is grey while squilf is dark ginger. okay, dark-ish greyish ginger. doeflutter? combine daisy's yellow with whitetail's even lighter markings (or at least thats how i think she looks)

if i'm working on a hypokit that i know is a duplicate (aka ive drawn a hypokit of this ship before), occasionally i'll refernce the parent's parent's colours + markings! ex: if it's a squilf ship, maybe ill take sandstorms pale yellow. honestly, i can't really help with design. my best advice is try to have as much fun as you can. also, pick the name AFTER you design the character! or at least while you're designing them, don't do it beforehand. it's much more restricting and can take some of the fun away! have fun, be creative!

[cypressbranch]

Cinderpelt winnerpelt >:D

[ohhnorr]

Genshin impact is so painful now

I love this game to death, the open world and its lore, the dragons, the gameplay, and the land of liyue reeled me in. And ofc Kaeya was one of the major reasons I started playing. I've been playing the game like maybe a month since it was released. So, like the launch era (yes I take pride in that it was the best era).

Mondstadt was an amazing introduction, to the familiar buildings of Germany. And the beautiful design of the culture mixed with the signature of genshin's design made the characters brilliant. Now the first story event (reconciling stars??) made me heavily excited about all the lore that was hidden ingame.

When I got to liyue I was glued to the game, forever, I thought. This was china from a whole nother perspective for me as a Moroccan. And to see such an elegant (not heavily sexualized) character like Ninguang in that cutscene. Yo, I fell in love. Childe was cute too, but then the man that got me everything or anything related to excitement and admiration came upon us. Zhongli. Oh, he was the package, with a beautiful outfit reminding u of the Chinese culture as it has its own modern genshin signature twist. Stunning. It's such characters that get me obsessed with games. Next to all of the intricate details and lore plus gameplay.

To finish off, Inazuma. That was one beautiful region, from the flora to the architecture. The temples and that beautiful quest. Ayaka's design is by far one of my favourites. Her design has her culture written all over it and it's beautiful. In Inazuma, we have so many characters inspired by their Japanese ancestry and it looks stunning and recognizable.

But then the sumeru leaks dwindled along. I was super excited for sumeru, that was my downfall.

After seeing these 3 beautifully represented cultures i was so naïvely excited for Sumeru. And thats expected right, i was rightfully excited to see the beautiful culture of the middle east, north africa and SEA being equally represented like the other three.

But thats when i heard al haitham an important arab figure whose name is now being occupied by a white buff tech man with a fandom who couldnt even pronounce his name right and call him habibi ?

ATTENTION: REPRESENTING. SWANA

Unrecognizable. In no way was the representation of Sumeru as intricately thought out as with the other regions. We have been colorised, orientalized and sexualized once again.

I'm gonna start with the one hurting me the most, Dehya.

(Listen i only heard her name and i was so excited to see my culture in this game i was jumping and ecstatic to see representation--- wait she is a cat girl warrior tf)

Dehya's name is inspired by Dihya, the name of an Amazigh Algerian military queen (Kahena). So quite a name to live up to. The Imazighen (us North Africans) barely get any representation as it is. And when we do, we become drawn out as barbarians or savages (for example another "name" for us is Berbers which the Romans called us).

Now what does Dehya look like huh? Yes indeed she has been revealed to be some warrior cat with an wild and savage look. And as an amazigh i hoped to see at least a little of our beautiful culture respresented. Yet i didint recognize any cultural aspects in comparison to litteraly any character in this game.

While we actually wear alot of beautiful jewelry! And we also have beautiful tribal tattoos, and Dihya herself is such a stunning figure to take refrence from.

But instead we get practically nothing. So we are now standing up for her. And yet there are people complaining against us saying that sexualization happens to every character. But Dehya is litteraly oversexualized on such a level that no cultural aspect is recognizable nor a point of interest.

Look im aware of the sexualization of female characters in games especially in gacha's. And its mostly the reason why i dont play alot of them. Yet in genshin its more mild and the design still upholds cultural aspects. Like with Inazuman characters; https://www.reddit.com/r/Genshin_Impact/comments/o7eifv/inazuma_characters_design_analysis_spoilers_for/

And alot of Liyue characters;

This is why i ask of the bare minimum. To analyze and take interest in the amazigh culture. So Dehya's design could be oh so much more elevated and still badass. Because we as well would love to see a badass cat warrior with actual amazigh tattoos, clothes and jewelry.

Unfortunatly she isint the only problematic character.

