Dragonsbayne

Dragonsbayne is a project by Abi, which is also being contributed to by myself and Anders. The official website is here, and that's probably the best place to go for information on it- this webpage is just an archive of art I've done for it, really. Nevertheless, I'll do my best to sum it up.

Dragonsbayne is a story set in a fantasy world, about a young half-dragon girl called Saft struggling to find her place in a world fraught with conflict between species. Her situation is personally complicated by the fact the dragon side of the family are the Goldenscales, a noble and politically important but very troubled family, in no small part due to the action of Saft's psychologically unstable and abusive father. (Meanwhile, the human side is a mystery due to Saft's father killing her mother... It's a long, and traumatic story.) Despite this, Saft is able to befriend a dracophobic human named Corvidan Pleasant, although his family has more than their share of issues as well.

I've contributed a few characters to the story, although all of them show up later in the story than others. In the meantime, here's some stuff I've drawn:

• Emma's Bar Background. From 2021. This was considerably simpler than drawing Turo's emporium.
• Valentines: Aurikel, Harris, Iva, and Dana. From 2021.
• Saejid Does Not Know How to Deal With Kids. From 2021. I think Saejid and Vanille have technically known each other for a very long time, so I wanted to draw an early encounter between them. Vanille isn't Queen yet, and Saejid himself is basically an intern working for a man who works for Vanille's father.
• Emporium Background. From 2020. An exercise in drawing environments, it's the front counter of Turo's emporium.
• Ermine Fairy. From 2020. My friend Jules has a story setting that also includes fairies, but in that setting fairies are humans with random animal traits, instead of the standard wings. I associate Saejid with ermines, so I could easily picture him in this setting. I like to joke that besides the ears and tail, erminefae!Saejid also has sharp little canine teeth and four nipples.
• Blushy Harrises and Blushy Saejids. From 2020. I wanted to draw some characters blushing, and Abi and Anders asked for Harris and Saejid.
• Saejid Redesign. From 2020. Self-explanatory, really. I wasn't content with his old outfit, and wanted something fancier.
• Harris Redesign. From 2020. Harris's design barely changed from his initial concept, really, but I didn't want to keep using the old one as a reference because he was supposed to be a dragon, not a human, in it. Besides, now he gets to have some fancy boots! He's supposed to be holding a spear here, but I'm sure he's holding it improperly. He's not much of a soldier, after all.
• Corvihorse. From 2020. It's Corvidan as a sparkly unicorn centaur. This is probably Vanille's fault.
• Squish the Saft. From 2020. I think this is how Aurikel would react if she met child Saft.
• Iva in a Dumb Sweater. From 2020. The title is self-explanatory... this was just an excuse to draw some fanservice, honestly.
• Dana V2. From 2020. I wound up drawing Dana in a lot of different outfits in order to come up with a new design I was happy with. In the end, this is what I went with. I know it's probably not clear in the drawing, but she wears spade-shaped earrings.
• Saejid Entrancing. From 2020. Fairies in Dragonsbayne have what are essentially hypnosis powers, and I wanted to draw Saejid using his.
• Looking for Secrets? CW: Body horror. From 2020. A little comic featuring the late Lilacinus. The text is from a quote people discovered hidden in the html of the Undertale website. I generally try not to reapply quotes out of context, but the mental image I had here would not leave me alone until I drew it out.
• Lizard Iva. From 2020, it's Iva Cliffsholder in her dragon form. She's based off of the frilled lizard. I'm rather proud of how this turned out.
• Beta Dana. From 2020. I was adamant that Harris needed to be a middle sibling, but due to a mixture of conservation-of-detail and other factors, I wound up only giving him one older sibling. I didn't like my first pass at Dana's outfit, however.
• The Jordanes Twins. From 2020. I'd made a quick concept in a dollmaker before, but wanted to try properly drawing a design for Harris's younger siblings. Fun fact: Lucia and Louisa Jordanes are identical twins mostly because it meant that I could get away with basically only coming up with one design for them.
