For the Entirety Project

THAT’S ACTUALLY A GOOD QUESTION I DO PLAN TO ANSWER IN THE COMIC ITSELF!

But I will answer it now because its not like a spoiler, if you ever got pulled around my an ear think of that sensation except way more intense and even stressful. Basically their brain evolved to recognize that thing is a sensory organ so it enduring damage triggers their fight-or-flight response pretty hard. Yanking their xala bea (that’s what its called) is probably the quickest way to find out how it feels to get slashed by a Ginaga’s claws.

One thing that was bothering me for a while was how the ferron had a far too complex design not to mention some anatomy issues so I decided to redraw the species (at least the female for now) and see if I could  keep them looking interesting while fixing stuff up.

So yeah female ferron now have more uniformed plumage patterns which are more centralized to posts to grab attention towards the overall shape. On that note the colour palette was adjusted a bit to have colours pop a bit more. Anatomy wise I made the legs less squash over and made the feet a bit shorter. The arms were fix to have their palms actually face inward rather than having “broken wrists” like the velociraptors from Jurassic Park.

I also reduce the number of snaggleteeth coming out of their beak, feather detail and reduced the number of scales along the feet.

One last feature that was tweaked is the top of the beak, now it actually look beak like and is overall less convoluted looking.

Hopefully these changes are things ya’ll don’t mind? As I get better at designing stuff in a cartoonish way I like going back to gaudy earlier designs and making them flow a little better. I just always hope the changes are well received.

It's good that you took the time to update the blog with what's going on behind the scenes. Good luck with it!

Thank!  I do apologize for being quiet about it. I’ll try to update a bit more frequently from now on even if not art related updates. That said I’m hoping in the new year to come out with some test art for what may be the final look of the characters? Again the style may change so I’m going to try a few things out.

I can’t note all the changes being done but the three biggest ones that can be listed here are:

Darwin, Natalie and Dal and now the only main characters. Holto, Buu and Lok are definitely still around but them and a few TBA characters are what I’m going to called “temporary companions”. Basically Holto and Buu follow around the power trio through the first season (or as I like to call them arcs) of the story and when by the second season their role becomes less prominent in that area and they come show up from time to time instead. This was the original “pitch” I had in my mind but I tried to make all 6 the main characters but after kinda thinking it through I don’t think it would work as nicely in practice.

The actual art style will probably be far less angular in the final product if not just roundish all together. I’m continuing to experiment with style right now to see what easiest on my wrist.

Whoops D: that was indeed a typo! Thanks for pointing it out to me, I have now went back to the text post and fixed it. I may have to add dualsex to my browser’s dictionary because given I use the word duel a lot more than dual in my day to day I’ll probably make the same typo again x-x.

Now onto a relevant post about WORD SHENANIGANS: Today I saw that the user dimetradone is dealing with the same issue as I have before and it did get me thinking about it again. To explain even though its biology correct I’ve never been really comfy with calling ginana or shlen “hermaphrodites”.

The reason this is problematic is its a common misconception that’s an acceptable term to call humans with mixed sexual traits when its actually not. I mean some intersex people aren’t offended by it but regardless its biologically inaccurate. I think short of dedicated dialogue to explaining the nuance between being a hermaphrodite and being intersex there’s a possibility for unintentionally encouraging people to use a term that has derogatory potential.

Originally my solution was to use intersex but that’s still inaccurate as its a term that only applies to species that under most circumstances have multiple sexes. 

I could use a botany term because there’s many for those for has multiple sexual functions but it seems like a weird thing to apply that to a non plant. Bisex would be a another possibility but I’m sorta concerned with that being misunderstood as being short for bisexual which is obviously something completely different.

There after about a million years I redid Emgar’s sheet. As I noted a little while back I did rename this character (they were originally called Elgarr). Anyway did the sheet in a bit of a different style and tried something new with the shading.

