Welp, I revisited a fairly old-ish OC and worked on them! Yayy! Okay... he isn't "old" in the sense of "character that belonged to an old story that I threw out of the window and now they just chill around" but rather in the sense of "important character in a story that I haven't written until he pops up yet, so he's more or less still just a name, face and some ideas.

And I fancied going back to him and give him a small redesign, as well as fleshing him out a bit more. Why? Oh, well, I've already said in the Bron-chapter, that I'm working on Defiance pt. 3... at least in my head... skskssksk..... and in there our dear old Esgaron here, shows up again, causing a second rebirth of Feredir, which unleashes Fers last bit of missing magical DNA, so that Ilshan is back.....
And that is essentially just a complicated way of saying: Esgaron kills Feredir and Feredir is then suddenly the god of space.

But for that I had to work on Esgaron himself, since I still have several different ways of that scene playing off. And when working on the relation they have in book 3, I had to establish some basic scenes in "Defiance" and eventually some moments in "Aquiesence"... (I desperately need to give part 3 a name... even if it's just a placeholder like book 3... aaahhhhhh).

So, I said "redesign" before, right? So that means he must've had older desings too, right? And yes! The really old one is... too bad to show you guys, so here's the october 2o2o version:

This was the point in his life, where he got the nickname "tie-guy", since Soulbounded thought his bandana-thingy looked like a tie...

Yeah... not too fond of the nickname itself, but I find it funny, so... yeah.....

Other than the nickname, let's get to the new design! So, Esgaron is from the Wavecall-Clan, which is down there somewhere:

[dang i desperately should finish that map......]

So, as the name presumes, the wavecallers are a clan dedicated to Vaporo, god of water. So the athmosphere is loaded with water-magic, causing phenotypical mutations of more yellow-toned skin, dark, blue-black / brown hair, blue or grey toned eyes, as well as usually more almond-shaped eyes.
The overall vibe is somewhat "viking meets new zealand aboriginals meets ancient japan/china meets steampunk"... yeah, it does indeed sound weird formulated that way, but that's just because I'm crap at capturing the vibes of the clans, okay?

So the only other Wavecaller I drew before was Vaporo over here in his mortal form at... some point in time I guess:

What did october 2020 - psy forget when drawing Esgaron? His ethnicity!! Yayy!! So when I went back I wanted to really have fun with that idea, picked the next best reference picture off of pinterest and had fun.

It was supposed to be just a loose heashot, since I was working on some other stuff >>cough cough<< BRONADAN AND THAT CURSED METAL >>cough cough<< on the side. But since it was just a portrait I had fun and tried a new-ish head angle... just ANYTHING else other than frontal or 3/4, because that's something I realised I struggle with a lot at the moment...

Welp, enough rambling around everything, here's the finished sketch/lineart:

Oh, you might also ask yourselves why I decided to desperately draw him.... okay, probably not, since I told you why he was in the back of my mind during that time anyways... BUTT the actual reason for me drawing it, was me having a dream. And then Arty reminding me of that dream. And the inspiration/motivation came crashing in, like a brick in the face.

Now, you see that old drawing? The boy has covered up his eye. And if you were able to see the old drawings, you'd realise that he has his eye covered up there as well. And in that dream, Esgaron was having a nice little diskussion with Feredir, full on "Fer, old friend, sure you don't wanna join the rebellion again? Your actions can be undone, we can make it work somehow. We need you..." etc.  and Fer just being like "Haha, no, fuck you. I have a shop and two (eh... in some way three) kids to look after, I ain't gonna join a terrorist organisation again"
And then Esgaron is like "Oh, so you have chosen death. No worries I never liked you anyways." AND THEN Esgaron took the thing off, that covers his eye...

And me being me had to pause the dream there and then just soak in the view of that other half of the face. I mean.. of course I had things planned for what was below. I thought just some really ugly, disfigured, black skull-ish something, since the black marks are usually scars from this magical disease that burns itself through your skin. Most people with the disease die, but some survive, needing to leave with these huge black patches of skin. So... I imagined him to have that, BUTT my dream said otherwise.

So we have the white in the eye (forgot the name of that, dang... sclera maybe...) in a black, the iris is a glowing, slightly smoking deep blue. And around that centre eye we have a few other eyes of the ancients...

