Glamorous Creatures (Introduction)

Hi! As this my first post to this blog, please allow me to briefly introduce myself (even though Billy D. Bunny already gave me a very flattering introduction of his own. I am a digital artist, who most frequently goes by the online moniker, "EukaryoticProkaryote", though, occasionally, I used "DahBastard" (in particular on Furaffinity and Inkbunny). Unfortunately, as those with a keen eye might have noticed, the link Billy D. Bunny provided for my gallery sent you to EukayoticProkaryote's gallery, and that's because, when I first signed up to DA, I mispelled my own user name.

via GIPHY

).

Anyhoo, while my art focuses heavily on fantasy themes, and in particular, a certain kind of anthropomorphic character, which serves as the basis for this blog post (more on that in a second), I am also in the process of developing at least one comic series. This series will be part parody of, part homage to the Saturday Morning Cartoons of the 80's and 90's (a genre rife with lovable anthropomorphic characters).

However, that is not the point of this post. The real point of this post is to discuss what fuels most of my art: what I call glamorous creatures. Quite simply, what I call a glamorous creature is a character with the following qualities:

• They possess human-level intelligence, or greater
• They (tend to) possess mystical, magical, supernatural, mysterious, or wondrous, properties, or abilities
• They are visually aesthetically pleasing in some elegant way, or at least can be protrayed that way

Admittedly, this might be a bit confusing, as the modern sense of glamour refers simply to a stunning, beautiful, or attractive quality. However, I believe this is the best word to use, as "glamor", arhiachally means "enchanted" or "magical". Thus, I use this word as a hybrid to simultaneously invoke both qualities.

It is no coincidence that I have chosen to focus so much of my art on this theme. Many of the characters I cherished in childhood can be considered "glamorous creatures." Examples include:

• Falcor from "The Never Ending Story" (no, I never read the book), a luck dragon whose mere presence increases the likelihood of fortune
• Aslan from the Narnia Series, essentially a proxy for (benevolent, not angry) God (or maybe just Jesus?)
• Puff the Magic Dragon, a..well...magic dragon
• Mrs. Whatsit from "A Wrinkle in Time", an magical alien whose real form is a stunningly beautiful winged entity

Folklore from around the world is also rife with such creatures, such as the Kitsune from Japanese folklore.

For each post of this series, I hope to provide an example of a glamorous creature (not necessarily my own), and discuss my own impressions of the character presented. I also invite readers to give me their own impressions of the character presented.

I have often wondered why I have developed such a preoccupation with this specific type of magical character. Why be so much more entranced by non-humanoid mystical creatures, rather than, say, elves? After all, elves, feature as prominently (or more prominently) than their anthropomorphic counterparts?

For my part, I believe the answer is in otherworldliness. Quite frankly, I feel that animalistic (or simply non-human) faces convey more of a sense of otherworldliness than humanoid faces every can. And moreover, removing the constraints of humanoid features enables the character designer to use features more suitable for conveying certain impressions, such as mystery, awe, or the ethereal.

In addition to this, I also believe that anthropomorphism (perhaps paradoxically) enhances a sense of security and the familiar. To me, to have another emintently sapient creature that is not human as a companion is to be as far from alone as possible. And, to me, it is the same thing that drives us to search for extraterrestrial civilizations, despite the danger. Such a discovery would mean there is hope; humans are not just some anomoly of intelligence ready to be summarily snuffed out by an asteroid, or nuclear war, or climate change. It means that there are others, who have been where we are--others who can be there for us when we falter in our humanness.

In essence, the non-humanness of such characters represent the very boundaries of human imagination and dreams. They represent what we could be, or have, if we could just escape the confines of our own failings.

But, I fear I might have written too much.

For this post, I would like to present on my my characters who is not just a glamorous creature, but is also very important to me, personally. I am referring to Aether, the fox-character shown at the top of this post.

Now, unfortunately, I don't wish to reveal too much about this character, because that would spoil the comic I am attempting to write about him. However, I will do my sense to talk around the story.

Aether is a character, who bumped around in my head for years, and years, in various prototypical forms. Perhaps one of the best examples of his precursors is the character in the following (somewhat cringey) picture:

This creature, who is decidedly not Aether, shares many qualities with his younger counterpart. As you can see, he is a magical chimerical entity who has befriended a young boy. The story behind this was as follows: A troubled boy lives in crime-ridden cesspool of a city, and lives with an older brother that has been trying to recruit him to his inner-city gang. One day, his older brother sends him on an errand for this gang. In doing so, the child stumbles upon an ancient set of ruins hidden within the cliffs near the city. And in these ruins he discovers and inadvertantly awakens a slumbering nature god. Said god presided over a world very different from this squalid world of today, and hijinks ensue.

Now, you might notice that I published that image in 2005, but that the next image after this was published only in 2020. That's because I took a 10 year hiatus from art to work on my other interests, which I might talk about some other time.

Throughout that period, I witnessed world events with increasing existential dread. Thus, it was only natural that I sought solace in imagining a benevolent magical creature somehow capable of "fixing things" whatever that means. Then, the Pandemic happened, followed by the riots. It was at this point, where I felt like the world was finally falling apart that I gave life to Aether, a chimeric, benevolent, fox entity, with mystical powers.

Why a fox? Well, I wish I had some intellectual answer to give you. But, besides that the fox in Asian folklore is benevolent, I really don't have much of a reason other than that foxes are clever, elegent,and playful. In fact, one of the key details of Aether's origin story relies on the playfulness of foxes.

And once I had come up with Aether (and his story) I just had to draw him, which meant picking up a pencil again. Here was his first iteration:

via GIPHY

Yeah...so I had to make a couple of revisions. Here is one closer to his current form:

--Err--I mean, this one one closer to his current form:

However, this character is still very much a work in progress. For example, here, we have him in pretty realistic form interacting with the main character of the story (sorry that this is a WIP):

And here he is in an alternative outfit:

But, he is slowly converging to something beautiful.

Anyway, that wraps up my first blog posting. Thanks for reading! (As a bonus, have a smol fox, who is not Aether.)