Contrary to how it may seem I do actually aim to be concise sometimes, hence the last piece on this topic being a little short on some things. This one should be short too, but I'd like to talk a little more about some nuances around the Dragon and Doll designs- perceived failings of my current Dragon look and what I find appealing in the Doll, and themes new and old that I want to carry through even in spite of feeling that I need something of a clean slate. I feel like last time I sort of went on the tangent of being a little defensive about my rebrand from Dragon to Pterosaur because this arc lasted a pretty short amount of time, if indeed it is even ending now at all- with my point made there, I intend to focus on these two newer designs. I'll be playing this fast and loose because keeping formatting all fancy and consistent to how it is in other documents can turn into a little bit of a pain here, so no headers this time around.
---
First off, is Q.C. currently a better design than Thia? Absolutely, I have to admit. Thia was a little bit rushed from trying to keep the rebrand fairly short and painless, and this strategy is very much coming back to bite me. Hell, if I remember correctly, some of the face settings on Thia are actually kinda busted and I can't even get her face to go back to the default when I zero everything- which means that, as we'll get to, I can't quite bring her in-line with the facial proportions I'm feeling more partial to now. A Thia remodel would probably consist of a new base model reusing some old textures- but only some.
Look, all the jugal and angular hornlets, and the beak nose, I like how they look, I want to put them on a character because truly I think they look good- but they sort of scream masculine to me. The hornlets in particular have always been a balancing act to avoid them coming off as beardlike. I'd probably find some softer way to achieve face scales- pretty much any monster girl media has some nice examples in its reptilian members and I might just do that. As much as I want to drive home the "this is a lizard" aspect, I need softer facial features from here on out, and a fuckin BEAK in the middle of my face is sort of conflicting with that.
On top of all this, putting them next to each other, Q.C. just has better quality overall. My colorblind ass is still working on learning the nuances of how light acts on stuff but Q.C.'s textures were a big step in the right direction so far, with much cleaner shading as opposed to the "I guess this should have a rough transparency gradient" logic on Thia. Her overall color and lighting contrast is vastly superior and a lot of those textures would replace the ones currently on Thia should I go back on all this. That all being said, the reverse might not be true- while I might end up with a smaller nose and more anime-esque contour to the face in a future Thia design, I feel like I'd stick to a sort of long face shape. Q.C.'s came out a little bit rounder and I'm probably gonna leave it that way, but, I don't know, I kinda like that shape for Thia.
So essentially a sprucing up of textures and leaning more towards a conventionally femme look is inevitable, whether or not the full rebrand happens.
---
As for whether these characters can coexist as sonas, the short answer is that I am warming up to it, but I still feel like running the two side-by-side would just be a tedious and exhausting way to delay the inevitable. One of these characters is going to be more me than the other, and will become the more prominent sona- the other will stop being a sona so much and probably just become a character in the background (though this is more likely for Thia than for Q.C., honestly, as I feel like Q.C. has less of an independent story going for her, and her current lore is very much streamlined for her role as a sona).
I simply don't want to have to run the gymnastics of multiple sonas. Either might come with a few alt forms but that's very different- and maybe there's an answer in there in the form of just making one the alt form of the other, but I have weird hangups about being able to casually go between such radically different physiologies, or more two entirely separate non-physiologies, plus, that still limits what I can do with the one that's reduced to a mask.
---
Finally, let's talk a bit about what I'm trying to do. As said in the last one, the core idea for a sona is a flying, aquatic thingamajig with a vested interest in nature as well as the mechanical, especially weaponry. While not spectacularly powerful with what fantastical abilities she may have or even much of a fighter overall, she seems to have a high degree of knowledge and can often be found tinkering away on things. She's distant, but not really aloof. She just wanders- if you were to put her and a bunch of friends together in one place she'd probably just take to the air and circle them, happy to be around in a sense but just preferring not to be in the thick of it- and likewise she's often sorta just doing her own thing at her own pace. When she's not, she can seem somewhat offputting and unstable. Easily stressed, very dodgy and twitchy, even if her intent is innocent. It often isn't, though.
This lays bare a lot of themes that have been around since ye olden Pterosaur days, and even a bit before. A big ol' drifting seabird that knows how guns work and will sit here and tell you about them for hours. This was distilled and slightly reflavored for the Dragon, but she's still doing essentially the same thing- going on long flights, diving on fish, and coming home to just muck about with whatever she scavenged up earlier that day. Q.C. loses a bit of the animal edge- she'll probably still have wings somehow (I'll figure it out), but lacks a lot of the wandering-through-nature side, as well as the narrative tradeoffs of having a character that was just built one day instead of born into the world that I always struggle with.
By contrast, Thia is increasingly running out of room for the tinker side. A bit might stay- she'll have lost her breath weapon in death, and replaced it with Magitech firearms. But the mechanical arms, probably not. I already got rid of the eye-light and haven't looked back since, and I honestly considered that as essentially an icon to the extent that when I was working on a signature it was in it, so, yeah, Thia is probably going to be mostly organic next time you see her- less stitching, too, maybe more bandages instead. Her death would be relatively mundane, but somewhat mysterious, because I feel the way things ended up last time was too... Conspicuous? Like it was too much of a badass last stand when it was supposed to be kinda just tragic and brutal.
---
So basically the choice is between a considerably more graceful-looking remake of Thia and the Scary Doll, and I'm open but skeptical to making both work at once. It would definitely be nice to just... Have them. But outside of like art cameos (and erp lol) I have no idea when the one that loses a bit of my favor and winds up relegated to a secondary role will get enough love to make them worth keeping at all. I feel like the best time to decide on one is now, anyways- while being able to do anything big with these is still so far away.
For now I'll probably be off drawing something else for a bit, that helps me get my thoughts straight.
Comments