Why eyes of the ancients? Mah boii is the partial reincarnation of the greatest bitch of them all: Ylarise (ancient goddess of evil)

And then suddenly everything made sense... because... well the elemental colour of evil was this deep blue and Ylarise was this entity of... um... well in her god-form she was this huge humanoid figure, pitch black, stone-ish skin, whith cracks to reveal this blue glowing core inside. And those cracks formed these tribal patterns... I won't describe the rest of her appearance since that is irrelevant for Esgaron here, but just keep that skin-thing in mind for later >w<"

Anyways, so I decided to draw Esgaron without the thing to cover his eye. And whilst I did sketch in the eyes if the ancient, I deleted them nearly instantly again, since they just... they just looked to crammed and the simpler version with just the one eye suited him more... that sleek little bastard.

When it came to colouring I figured out a bit more what his childhood and adolesence was like. So, he was born into this poor family in a large city (which doesn't have a name yet... let's just call it... um... Liyue for this chapter, since I'm playing a lot of genshin atm and that was the first city-name that kinda popped into my head other than "Bigwater-city"... and since I'm gonna go back to that game towards the end of the chapter I thought it would be fun >w<).
where was I? Ah yeah... born in this large city, which essentially hangs upside down from the bottom of the kontinent (remember how everything floats?), whith a large portion of the city also being underwater.

So his parents worked in a huge factory-ish workshop at the docks, helping to build and repair ships that sailed along. It's a really tough job, that requires a lot of time and doesn't pay much, His parents thus didn't have a lot of time to raise him, and most certainly not the money, so he grew up at his grandparents home on the other end of the city, his parents visiting him twice a week.

He wasn't necessarily unpopular at school and tried his best to live as normal a life as he could. Things only got a bit problematic, when school ended and all his friends were planning on getting good jobs, leaving the city and/or studying. He personally knew, that he never had the financial means to even think about going to university, especially since his grades were "just" average and nobody would give a stipendium to a poor kid that wasn't exceptionally good at school.
So whilst his friends continued with their lives, he was stuck to get himself an okay job at the docks, carrying wares around and coordinating some of the warehouses there. During that time he lived with his parents again, since the positioning was way more convenient.

He lived his quite lonely and miserable life, until his father got ill with an illness that went around (it's the one that also took the life of Ûndaers mother... just forgot what I called it and am frankly to lazy to look it up). He got the treatment he needed, but the hospital bill sent the family into a huge debt, that they couldn't repay in a lifetime.

Sooo... Esgaron, feeling pretty helpless, decided that he had to change something. So he packed his bags, stole a dragon and left the city, in hopes of finding a better paying job somewhere else. Promising, that he won't return home as long as he couldn't get his family out of debt. Now, Liyue is situated rather close towards the borders of the Nightmare-Clan, so when he didn't find anything in the nearby wavecall territory, he decided to leave the country in itself. Digging himself into his own, personal debt through the border control and the overall travelling.

In the neighbouring clan he found a good job, worked hard and earned quite the amount of money, except that his travels and overall living expenses (which wer already reduced to a minimum) had already consumed most of that. Finally out of debt he was looking forward to working towards his actual goal, when... OH NO!! Apparently there were some illegal buisinesses going on between the big-boss and some clients, that most of the workers there had no idea about, and the place needed to get shut down.

He didn't find a new job in the near future after that, since his last one was for ever ingraved on his resumé and caused immediate distrust by everyone who was looking into hiring him.
Feeling stuck and lost, he realised that he had to leave the clan. But where should he go? He couldn't go back to the wavecalls, since he might as well return home and admit what a disgrace he was towards his family. We had the windsmiths nearby, which seemed like a good idea, but he couldn't afford to cross the border (smol remark on the side: this was before the travel-treaties were made, to ensure free roaming across the clans. In these times every clan decided for itself how much and if it wanted to charge people from entering the clan in order to live and work there... just crossing through a clan was allowed though...). Same game with the gravebuilders. So he decided to fly through the gravebuild clan and find a job in the free to enter bloodhound clan.

He worked for a small amount of time in a pretty good place, before being recruited by the Azure Rebellion because of the eye. Once part of the Rebellion he found something like a family and home away from his actual home, and also earned quite the sum of money through organising trades, etc.
This was, when the rebellion-wars began and he had proven himself to be a skilled mage and ruthless warrior.

Having won enough money to save his family, he wanted to return home, but then decided, that if he only waited for a bit more, he could also buy his parents and grandparents new houses in the nice part of the city and give them a good head start in wealth, so he didn't return and remained in the clan, woking hard as he always has.
Finally winning a sum that he thought was fitting enough, he returned home. And knowing me, you'd probably presume that his family has died in his absence or something.... and whilst that does indeed sound like something I would do, that sounds way too much like Nordîr and I don't like to repeat backstories...
SO! Instead he came back glorious, wealthy. Except that his family wasn't as happy as he thought they'd be. Honestly, they were pretty dissapointed, since even though they didn't have any money, they still were a proper, happy family at the time and through running away he didn't only destroy that, he also returned as a "murdering thief."

