Loose Canon

 

Finalized! She’s supposed to have talons on the front, but paws are so much easier to draw, so, paws it is! She’s mostly white with parchment colored wings, head and back, with blotches of darker brown (almost like water stains in an old book) and edging of gold. She has gold speckles around her face and the undersides of her wings have little black marks that look at a glance like cursive handwriting. When her wings are folded, they snugly follow the contours of her body

 

Vahaadi watched the peculiar man with a guarded frown. “What do you want?” he asked, keeping his voice low so he wouldn’t wake Spark.

“You,” the stranger responded with a little quirk of his eyebrows.  “Your power.”

Vahaadi scoffed and folded his arms. “Ha. Get in line.”

“Ha-ha! I never was one to wait my turn,” the man burst loudly, throwing his cape back with one hand as he bent into a flourished bow. At eye level, he doffed his hat. “Mr. Sabo,” he quipped in introduction. His voice dropped to a pleased growl, and he slid the top of his cane under Vahaadi’s chin, tilting the djinni’s head back as if inspecting a prize animal. “But, I hope you’ll soon call me ‘Master,’” he leered through his clenched teeth.

Vahaadi scowled and slapped Mr. Sabo’s cane away with the back of his hand.

Sabo, take 3! I took some feedback on this guy’s design, and now I’m really happy with his look!

The weird mohawk has been replaced with a (weirder) shaved club pattern on the back of his head, and he’s now completely bald on top! I moved the heart shape to his collar and gave him a swanky top hat and a more sinister eye shape.

Except for the one in his eye, all of the dice patterns will be represented by buttons on his outfit. Two and four are the closures on his pants, six is down the front of his coat, five will be on the back of his coat, and three will be the cufflinks of his sleeve (not shown in this angle).

I worked the pawn shape into the bottom of his cane, and I gave him a cigarette holder shaped like a king piece! I like the idea of him always talking through his teeth because of the cigarette clenched in his jaw, and the cane and hat open up some ideas of things he can do with his hands while he talks. It’s important that he seems really animated. He’s a bigger, louder character than I expected him to be, and I like it. CX

 

Sabo, take 2? I wanted to push his visual association with Toymaker more strongly by incorporating game elements into his design. I think I went overboard, though, and wasn’t able to include everything I wanted.

Cards: the forelock of his goofy mohawk forms a heart, his eyepatch represents the suit of diamonds, and his beard is styled like spades. I haven’t figured out where to work in a club element. I thought perhaps an earring, but it would have to just be a little stud because his collar is so tall. I want his half-cape to resemble fanned cards, but I didn’t quite nail the shape.

Dice: I thought I’d represent each side of a six-sided die somewhere on his form. I didn’t get them all:
1 – His iris is a rounded square and the pupil makes it look like a die.
2 – buttons on his lapel.
3 – Didn’t make it on the design. jacket cuffs, perhaps?
4 – The, uh…flap thing on the front of his pants? *hides face* >////<
5 – You can’t tell from the drawing, but there are five dots tattooed to his scalp. Kind of a weird place for them, but it makes me think of a doll that’s had its hair pulled out, and I think it’s a subtle hint to the fact that he isn’t real.
6 – The buttons down the front of his coat.

Chess pieces:
Pawn – Not represented. :/ Thought about giving him a peg leg that would look like an upside-down pawn, but he looked unbalanced, and too much like a pirate with that eye patch.
Rook – The tail of his coat is shaped like the turret.
Knight – the head of his cane (sloppily drawn, here…) is carved into the bust of a horse.
Bishop – His boots are shaped like bishop pieces.
Queen – The cuff of his sleeve is scalloped like the crown shape of a queen piece.
King – Not represented.
My first thought for incorporating the chess pieces was to give him a set of throwing knives with the hilt of each shaped as a particular piece. I may still use that idea by giving him a sword with the hilt of a king piece and a dagger with the hilt of a pawn piece, but I didn’t know where to put them on? My inclination is strap them to hip, but he already looks so cluttered…

He has very prominent teeth because I want him to recall a nutcracker or a ventriloquist dummy. I gave him the eyepatch just to work in the diamond shape, but it happens to be the same eye that Toymaker is missing, and now I’m thinking I should run with that. Maybe none of Toymaker’s creations have their right eye.

While his design still feels really all over the place, I do like how his silhouette turned out. He fits into the character lineup much better now, while not looking too samey.

 

In revisiting and reworking the Loose Canon manuscript, I realized Serenade doesn’t seem present enough in Season 1, considering she’s supposed to be the main antagonist. She’s clearly present in episode 05, there’s a brief glimpse of her in episode 06–then she disappears until episode 11, when she launches her Rat King attack on Earth. I want to try to add her to some of the interim episodes, and one possibility is the Fable episode, where Spark becomes a ferret and Vahaadi becomes a caracal.

Serenade’s design is modeled after a mouse, but if she were to appear as an enemy in that form, she wouldn’t be very threatening! As a ferret, Spark would be bigger than she is, and Vahaadi could eat her in one gulp! (NOT that I think it would even occur to him to try, I’m just saying…)

Her hennin is supposed to resemble ears, but in looking at it, it also resembles a cobra’s hood. Plus, she’s got that diamond motif going on…so, what about a cobra?

It’s kind of a departure from my plan for her, but I think it will be a lot more exciting to see Spark fight with a cobra! While the mouse motif better suits the Pied Piper vibe, a cobra kinda elicits a snake charmer vibe, which is also cool. And I get to exploit her diamond patterns! What do you think?

I’ve been trying to experiment with styles for Krissy/Spark–both wardrobe and drawing style. Here’s a study I initially did to compare how I draw Krissy (really bony and angular, no meat) to Spark (curvier, fuller…I forced myself to use the Krissy base and draw Spark’s features on top, and it looks all wrong), but I also used it as a mannequin to try out a uniform idea. The first version is her wearing it properly, and the second is the way I think it would look by the end of the day: rolled up sleeves, loosened tie, untucked shirt.

And this is a cartoony style study 😀 I was inspired by this person specifically, but I didn’t pull it off as I’d hoped. Things I was trying for this look: Big hair, round eyes, large head ratio, delicate limbs, little feet and hands, exaggerated clothes shapes (specifically her boots).