A New Udevu

Udevu appeared in the comic “An Unusual Choir” as a rather fuzzy Mufasa-clone.  (Udevu is my own name for him since he did not have one in the story.) Since clones are boring, I never really drew him.  But then I just recently noticed that Udevu has a minor coloring error on his left shoulder.  So I revamped his design to include that (I call it a birthmark) and then spiced up his look even further by giving his tail the same treatment, since his tail is never shown in the comic.

Udevu is Simba’s uncle in the comic, and I like the idea of him being a younger brother to Mufasa and Scar…read the brief story I have for him in the comments on the pic.  That’s why I added the green eyes and black tail tuft to his design.  Here is the revamp:

Building a Better Ahadi

This pretty much sums up my opinion of the TLK6NA design for Ahadi.

I think it’s ugly, boring, and not creative.  I see his coloring as a putrid mixture of toilet-fillings: diarrhea, vomit, urine…etc.  Other than the colors there is nothing to make him unique, and that’s frankly a uniqueness I could have done without.   Mohatu and Choyo (the “selfish” lion from “The Brightest Star”) each had defining characteristics that made them more than just Mufasa and Scar clones.  Even Udevu and Laika, Simba’s aunt and uncle from the comic “An Unusual Chorus”, are spectacularly hairy.

Ahadi is one of the only two subcanon characters I consciously modify from their published forms.  I think that there is enough leeway for me to do this because the textual description of the character says that he “had a long black mane and bright green eyes.”  Putrid-illustration-Ahadi does not match this.  I find it really unusual, since generally the TLK6NA illustrators have a keen awareness of all the characters in the scene, and pay attention to details like “Ni is a scruffy lion covered with dirt.”  Though I do suppose I have never seen mention of coloring in TLK6NA, so maybe that kind of actual visual description was beyond the artist.  Whatever.

In any case, along with adhering to the 6NA text my fanon Ahadi has:

1. Golden coloring – partly because gold/black is not a color on any movie canon lions, and is more visually appealing (to me) than the other mixed Scar/Muffy combination orange/reddish-brown.  I was also influenced by early fanart designs for Ahadi.
2. Outlander characteristics – because outlander lionesses are so booooring and I didn’t want Uru to be one of those, so I gave the dark hooked nose, angular features, and claws to Ahadi.  This also fits in with my origins for him as a “desert lion” – I have a detailed explanation for why these characteristics help Ahadi and related lions operate better in the climate (i.e. dark eye surrounds absorb sunlight, like grease on a football player’s face or the tear-stripe on a cheetah).
3. Fwippy mane style – Mostly to make him different from other canon lions.  Inspired partly by concept art for Scar and also by the classic “superhero” forelock that springs from the front of the hairstyle.  The sideburns also come from that concept art.
4. Goatee – Because Nuka had to get one from somewhere, and Ahadi, as his double-grandfather in my fanon (the father of both Zira and Scar, his parents) had to have significantly contributed to his genes.

So, I decided to come up with my own design for Ahadi because I hate the illustration version,  if I hate the design, I will not draw the character, and I wanted to draw Ahadi.  Simple as that.

Kovu/Kiara Spawn, Part Un

And here he is!  My Kovu/Kiara spawn…to be more specific, their son.  He’s been uploaded on TLKFAA. I’m also working on a daughter that I will talk about in part two.

The main reason why I’ve never made a Kovu/Kiara spawn is because my canon story doesn’t extend that far into the future.  I’ve done work pre-movies all the way back to Mohatu, and extensive work during and inbetween TLK and SP, but nothing post-SP.  I still am not planning to make up a story post-SP, not in any detail; I just felt the urge to finally make my own spawn. :)

His name is Kijana, which means “young man”; it generally has a male connotation (though it may be gender-neutral depending on context). I used to call him “Kora” a couple years back, a result of combining Kiara and Kovu’s names which I have found out is very common.  I changed his name partly because it was so common, and of course because it was too similar to my own username, Koraden.

For the son, I decided to draw more from Kiara’s heritage than Kovu’s.  His base color scheme is very similar to Kiara’s: fur and underfur color, ears, nose, and mane color (his tail tuft is pretty much the color of Kiara’s at birth).  His mane reddens as he gets older like Simba’s does, but the color I have on his adult form is as red as it gets, nowhere near the classic Mufasa and Simba red.  He also has a similar body build

However, I did draw from Kovu’s side of things as well.  The classic outlander scruffy cheeks and hooked nose (though Kijana’s is supposed to be like a large Mufasa-version of that shape); the light nose bridge coloring, and the darker upper eye surround all come from Kovu.  His nose bridge shape is a pridelander/outlander combo, but his adult chin is Kovu-shaped.  Kijana’s eyes are also quite similar to Kovu’s with a more subtle version of the dark outside corner – the iris size is supposed to be midway between Kiara and Kovu’s.  I went with the blue-green eyes because they seemed unique (Majordomo gave me the idea to separate the blue and green instead of having a single matte color; the blue is the outside and green inside).  To me they recall Nala’s heritage and her sea-green/bright blue morphing inbetween movies.

Mane style was a difficult decision for me since Kovu’s flop is so iconic, as well as Simba’s shaggy bangs.  In the end I made an effort to combine the manes of Mufasa (basic shape); Simba (reddish color + those dark curved areas over the forehead); and Kovu (that “point” in the center that leans forward is supposed to recall his prominent tuft).  That mohawk-ish shape is especially prominent in cubhood and adolescence; the cub version is kind of a merging of the Simba/Kovu cub designs.