They did indeed accept the money and hoped that he would return back completely, so that they could attempt to restart, but Esgaron left again, not able to leave the Rebellion behind just yet, but also feeling unworthy of being with his parents.

You see, his parents were Esgarons everything. Simply because he loved them more than anything and hated not being able to see them for most of his life. Since he was a little child, he dreamed of becoming rich and successful, so that he could help his parents out.
So when he returned and his parents were dissapointed, he couldn't cope with it  unable to see that they just wanted him to stay. So he decided to leave again, work more, work harder and only come back home, when he was worthy of returning.

Sadly, he never dealt himself worthy of returning, since... there's always something he could've done better. Always something he could've done more. And infinitely stuck in his high expectations and the attempt of making his parents proud, he never actually returned, but always sending them money over, as well as gifts and letters.

...

...

oof that was another wall of text.. apologies, I'm currently a wee bit obsessed with him and everything is still new and in development. Honestly this is the first thing I have properly formulated everything out and connected the stations of his life somehow... so yeah...

Back to the drawing I guess >w<""

After the flats from above I added some minimal shading, working with my usual "2 shadow layers, 1 highligh layer" technique. Slowly but surely I am getting used to not rendering everything out with so many layers but focusing on the most important elements...

The most fun I had here was obviously with the eye... aahhhh it's so shiny and adding those extra streaks in the hair to give it an even more glowy effect was so... ah.... love it.

So that was that first portrait I drew of him!

Started and finished it on the 1o. february, in between working on that drawing of Bronadan and... dang that was a lot of fun! I'm also very happy with the overall vibe he has now. Don't get me wrong, the look of the october-version was still hella cool and all that, but the new version is just way closer to how I imagined him to be ^-^

So you thought that was it, hm? NO! I have a total of three drawings in this chapter, so buckle up my darlings this is gonna be a long one! Even though you already worked your way through the big batch of words already >w<

And I swear the next ammount of text will be more drawing-centered, so I won't be spoilering my own books anymore and won't bore you with backstories of side characters ^-^"

Okay, so after giving him a face I felt the urge to draw him halfbody sometime soon, meaning that he needed clothing!

I initially started off with an outfit that resembled the one in the middle here quite a lot, but then didn't quite like the vibes, so I turned them into some adoptable designs over on discord ^-^
Sitting down a second time then, I thought up what exactly I wanted to see here, also including his also black arm with these odd, magical patterns below the skin. Remember what i told you before about Ylarise? Well, his arm i covered in deep scars that form the patterns she used to have on her right arm, and through said scars one can see this blue glowing... something. He doesn't know what it is, the doctors don't know what it is, the magic-experts don't know what it is.. but you guys know what it is now, and that's the main part! ^-^

And here we have the end results :D

The overall designs were very much inspired by genshin impact, since I .... well, I'm a bit very much addicted... but that's something I'm gonna fangirl about in the fanart-chapter that will come sometime soon (hopefully.... grrr, really gotta finish that drawing)

Outfit number one!
I was going for a very formal, priest-ish, scholar looking outfit here, since Esgaron is indeed a person that works mostly behind the scenes. He's also a huge nerd and I thought having this very strict, more traditional looking clothing would emphasize his very pure and thoughtful nature.

Second outfit!
He is indeed the guy who coordinates the entire intel and takes care of the rebellions prisoners, but when he goes out on the battlefield, he's there to kick the arse of a few hundred people... at once, usually.
Is he one of those OP characters of mine that only get held back when I smash another OP character in their face? Yes. But it all makes sense because.... um... godly-genetics n stuff... it would only make sense for them to be overpowered, as they control an elemental magic that nobody else can, since the magic is so sparse around the planet... and... yeah........ they are somewhat-gods okay? Of course they are more powerful than mere mortal beings....
Back the the actual outfit! So I wanted to go with a very martial-artsy type outfit. Everything is fairly simple, except some elements that seem a bit out of place. and clearly only there for decoration purposes. You know, being an overpowered battle-mage means that you don't get near any of the enemies, so a battle is more or less just a fashion-show, including the chance to show off how powerful you are and how you aren't a person to be fucked with. That's how Esgaron sees it at least, which is why he has some nonsensical chains with pearls on them and a useless (but pretty) shoulder-plate ^-^

And last but not least...
Every OC has an outfit they wear when they just get out of the shower after a long day of work, planning to sit the rest of the day on the couch and... dunno... read or whatever.
And this is precisely what he would wear. Still elegant, but just really, really comfy.

