Old Again, New Again

 Forever ago, I used to be on Gaia Online…left once I realized it’s a huge money-sink and the concept of RP (well, as I know it) is beyond most of the population.  Before that and in the years since, though, I’ve still gone to the tektek avatar creator* site to mess around with all the shiny items.  It’s actually a good place to mine for design ideas.  Back in the day, I drew my own avatars and colored them by mouse.  A lot of the old artwork never got finished…

…yeah, and it’s probably not going to, either.  LCD monitors are not conducive to my coloring method on a large scale like this, not to mention I’m way out of practice.  So, nursing some eyestrain, I decided to just redraw everything.  That turned into another trip to the avatar-creator and several hours later I have a redesign.  It’s not 100% accurate to the sprite image, but that’s the point.  Playing with it.

* note Tektek got killed off by Gaia a few years ago.  Much of value was lost.

The Oracle here actually has a lot more chains than are visible.  And yes, those are something like the Greek evil-eye charms all over the place.  Also a pretty decent example of style change, since the original on the left is at least six years old.

Another redo of old art that will never get finished.  I will probably never not like Old!art’s butt, but new!art is more…genderflavorless, I guess?

It’s some sort of ‘airmail’ deliveryperson.  They all wear different colors depending on their regions, and will paint the membranes of their wings rather like the markings on bombers.  I want to say they’re some sort of dragon/djinn hybrids.  They’re really competitive.

I don’t even think these two are in the same ballpark anymore, tbh.  Old is much more recent art this time, too – 2009-2010, maybe?  Whenever Gaia first had the centaur potions.

New is better.  Also LEAFIER.  Also also damn near impossible to recreate via avatar XD

Not good at those Edison-style retro lightbulbs.  Nope.  That’s some of the most pathetic seaweed ever.  The whole thing’s also far more detailed than I meant it to be, and it took two days (hence the dirty-ass paper, oy).  This is me getting carried away.

The whole thing is supposed to look steampunk-ish, though without some kind of phenomenal magic skills I doubt it’d be able to function underwater. It has a lot of glowy bits, mostly along the expansion hinges.  It’s also supposed to be carrying some kind of harpoon or harpoon gun, but uh..

The one on the right has more obvious deviations from the sprite image than the last, and it also developed some backstory along the way…

It’s some kind of treasure-guardian, and it looks like it’s been startled or something =p

They really are meant to look like goldfish, and they can ‘swim’ just as well in air as in water.  That bellybutton-looking thing is a gem with sigils or something around it, binding the guardian to its particular place.  They wouldn’t be too big – maybe about the size of a koi – but they pack a painful little punch and will swarm like hornets if you let them.  The number of guardians you get mobbed by depends on the size of the hoard you’re invading, because the only sure method of ensuring their allegiance is to bind them with a piece of the treasure itself, as a sort of payment.

That really sounded better in my head.  OH WELL.

Bonus, another one that never got finished and two that did because I basically used them for dress-up.  The lineart for the unfinished one has bee non display in my office for ages.  I'm still secretly pretty proud of it.