Whew, so I think I’ve summed up most of my design thoughts for Kijana here.  You wouldn’t think that character design could be so involved, but it can definitely become complicated when you really become engrossed in the details.  For me it can also be a very rewarding process, and I am quite proud of the end result. =)

Just for the record…

…my favorite character of the Friendly Five is Chumvi.  I like Malka’s design the best, but I am a lot more interested in the fanon plot story I’ve created for Chumvi.

Here’s the short form: As a cub, Chumvi realizes that if he is to survive Scar’s reign, he has to join Scar’s side.  When he gets older, he becomes Scar’s right-hand enforcer.  Zira approaches him to be the father of her cub (Kovu) after she learns she and Scar are half-siblings.  Chumvi ultimately undermines Scar by allowing Nala to escape the Pridelands and later by distracting the lionesses sympathetic to Scar’s rule so they are not there when Simba returns to fight him.  (See the comic I made for the last site contest.) He leaves the Pridelands with an outsider lioness so he does not threaten Simba’s rule, and when Zira and her followers are banished he tries to install himself as their leader but fails.  Finally he goes southwest to the steppes where his outsider mate originally came from and reestablishes a pride in that area, where he lives for the rest of his life.

In summary, I heart Chumvi.  And I will continue to draw pretty pictures of him. <3

Match-ups of the Friendly Five

NCAA “March Madness” (a national basketball tournament) is under full swing  in the U.S., and as I watched my bracket picks in their game match-ups, I thought about another kind of pairing up…romantic ones, of course.  A rich source of fanart around TLKFAA stems from romantic pairings, and the combinations are endless.  But today I want to talk about a specific group of subcanon lions.

The “Friendly Five” refers to the TLK subcanon cubs that:

1. Are Simba/Nala’s age
2. Did not appear in the movies
3. Appeared in an illustration in a book or comic
4. Were explicitly named in that book/comic

And these five cubs are: Tojo, Kula, Chumvi, Malka, and Tama.

The Friendly Five are particularly popular to draw, since not only do they all have illustrations, they all have names.  And of course it’s always fun to draw a bunch of lion cubs playing with each other. (You may notice that I have excluded Mheetu from this bunch–this is because Mheetu really has no subcanon design, only concept sketches that are not in the TLK style.)  But at some point, lion cubs have to grow up, and that’s where the pairing fun begins.

In my personal fanon (theory only), Kula, Chumvi, and Tama all share a father and are half-siblings, which simplifies things greatly for my pairing potentials.  My personal picks are Tojo/Kula and Malka/Tama (this latter pair producing subcanon cubs Afua and Boga).  In my fanon, of course, Chumvi throws in with the outlanders and fathers Kovu.  However, not everyone agrees with me; not by a long shot!  Here are the pairings of the Friendly Five:

• Chumvi/Kula – this one has been around the longest, since TLK6NA became known around the web.  Although I pair them as siblings due to design similarities, many fanartists pair them as a romantic couple.  One theory I remember reading actually had them as the true parents of Kovu, no doubt due to the brown coloring of them both.  Many people draw the non-illustrated cub Afua as their son.
• Tojo/Kula – not quite as popular as Chumvi/Kula, perhaps, but it certainly has its proponents (including me).  The personality profiles seem to meld together well: Tojo is a provider, as seen when he cares for his birds.  Kula needs to be provided for, as evidenced by her need to find and keep food in “Nala’s Dare”.
• Malka/Kula – I really don’t think I’ve seen this pairing around much on TLKFAA.  Maybe it’s because Malka is a relatively “recent” character, and Kula has been around for a while, pairing more commonly with the other two “older” cubs, Chumvi and Tojo.
• Malka/Tama – This pairing has recently gained ground on the Archive, and it’s one I like.  I doubt I was the first to put these two together, but I was the first to make Afua their cub, in my comprehensive family tree’s first version.   I also recently added Boga as their daughter.  I think the unconscious appeal of this pairing is that these two are both “recent” comic characters with rather unique designs.
• Tojo/Tama – As more people learn about Tama, I see more interesting theories include her.  This Tojo/Tama pairing seems to primarily exist for one reason: to cast them as the parents of Vitani.  They both have head fluff as cubs, light fur, and Tojo has blue eyes.  There are some problems with this when you ask where her outlander characteristics come from, (much like Kovu as Chumvi/Kula’s son) but it hasn’t hindered the popularity.  Some even like to think that both Vitani and Kovu came from this pair.
• Chumvi/Tama – The least popular of the Tama pairings, and I honestly don’t know if I’ve seen art depicting this one.  Like Malka/Kula, this combination of an older cub with a recent one is uncommon, and it does not explain Kiara-generation cubs so it is not as prevalent as Tojo/Tama.

So those are the potential match-ups of the Friendly Five…at least the M/F ones.  Now I kind of want to see some Tojo/Malka or something, but it can wait for another time.  But just for fun, before I go…

• Chumvi or Malka/Nala – Lots of fanartists flirt with the idea that Nala might have fallen for one of these cubs (or also Ni) and I’ve been in both camps at one time or another. Hmm…this is giving me a new idea for a Chumvi/Nala picture…keep a lookout on TLKFAA in the next few weeks and I might end up drawing a little something!