Been a long time since we’ve seen this guy. I do love him, though. His last reference sheet dates 2009, wow, and there are a lot of things I really don’t like about it. I know the wing looks weird but I was drawing this with the intention of redesigning him. On my last reference sheet, the sideview was just wingless so you could see his back. While that’s nice, it would completely screw up his actual anatomy to look at him that way since it’s not like he can magically make his wings disappear. I didn’t want to draw his whole entire wing since it wouldn’t fit, so I just drew the membrane pocket that he has and omitted everything else. I drew it behind his head decorations since I didn’t want to block them.
I doodled this at work and splotched some color on it here tonight so I could see if I was going to change his colors at all, which I really didn’t. I’ll be working on a new sheet for him some time in the future. With regard to the fact that his back legs are too long and his head is too big in this image, here are the things I changed about his design:
Since he’s a guard/warrior, I really wanted him to have a more stocky, heavy build. I thickened him up a little bit, and shortened his torso. He was a bit noodly before. I also tried to proportion him a little better. His pinion feathers aren’t so long/giant and neither is his tail. It’s also a little thicker, since he does swing it around. I also made his scales organized a little differently and introduced a little bit of irregularity to make him look a bit more organic. They go with his patterns a little better here too.
I didn’t change his colors a whole lot. In fact, the only things I really did were:
I made his whites whiter. They used to be a dull, medium gray (which the bright orange stood out on). Now I have brought them back to the soft cream they used to be. I added a bit more contrast in general, really. I also made his tail spikes and thumb claws dark like the rest of his claws. I also made his eyes (and inner flesh, subsequently) as well as his markings a darker blue. More indigo, really. I know that the neon blue he was before is one of my favorite colors but to be honest, sometimes a dark color is really more eyecatching.
That’s all on him for now. I’ll be doing more sketches in this blog as I decide what all I want to be on his ref.