Species like the Kisob’ae and Mila’aga are usually referred to as “false mammals” but that nomenclature is one used by humans. There are no mammals on Cellon therefore they wouldn’t be calling themselves false mammals. It was coined by the first humans to really describe this group of animals as they noticed they had a lot of features we associate with mammals but were “off” enough they clearly were something completely different.

If you’re wondering what’s the local word for them unfortunately the way they class animals means there’s no such term. I mean they have terms that basically would translate to stuff like canine and primate but nothing as all encompassing as ones like insect and reptile.

Redrawing the few characters that need new art (Elgarr, perhaps all the important humans, Dal, may do a quick turnaround for Buu and Holto as well).

Finishing up everything that has to be hosted at toyhouse.

Getting the 3 animal species and single tech piece that needs to be finished prerelease (which is an item Darwin has).

More world concept art.

Redoing the art of all the people species in order to truly establish their finalized designs. So basically after these pics are done there won’t be anymore “tweaking” to their designs as there has been from time to time. The only change they may be subjected to is my style evolving.

Now for the meat and potatoes: because 2016 was a terrible year for my health I wasn’t able to get nearly as much as I wanted done. As such the release date of Entirety will almost certainly be moved to sometime in 2018 instead of this year. I rather not rush into things for the sake of a deadline I already had established from the start may not be met. But yeah I’ll get there hopefully! I already determined a schedule with other things I do offline so I’m less likely to get burnt on in some way and be unable to draw for a few weeks which was part of the problem in 2016. Another part was just getting distracted with other drawings that were unrelated to Entirety, I will likely keep drawing those from time to time but keeping more focused on this.

*cries* Oh thank goodness this image I started in October is finally done now my health stop being terrible!

Sorry for being ultra uber quiet lately. I went through a really bad bout of mental health so the drawing that was suppose to come right after Tyfon’s revamped sheet ended up being put way on the back burner.

That said I will do a “doing it for the art” thing at least since someone over at weasyl asked a important question: If having black face tattoos is considered a bad omen for Kisob’ae what are the other colours and what do they mean?

So here’s a quick summary. There’s obviously more like say orange but they tend to have a lot of the same meanings just with slight variations. For example pink and purple mean almost the same thing. Red is consider the best choice because luck is a very generic thing most everyone wants. the rest are a little more niche.

Furthermore if you’re wondering what happens if they tattoo a mix of colours its consider meaningless unless some of the tattoos are black as using black ink in general is considered bad luck. Also most people will think you look ugly and judge your decisions because it isn’t face paint you can’t remove this shit easily. If anything you’re judged less harshly if you just don’t bother tattooing your face but obviously still less harshly than if you chose black.

**Just in case you forgot or are new: parent is singular because ginaga have non sexual reproduction so the “father” is regarded as irrelevant.

Basically when a ginaga lays an egg... technically their job is done. Many will brood for some time after the egg is out but usually individuals which job is specifically to rear children take over. This is something that was present in their culture forever, it predates becoming “civilized”.

While the majority of Ginaga in modern times will have a relationship with their children after they hatch there’s no obligation to do so. So yeah this can lead to some problems of jealousy and stuff with kids but usually the caretakers take time to explain that some parents have very good reasons to be absent besides “I just don’t like you” so its rarely a massive issue.

So Tyfon knows who their parent is but has almost no relationship with them... not that they would want one because apparently this person is even a bigger pile of trash than Tyfon. Elgarr on the other hand had a strong relationship with their parent before they died and has a strong relationship with their own children which are now all much older. Xerxin relationship with their parent is never brought up in the story but I’m here to confirm they had a very nice relationship with them.

As a quick mockup I’m thinking of making the shade of their skin a bit more yellow-green and changing their hair colour from a grey purple to a brown. As tree dwellers being brown, grey and green makes sense. Also its canon their white markings came about when camouflage was less necessary for their species so the fact that sticks out makes sense.