So those are the first three clothing ideas I have for him! More will probably follow, since they're super fun and easy to do and... aaahaahhhh they all look so pretty.
Started them on the 13. and finished the last one on the 14. ^-^

And here we are! Finally! The last drawing!

So.... after drawing just a portrait and some clothing, I desperately wanted to put the two together and just... have fun with a monochromatic, half-body sketch of him ^-^

so that's what I did...

For funsies I went with the centre outfit, since I also wanted to show off his weapon, that he does indeed use sometimes, when an enemy comes to close! So yeah.. he's a spear-fighter with his trustly weapon that iused to have a really epic name, but everybody just nicknamed it "toothpick" until that was just what it was called.

sooooooo..... I haven mentioned Genshin impact how many times already in this chapter?? A lot. And why? Because of this precuse paragraph you're reading.
Okay, anyone who plays the game, knows of the event that is happening at the moment of me wiritng this, where you can get this character called "Xiao" (very handsome dude... also in my pfp everywhere at the moment)..........
Without realising it, I subconsiously just copied a shitload of things from him onto Esgaron, which is why quite a lot of design features (including the goddarn weapon, guys!) just look like a psy-ripoff of his design, which is essentially what happened without me knowing it.
I realised that fact, after posting that last sketch in my whatsapp story and that was a bit... mind blowing. Because I did not in any way do this deliberately, but the more I look at the two, the more similar they appear.

[ here's the official pic of Xiao btw, for everyone who isn't familiar with him >w<  ... the pic isn't all too good with showing the similarities in the design, but it's enough for you to grasp the context. Also... nobody is stopping you from googling that precious child, so.... sksksk ]

So... why am I writing a super long paragraph that essentially says "I stole another character's design, without knowing it"? Because I wanted to say a few things about that topic. Especially since that isn't something that happened for the first time over here on my end. And I thought I'd give my opinion on this and maybe say what I do in cases like this, in case anyone else out there has a similar issue sometimes >w<
First of all: it is totally okay! At least in my case, I always do this subconsiously. I don't look at another characters design and say "That's pretty, I'll steal that and make it kinda fit into my world" It's a design process I go through, only to find that the end result looks freakishly similar to another character.
BUTT that doesn't mean it's okay to keep my character that way. Because I have indeed been stealing. I stole without noticing, but I did indeed steal in the end. So that means: I gotta change stuff up again.
Question is now: How? So... Esgaron here, mostly got affected in terms of clothing, so I gotta redesign his battle outfit completely and change up his other clothing a bit as well (got some fancy ideas I gotta test out >w<). Weapon-wise... I gotta work on that. He always had a spear in my head, pushing his opponents away so he could just stab/dissolve/posess/burn/implode/crush/slice them with magic from a safe distance. So what does that mean for me? That weapon has too look a shitload different to what it looks now. Maybe I'll even switch it up to a helberd or a harpune-ish something... gotta see...
Overall I also gotta go back some character design steps that haven't been drawn out yet. Because in retrospect, the further I developed Esgaron the cooler he got, but as soon as my genshin-obsession started, his design took a violent turn in direction of that xiao-vibe.
I just gotta... set him apart a bit more and create a larger gap between the two >w<""

But yeah.... enough of that stuff, let's get to the actual drawing!

Nothing dramatic, just me drawing him with some old brushes I haven't used in a long time. I also had some fun with grey-scale working :D
Don't really have all too much to say to the drawing itself, since it is indeed just a sketch (didn't even have a sketch below that... just these lines there on an empty canvas >>fingerguns<<) that popped in my head outta nowhere... I am indeed thinking about going back and adding some minimal shading, but we'll see. I have WIP to finish, requests to draw and school work I've been procrastinating from >w<

Wowaroo! That was it for today! Ima better go play some more genshin since Arty just got Xiao and... I WANT TOOOOO AAAAHHHHH
>>insert intense fangirlism<<

I hope you like the character, as well as his design, even though I'll be changing him up again soon. Vote, comment or simply read, I'm happy you're here in the first place and would be even more happy if you decided to stick around for longer ^-^
>>quickly cuddles you guys and gives you all the usual stuff, before returning to Teyvat<<