Nilou, is an Persian dancer. Whilst having culturally accurate horns from the Sassanian period and a burst move from the gorgeous Persian dance. She has still been sexualized and orientalized. Dancers have always had their stomachs covered. Its culture, it's beautiful. By exposing the belly it's unrecognizable as Persian and becomes mixed with the Arab belly dancing outfit. If they want to sexualise her that badly then exposing the belly is the worst move- it erases the culture, it mixes with another culture, it sexualizes and orientalizes. It becomes a problem.

(Cr: demonscallme on twitter)

Tighnari, an amazigh name supposedly Moroccan. With ears from the fennec an animal from the western desert. Other than that his outfit and design is all over the place. In genshin they are more than capable of making modern day clothing mix with cultural themes. Yet this is not working at all. Nothing is recognizable nor representative of anything amazigh nor arab. Its just a jumbled mess. Disappointing in comparison to the modern clothing and cultural mixture of design with for example zhongli.

Dori is the worst of all the characters. She is orientalized and sexualized. No one encounters representation except seeing a  fucking joke. She has no cultural aspects that are recognizable instead she is the spitting image of an orientalized character. They have a huge region and countries with countless cultures to take interest in. Yet they went with none and followed stereotypes. Her clothing is also grossly sexualized for a child model. It's disappointing how we are being spat on, our cultures are being treated like a joke.

Now a major argument against anything related to the word orientalism had been "it's fictional".

Stereotyping and racism are stated under orientalism. When we say it's racist, stereotyped, and so orientalized it is wrong, it should not be spread around as if it's nothing. It hurts to see and it's disrespectful. So we SWANA deserve just like the german, Chinese and Japanese to be respected and upheld with the same input into our designated region. This game isin't so fictional anymore.

Colourism, all characters until now are pale. Not denying it. We have in the swana region, people of all colours. If u are gonna represent characters from that region we expect different skin tones. To be recognizing oneself is an amazing experience. And it would be representing swana perfectly. It does not hurt it only embraces. That's why we are speaking up about this. Look I'm willing to wait, to take this back, the moment we get a broad set of people from different skin colours. Its not hard to do, it does not contradict anything. So why are people still pressed? Aren't we supposed to break free from the stupid standard of the pale is elevated. There are white Arabs yes, I'm not saying we can't have any pale characters. But with a region as broad as the swana region. There are bound to be some different skin tones and that should not be ignored.

To conclude,

we want to have equal input into our region as there has been done with the previous three. We want people to see our beautiful cultures. And above all, we want to be respected. Yes, we cannot have everything, but it does not hurt to try. It does not hurt to speak out. And you who are against this notion, you are not achieving freemogems out of this. You are not changing our minds. You are not the only one in the world. Broaden your perspectives. For the sake of an exceptional game.

[cypressbranch]

Ok what I'm so impressed by these normal designs wtf what's your creative process

YESSS IVE BEEN ALWAYS WISHING FOR PPL TO ASK STUFF LIKE THIS ABT MY DESIGNS!!! IVE WON ART!!! Ok so! Firstly I think about their name and I piece the prefix and the suffix of course

With Rootspring I considered how spring could be perceived as theres many meanings to the word and i implemented them all as much as I could to make the design less lackluster

I also consider things seen with the word that is a prefix or suffix! Flames are often on coals so I gave Nightheart some coals so his design was less bland and more cohesive, same with

Those two both apply to my Tree one and instead of earth just being dirt I used the earth planet! And also the sun and moon which of course rotates the earth so is seen around it!

Another thing i think of is the characters family. Brokenstars face is split to be reminiscent of Raggedstar and Yellowfang and Rootspring is covered in violets because of his mother Violetshine

ALSO for Mapleshade (who *cough* i now hate her totally normal design i wish i did the leaves differently...) i refrenced video game media for the shade aspect! Thats why she has yellow eyes and is all misty!

With the cats with boring names you kind of have to get creative with the ideas you already have, for Brokenstar I took the aspects of his tail prefix and his leadership and left out like his body since i mean. His name says nothing about his body aside from his tail sooo his forehead star trails along his back into his tail which i gave an exposed bone due to his warrior name and then proceeded to add more bones to add variance!

Techinally its not as cohesive as that i gotta admit, to be honest an idea comes to my head, i do the research i need to and churn it out! (And i seriously mean churn it out most of the designs take around 20 minutes its great!)

At the end of the day though, the totally normal designs are just all about taking the cats name incredibly literally in a eldritch and abstract way that lets me draw aaall the trees i want <3