#cirque royale

"Cirque Royale is an episodic slice of life comic about the regular lives of the newly appointed royal clown family."

This post's topic: Names and how I'm really bad at naming characters

1. Former king and queen, George and Louise Mills were named after the main characters of the 1970s sitcom "The Jeffersons".

Why? I don't know. I think I was trying to come up with names and saw a picture of the Jeffersons or something. 🤷🏾‍♀️

Subsequently, Louise's mother and sister were named after Wheezy's mother and sister from the show.

(I did not stop to remember that George was also my grandfather's name. In contrast to George Mills, he was a very kind and funny man who was beloved and is greatly missed by everyone who knew him. 🩷)

2. Will and Fred's name were also lifted from the main characters of an old sitcom, "The Flintstones".

I watched a lot of old sitcoms and cartoons growing up...

3. I changed Leo's full name to Leondro because, once again, I forgot that I have a family member named Leonard.

4. All mimes, with the exception of Claudette, Claudette sr., Charlie, Red, and Kingston are named after French artists. Why? Because I automatically associate mimes with France and art. And it's fun to use my worthless art history education.

5. The Cashworthy family is (obviously) named after astrological signs: Leo, Aries Gemma (Gemini), Diana (Virgo). Diana's daughters are named after part-lion mythical beasts, Griffin and Chimi (Chimera), because they are only half Cashworthy and the family is very lion-like.

Diana's husband, Waldo, was named such because he doesn't show up much in comic, like "Where's Waldo". (side-note: I just learned that Waldo's name is actually Wally and he's only Waldo in North America for some reason?)

6. Claudette and Red were actually named by my EnterVoid friend, Puzzlething, during the original character tournament that I created Clown Princess for. She used the name "Clownette", so I kept it and made it Claudette, because I figured it would be the equivalent of a human girl named "Humantha". Never mind that her last name is Klownikov. :p

7. Charlie's name came from a random clown name generator...as did Cupcake and Daisy.

I did not consider that Charlie's official title would then be "Prince Charles" 😬

One of three pieces I'm submitting for the Incognito Art show, this one is of Claudette Klownikov from the webcomic @cirqueduroyale by @atomicbritt ! I drew her as a magical girl, because we both love them.

For those not in the know, the Incognito Art Show is a fundraiser where artists donate up to 3 pieces of original artwork to be auctioned off, and the proceeds go to three studios catering to disabled artists! With this, I dedicated one of my pieces to neurodiversity, and Claudette provided the perfect muse.

I loosely designed her outfit off the one Swamp Princess wears, and gave her rainbow butterfly wings and a rainbow infinity sign wand as those are two pretty neat autism symbols. I also had a lot of fun drawing her hair!

I put bubbles in the background because her special power in cirque royale is the ability to teleport, which looks like a cloud of blue bubbles! I imagine now that she's a magical girl, she has the ability to blow huge bubbles which capture enemies inside and purify them, as well as use the power of laughter to drive back the darkness.

I finally got to make a custom doll of Matisse from my comic @cirqueduroyale.

Her pink jacket was made by @hauntcouture!

Day 15: Have you ever made a custom?

Boy, have I.

I few years ago, I learned about doll customizing and got into thrifting and repainting old monster high dolls to look like characters from my webcomic @cirqueduroyale.

Then I lost interest for a few years until I finally finished Unicorn Princess last year. Her custom was. The. Worst. She had 6 different faces, a split scalp, 4 different wigs, a lost outfit that I reordered just to find it after the new one arrived and that time I accidentally sprayed her with spray paint instead of sealant. 😮‍💨 But whatever, she's done now.

Then I made Cupcake, who was so much easier omg.