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Nuki News #41: I Made a Dragon!!
🕑 Added 2021-01-13 18:55:07 +0000 UTCJumping off of last week’s NukiNews(Where I was practicing a method for design) I took the skills I learned and from it, made a dragon character! Why a dragon character? Well aside from saying dragons are awesome(because they are), I actually already had one, Soppy. Here he is now:
Truth is, I didn’t like him much. His body shape gave me trouble, the demeanor and personality wasn’t something I ended up relating to, and I wanted a bigger character who is more outgoing and a bit more rough n tumble(Monty the Moonbear is a great big fella, but he’s the silent type). I’d even drawn Soppy for a Patreon Exclusive pic, back in the day- which I felt turned out fine, but I often just didn’t have a place for him to interact with. Unlike my first iteration of Artie and Monty though, Soppy did have some thought put into him! But I didn’t ask myself why I wanted a dragon character or why it was important I make him. Ending up to where every time I tried to draw him, it was to ‘figure him out’ or struggle with drawing him.
After spending a week practicing design with various art exercises, I was streaming to show one of the exercises. After finishing it, the topic of character design was being discussed, and I mentioned the struggles I had with finding use for my dragon character. Spur of the moment, I realized, with nothing better to draw, I can take another crack at making a dragon character!
It started with making an inspiration board, filled with dragons I liked or poses/moods of a character I wanted to incorporate. I also wrote characteristics down for what I desired food the character:
Then came just drawing various shapes of a dragon body that I wanted. This took a bit to find what really gel’d with me, dragons come in all sorts of shapes n sizes, and I wanted something that was very attractive to me. I didn’t give this consideration to Soppy when making him, and ended up with me not wanting to draw him.
I came onto a shape I did like- a two headed dragon, more anthro, able to stand up. But the next challenge was things like giving them not one but two recognizable faces, personalities to play off of, and most important- colors. I even asked 7 friends which of these colors they liked - the first one being Soppy’s color scheme. After sending it to others for feedback, I realized quickly what I wanted, and made adjustments appropriately. I tend to curse myself that way- I show someone something and the act of doing so immediately get my brain to settle on a decision- though getting thoughts from others is always helpful to see what kind of reactions you get.
With the colors chosen, and design developed, alls that's left, of course, is to make a character sheet. So I happily present to you, Flint and Sizz! I hope to make art of them in the future- theyre certainly up my ally. All in all this process took about 15-20 hours over the course of 4 days.
I hope you enjoyed this close look at my process and found it insightful or fun in some way! There are more characters I have for personal stories, but I seem to have more of a committal knack for drawing characters in my fat fetish art, ahaha.
Comments
Artie
Thanks so much Macxi! We definitely got to relate quite bit in this way, among the other stuff we end up similar in. xD
Soppy was a great character but so is your new one, and it’s super awesome that the new design will not only be easier for you to consistently draw but also much more up your alley as far as design is concerned. : ) This is actually the same struggle I had with Muddy for a while and what caused me to recently alter my fursona into something that felt more “me” but kept qualities of the old design I liked. It’s always kind of disappointing when a design has something that’s not clicking for you... like parts that are consistently difficult to draw or details you wish you could put more thought into - but it feels awesome when you hit on something you really like! Makes the extra effort feel super worth it.