• The Impalement. CW: Blood, violence. From 2020. A kind of whump piece. I thought it'd be horrid and ironic for Turo to get stabbed by one of his own weapons. He's also a very stoical character, so I wanted to draw him in distress.
• Safteel Baby A and Safteel Baby C. From 2020. In Dragonsbayne canon, Saft very nearly winds up marrying Prince Geel. I thought it would be interesting to try and figure out what their children would look like, so I wrote down Saft and Geel's respective facial features, and randomized who got what, as well as a very basic personality for each child. We all wound up liking two of the designs a lot, so they got recycled into the characters Harris Jordanes, a human dragon hunter, and Iva Cliffsholder, a dragon noble woman.
• Turo's Proposal One, Two. From 2020. I made a joke about how Turo tends to be so cryptic in his phrasing and oblivious of how people might interpret things he says to suggest that he might phrase a job offer to Tahra in such a weird, vague way, that it could be taken as a marriage proposal- and how uncomfortable would that be for Tahra! This is also one of my earliest CSP drawings.
• Hatching Meuric. From 2020. One of Anders' characters. Meuric is normally this enormous, physically intimidating behemoth of a freshwater dragon, but I was inspired by a picture of a baby alligator to try drawing him as a small child.
• A Touch of Romance With Bruhikel. From 2020. A little drawing of Aurikel and her husband.
• Pie Slice Turo. I've drawn most of the cast as children before, but after learning a bit about Turo I decided to redesign him. I used a screenshot from Steven Universe as a pose reference, which is where the term "Pie Slice Turo" comes from. It actually wound up spinning off into a whole AU.
• A Touch of Romance With Gladililac. From 2020. A little drawing of Gladinus and his beloved, the late Lilacinus.
• Misery Collage. From 2020. The various cast members making angsty expressions.
• A Sagely Gentleman. From 2020. A quick MS Paint drawing I did, and the first concept art/design for Saejid. He didn't have a name at this point, but he did have the concept of "evil scientist fae." To go with Vanille, I googled for scents that are commonly used in men's cologne and such, and sage was the first result I found. I came up with a few different variants, but Saejid was the one Abi and Anders liked best.
• So Small and Funny. From 2020, it's Aurikel meeting her granddaughter's boyfriend. I thought it would be funny to picture because of how awkward it would be- Corvidan, even if he'd be a lot better by that point, is afraid of dragons, after all, and Aurikel would likely be unintentionally condescending towards any humans. This was also an attempt at seriously drawing/designing her dragon form.
• Beta Aurikel. From 2020. I wound up thinking about what Saft's grandmother- who had to exist, logistically, but was handwaved as "probably dead" and otherwise had no role in the story at the time- was like, so I reverse engineered Ravus's design to try and figure out what she might have looked like, as well as came up with a basic personality and name. Her human form was later redesigned by Abi. I didn't have any real plans for Aurikel, but we all got attached to her pretty quickly, as we realized her story is actually quite sad.
• I Love You! From 2020. I asked Abi and Anders how I thought the various characters might respond to a love confession, just so I could fill out this silly meme.
• Turo Snzz. From 2020. It's a drawing of Anders' character, Magineer Turo, sleeping, after we were joking about him having a bad snoring problem. It was interesting for me to try and work out what his sleep wear might be like. I don't know if the outfit is accurate or not (hair down, less/different jewelry, and a sleep shirt) but according to Anders, he doesn't actually sleep with blankets. Anyway, here's a version without the snoring sound effects.
• Dragon Saft DTIYS. From 2019. Another redrawing of a Saft picture Abi did for a DTIYS twitter meme. I don't draw animals and monsters and the like very often, so this was a good exercise for me.
• Dragonish Saft. From 2019. In Dragonsbayne proper, dragons are usually in full-on giant lizard form or in a human disguise (minus the pointy ears.) I thought it'd be fun to draw a humanoid Saft with several of her dragon form's traits showing, sort of like how I draw Wrilnora in Separate Souls.
• Saft DTIYS. From 2019. A redrawing of a picture Abi did. (For a twitter meme called "Draw This In Your Style" where you're supposed to do that! Not me being rude!) It's Saft and Festivus.