Well, I fixed it.

Rather, my computer got worse (not going to sleep as it should have, in some sort of weird half-awake, half-asleep state) to the point where I resorted to a hard-reset. Fortunately, I'm progressively wisening up about leaving things that I can't recover. By which, I mean, I am back to normal, sort-of. Computer's still painfully slow right now.

But it does mean that, at least theoretically, I should be able to show you the images that I scanned.

Let's start with this one. This one, if you're a long-time follower and/or archive binger, you might remember me referencing back in the earlier days of my blog. My blog was brand new on the date mentioned, but I'm decently sure I did mention it. Now, mind you, I made this entirely without references, so it was entirely from memory. Given that, most of it was pretty good, although most of it sucks. The gloves were fairly decent, and the dark staff gave more or less the look I know I'm going to go for. I also came up (well, re-came up) with a clear design for his body armor: here leaning more towards Roman, my design would be a Roman/Greek-hybrid inspired armor, with my own touches, of course. It reintroduced the concept of having the tornado and the bolt embedded in the armor, something that had mostly fallen out.

The main design here, though, of note is the face. Completely from scratch, I managed to make a face that I instantly fell in love with on my first try. (The tries below were attempts to recreate it, unsuccessfully.) That's why everything on the page says stuff like "badly done", "roughly done", "crude" or so forth, but the face does not: the face was the validation for the existence of this brainstorming session where I just doodled away.

I don't know the date of it (I only date finished drawings, and it never got that far), but the above eventually led me to create this:

It's in light pencil, so the details are hard to make out; like I said, I never finished it. But you can see a few things. That smaller face that wasn't erased? (Like I said, this never really got past the sketch phase into the proper drawing phase where I'd have polished it up.) Direct trace from the penned doodle. I wanted to use the entire paper, though, so I enlarged the head. I didn't quite have the details of his uniform ironed out, though, so I used the sketch to rather messily play around.

And me using this as a reference, I was able to make this:

There's a few things missing/wrong in my handwritten notes (for instance, the bolt's color is blue, for good, not yellow, for neutral; I didn't mention more of the anatomical flaws), but this is the current design for Davos. You can see the blunders, in that I couldn't draw the staff without losing all my lovely detailing, and that said staff is crooked rather than straight (price of going entirely freehand, I suppose), plus the abnormally-wide torso (if I shrank it, I think he'd be much closer to being proportionally perfect), but I absolutely love this design for him.

It's artistically...appealing. It's sharp, yet sleek, simple to draw with practice, yet complex enough to be eye-catching...I really think that I've built something special. It's him as I envisioned him. He's come a long way from the sprite art he started as. In fact, have a look.

That little guy, that little sprite, was how Davos started out. This being his default childish expression. I had in mind for years (December 25th will mark the fifth anniversary of his creation) this, and bringing it out. The spiked hair, the staff, the boots, the shoulderpads, the armor, the basic design in sprite form was there, but it was very rudimentary, not very well-defined, and there's so many ways he could have been interpreted.

And now, not at the hand of someone else, but at my own, I have created a Davos that to me...fulfills every aspect of his character, plus the little add-ons that got attached along the way. The white gloves, the scarf, the armguards, they all gave his character an extra "flair" that felt vampiric, and given the addition of the leg armor, I basically got the design I've always wanted for him.

I've said to other artistic depictions of Davos, "That is Davos". But those were other artistic depictions, be it a program or fanart. This one is all me, entirely my own design. (Albeit taking obvious cues from outside sources. Have to balance originality and practicality; designs that are too original would be infeasible to actually wear not to mention draw. Plus some people come up with cool ideas, and it's hard to reject them simply because it was their idea before my own. Still, though, entirely DRAWN by me, and having the exact design dictated by me.)

I'll be trying to color him now that I have him, but it also reminded me that I've got other characters to give redesigns to. Argus has a design I'm quite happy with, but I need to actually do it from start to finish; last time, I cut corners (albeit still making an awesome image; variants of said image are still in rotation to this day as my avatar in some places) and used a process that's by my current artistic standards obsolete. Aria I mostly redesigned but didn't quite finish; I should do that. Sasha, I have sort-of redesigned in doodles, but I need to make it official and keep it as simple as I can.

Sanik, Tyra, Sarge, M, Kinas, Sinaer, Nathan, and Enlecar I haven't consistently designed for in ages. I've made up story justifications for their outfits being artistically impractical in certain areas, but it'll be easier if I can simply redesign them in a manner similar to what I've done with Davos.

And I haven't designed Lord Demon or Indigo Montimer since their doodles. Their teammates (which I seriously need to stop forgetting the names of) have sprites, but haven't actually been designed at all.

So basically, what I'm saying is that drawing-wise, I'm one down, and have fifteen to go. But I want to color Davos first, and make him as stunningly gorgeous artistically-wise as I can. Butyeah, got some work to do.