scribbles and sketches

What 'looks like a man' and what 'looks like a woman' changes alot depending on who you ask and where and when you are in the world and throughout history.

Everyone's standards for what either gender should look like depends on an immeasurable amount of factors. These factors range from where you are, to when you were raised, to who raised you, to what media you engaged with, to the real life people you met etc...

The reason I make my human version of Sylvia look more stereotypically 'masculine' is because I feel that's what she is in the show.

She's not human, she's a blue dinosaur alien first and foremost, she doesn't have any human secondary sex characteristics to latch onto.

The only stereotypically feminine thing about her character design that I can spot is her eyelashes. ( A very common character design detail used in cartoons to communicate that a character is a girl.)

She's repeatedly written with her gender in mind throughout the show as well. We see she isn't interested in fitting into the feminine beauty/gender norms that occasionally get placed upon her by a few characters. We see that it's ridiculous to try and make her fit into these norms at all, and at worst it makes her uncomfortable.

There's only a few exceptions where we see her in stereotypically feminine attire. Sometimes it's because she was forced into it, others because it's what she chose to wear at a formal event.

She mostly doesn't wear clothes at all. If given the choice she wears whatever fits the situation.

This de-gendering of her leads to a de-humanisation of her as well, where some villains just refer to her as a horse or a zbornack. (If she doesn't fit into their idea of what a woman should be then she has no use to them.)

We often see a reverse of this with Wander. He's constantly depicted as being comfortable with femininity. He also doesn't fit into many physical traits that are deemed as masculine.

Wander wears "feminine" stuff because he simply love dressing up and playing a character. He's having fun.

Sylvia wears "masculine" stuff because she's just wearing whatever is practical to wear in that moment.

These two make a great duo when you think about what female and male characters are made to be. They subvert the normal expectations just by being themselves.

With all this in mind I tried to think of what kind of human she would be, and to me it made sense to lean into design elements that are often masculanised, with her prominent facial features, broad shoulders, strong arms, thick neck etc... I don't like limiting myself with gender norms when thinking of character design, I feel it's more honest to depict humans looking like themselves rather than trying to fit them within what they "should" look like for their gender.

I wanted her to be a tall and strong human, because zbornacks in the show are often seen as rough and tough creatures who take pride in their strength. She's strong, that's just a fact about her. Sadly people still see being tall as a masculine thing and being short as a feminine thing.

I wanted her to have darker skin (although I need to get better at using colours, I'm still not satisfied with how I do her skin tone.) because she's travelling with Wander all the time so to me even if she was pale skinned she'd at least be tan. And I just want there to be a variety of skin tones when thinking of human designs for characters.

(Although I've often seen human versions of her depicted with darker skin whereas other human versions of characters are very pale next to her. There's the habit of assigning darker skin to characters who are seen as aggressive and tough due to racist stereotyping. We see this habit pop up with Hater as well. He and Sylvia will be darker skinned whereas Wander and Peepers will often be lighter skinned. This isn't me judging other artists human designs for the characters, It's just a broader problem with character design in media as a whole, once you notice the pattern you see it everywhere.)

I also didn't want to compensate for her perceived lack of femininity by giving her a very slim waist or longer hair or emphasising her chest. I've often seen when female characters are actually given muscle for once the artist will try and make up for it by pushing those previously mentioned traits.

I made her hair shaved at the sides and in a sort of mohawk because it looks like the way her zbornack feathers sit on her head. It also gives a sort of rebellious feel.

I gave her a big nose because zbornack Sylvia has a big snout.

I gave her a more prominent belly because her belly is prominent in the show.

In my art of her she wears a vest, baggy thick trousers with big pockets held up with a belt. Because I feel she'd wear sturdy practical clothing for travel. (And also because I suck at designing clothes and I don't understand fashion so I wanted to keep it simple.)

So yeah, those are some thoughts on why I designed her the way I did. There's also no wrong way to design a human Sylvia, this is just my version out of many other cool versions I've seen.