Wasted Time
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Hunter Pups Collection; Grace, Louise, and Wyatt
🕑 Added 2022-10-01 07:47:23 +0000 UTCOkay, so we're actually doing something a little different this week, mostly cause I got on a bit of a tear with a lot of sketch work. I guess I needed to get it out, or mend my soul a bit with some art therapy, but I ended up finalizing and doing some sketches of all the different Hunter pups interacting with their families and siblings. That's pretty much where most of my work this week went when I wasn't knackered, well that and some sketches of a Loch Ness Monster girl I was working on. So let's have a little showcase of warm and fluffy family moments and discussion on the Hunter family pups collection, as well as a more in-depth look at how my character crafting works I guess.
Wade, Giselle and 'Grace Hunter';
Initially, way back I had said that I wasn't sure I was going to keep Wade and Giselle together. At the time, I guess I was thinking that it seemed odd that all the hunter boys all seemed to be in successful long-term relationships without someone splitting during the course of the fics...but upon reflection, one could argue there are a few gals you didn't see date the various Hunter boys that didn't stick around. It's not like they all matched with their first crush or sweetheart and that was it. There was indeed trial and error. Even in Vernon's case, he had two semi-serious mates before Dawn rocked his world. So saying Wade had previous failed relationships before Giselle, and she just happens to be the right one puts it all in a more reasonable suspension of disbelief perspective. Grounding my characters and the world they live in has always been paramount to me...although I have caved to some...'small world-isms' now and again.
Concerning Grace; Grace was a design not wholly conceived by me. In fact the groundwork for her was actually established by a discussion between me and Elite Shade, the author of 'Found'.
(Check it out here! He does a great job of writing my characters, and I'm sure if you love the Bellhunterverse, you'll love this even though it's an AU.)
https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13128859/1/Found
Basically, they pitched the concept of Wade and Giselle adopting a megafauna calf, and suggested a rhino. I liked the idea and from there my brain began to work on 'Grace' and how she would fit into Giselle and Wade's life. From my mind came this shy little Rhino calf, maybe no more than five or six when she comes into Wade and Giselle's life. Wade, like his brothers, was mildly skeptical of the idea of adopting outside his or Giselle's species. But upon meeting her, again much like his brothers in the same situation, he immediately falls in love with her.
Grace is dainty, feminine, and loves to be held and snuggled, a task much easier for Giselle than Wade, as even at five she was already pushing his weight lift limit despite his insistence at trying to carry her. I imagine her finding ballet beautiful, and wanting desperately to be a ballet dancer. Naturally, that's a difficult, if not impossible career path for a mammal of her size, who also tends to be a bit on the clumsy side like her adoptive mom. Needless to say she gets picked on for that, both at school, and of course by Yuri's spitfire of an adopted pup, Piper, who next to Lumi (Trent and Qali's daughter) and Paige, is her favorite punching bag.
As an adult, I can see her managing to achieve her dreams despite her mass, and becoming a surprisingly swift and light on her hooves mammal that dominates any stage she dances across, and eventually opening a school dedicated to teaching ballet to 'unconventional dancers'.
Grace's name was actually posed by one of my Patreon backers, 'DuskyLycanroc' or 'Batduskylycanroc'. A lovely, simple, and ironic name for the young calf as she struggles to find her way in Zootopia. But luckily, she has parents who love her to death, and back her 100 percent of the way.
Thanks to EliteShade for the Concept, and Dusky for the name.
Zach, Vanna, Wyatt and Claudette;
Zach and Vanna are another couple that I think would go into the adoption game looking for a wolf pup or tiger cub out of fear they wouldn't be able to connect with an outsider species and properly rear them. Basically afraid those pups would have a lot of questions they couldn't answer and problems they couldn't deal with. But naturally, especially when it came to the Hunter sons, their soft-hearted nature quickly threw aside any sort of concerns once they met the pups that they would go on to adopt.
Wyatt was the first I came up with probably almost a year ago or more. Basically a pint-sized, excitable little gremlin who was super optimistic and a bit of a pawful. I think the main jumping-off point was taking Vanna's self-confidence issues, and placing her in a situation where's she terrified she's going to scare any little pup they look at, and the prospect mortifies her. Then this little, tiny guy meets her, and he just thinks she's the bee's knees. Wyatt has no fear, scrambling up Vanna without hesitation to get in close and inspect her with quiet wonder. It's a connection that only deepens when he's adopted, and he just thinks she's the coolest mom anyone's ever had. Granted, that fact makes Zach...just a little jealous sometimes.
Wyatt is very in touch with his raccoon impulses, despite not having any other raccoon figures in his life. He's a natural tinkerer, and loves to take stuff apart...which can be a bit of a headache for Zach and Vanna, at least until he gets old enough to actually know how to put things back together on his own. As a preteen and teen, he spends a lot of his free time scrounging at the North Meadowlands junkyard to find parts for his various doodads and inventions. As an adult I imagine him ending up to be an engineer, or something in a similar vein, and probably sees himself as a Mythbusters type of mammal with his weird and sometimes destructive side projects.
Louise "Claudette" Hunter I came up with in the last few months, as some...unknown deep and visceral feeling in me told me that Zach and Vanna would adopt two pups rather than one, similar to Dawn and Vern. They just didn't feel like a one-pup family unit. This time around I knew I wanted something closer to either Zach or Vanna's species and eventually settled on a lynx. I also knew I wanted to go in a gothish, emo direction as I didn't have a single character like that and I've always had a soft spot for them.
Claudette is older, around eleven or twelve when she gets adopted...although the sketches here are closer to fourteen I'd imagine. Basically, she's around the same age as Allison, and with the pair sharing a similar interest and demeanor, they become bffs. Louise is a poetic type, all about deep and visceral feelings in her work but trying to put up a wall around those same feelings when the prospect of expressing them comes to close family and friends. She loves her Mom and Dad dearly, but getting the words 'I love you' out of her can be like pulling teeth sometimes. She's a glass-half-empty kind of gal, keen to bring up everything that's wrong with the world when given a platform. But deep down shes' as delicate as a flower, and just as easily prone to wilting when wronged by someone she truly cares about.
Thankfully, her Pa's there to make the foolish pups who break her heart pay in spades for hurting his daughter, and while she will give him guff about finding it embarrassing later, deep down she really appreciates it. As an adult, I can see her perhaps going into writing short-form horror stories, working as a particularly acerbic and dark-humored barista as she tries to get her works published on the side. Thankfully she's got an aunt who might be able to get her some connections in the industry.
The 'Clawdette' part of her name is actually not her middle name, but her last name from birth. Like Allison, she kept it when coming into the family out of a degree of uncertainty, and Hunter was later added to allow her to keep both names.
Phew, that's all for this sheet. Next sheet coming up shortly. And for Patreons, I haven't any of the speed drawing vids for these yet, but this one won't have one, as I forgot to start recording with this file. I'll upload those vids separately during the weekend.
-Wasty
