HELLOOOOOOOO!
Things have been crazy busy around here lately but I’ve been chipping away at the third draft of gryphonwip really focusing on world-building and characterization as well as cleaning up prose. You can really tell that this is my first project since Unface written in first person POV because I don’t really know what I’m doing. But I’m getting there!
I had this fun breakthrough last week that Ackerleigh (fka Alister) is genderqueer. I knew he was a tiny delicate twink type but I’m shifting that to really nestle into my own relationship with gender. Ackerleigh doesn’t want to be treated like he’s delicate or feminine even if he loves embroidering his own billowy blouses and is a 5’6 academic type. It really helped his character light up for me.
After a long struggle with Nico I also feel like I figured him out! The key was curls.
And then bam! He stopped being Micah lite.
Look how cute!
Ackerleigh’s design didn’t really change at all when I overhauled Nico. I tried to make him dark haired for like an hour and hated it. But I still did some cute art of him when I was nailing down his adorable fashion sense.
I actually have a height reference in Milanote so I was able to establish that before I did a ton of couple photos of Leigh and Nico.
Their faces are mid but this was the image that made me realize just how much Wolfgang and Shin influenced these guys’ aesthetics. Nico is nothing like Wolfgang though; Nico is a shy sad baby. And Ackerleigh is much punchier than Shin. But Nico’s colors are yellow and brown (and red) and Leigh wears a lot of grays and blues like Wolfgang and Shin.
Let’s see, I also did this cute one of Leigh and Pax and I think it’s the only Pax art I love from this round.
Honestly Pax is a huge bitch to draw. I’ve made minimal progress it feels and every second effort to draw it looks like ass. I think the problem I ran into is how derpy eagle faces look. Their beaks and eyes almost precisely line up, which I guess makes sense for how eagles hunt but come on
Mister Arrow much?
It also doesn’t help that Pax’s head is black so any time I want to draw elaborate feathers I’m like “ok but it’s a voidcat so why am I doing this”
So I usually end up compromising by shading it gray. Didn’t these wings turn out nice?
The face is rrk. The face asldkfjalf
Ok so in true Mary fashion though I ended up wanting to do this blog post because I made up some character profile pictures today to get ready to launch this project to the public (Al and Vic and my dad still have to read it) and I don’t know what made me think of it but I ended up looking at the profile pics I made for Redefining Evil a bajillion years ago so NOW IT’S TIME FOR A GLOW-UP EHE
versus…
I’m having an identity crisis with Claire right now because I’m wondering if she needs to be Asian but I don’t love then that my token minorities are a couple so I’m wondering if I just need to turn her back to brunette. But my hand was also cramping when I was trying to work on her today so I think I just need to come back to her with more energy, because I love the previous picture I did of her when she was blonde.
Well, considering I came on to literally just compare my shitty profile pics from RE with my new ones, I certainly ended up with a whole dump!
I also want to go slow with gryphonwip because I want to enjoy some privacy haha. Pride is coming up this weekend and I have over a thousand dollars of books I’m hoping to sell so that’s…yeah not private.
Oh my gosh I forgot about my first official couple pic from this round of revisions!
