Even MORE old pony redesigns!! (Spider warning)

[seiko yume 23]

OK OK I wasn't going to finish these designs tonight, but I found my old MLP amino profile while searching "MLP changeling Hollow Knight" and the first image result were some old MLPxHK fanarts I made in 2018 along with the character profile for Salix (formerly named Moonseed.) Willow (formerly named Marquis) unfortunately never got her own character profile during that time. I think it was because I was going through a phase where I was struggling to write and create a lot, so I would just mash together a bunch of random junk and call it a night. I took one look at Salix's profile and the short story with him and his sister interacting and went "I gotta make 17 year old me proud."

 

Yes, I know half of Willow's legs are missing in the first and 2nd drawing. Whoops!

 

I couldn't resist redesigning Willow first, especially since I've been super spiderpilled from playing Silksong. Her design was actually a custom horror-themed adopt I paid someone else in amino coins to do, but since she was designed about 7 years ago, I'm certain her original designer wouldn't mind if I tweaked her up. I did unfortunately get rid of her fur to help her fit more into the changeling species I altered her and her brother to, but it was a necessity so I could spend more energy to draw all those limbs and eyes. I never wound up giving her much of a personality other than basing her off of the midwife from Hollow Knight, and Homestuck's Rose Lalonde. Hell, I never even gave her the parentified older sibling trope! (Not that I would ever do that to the poor girl now.) Now that I have a chance to revisit her, I like to think of her as a chaotic older sister with the creative mind of an ambush predator, seeing pathways or solutions that others might not see, and striking on opportunities the moment they arise. This can be both figurative and literal, as she does hunt for her food, but has hobbies like crafting and weaving. She refuses to organize her canopy of webs and woven creations, claiming she has her own system and that if it works for her, it's perfectly find. When interacting with others, Willow likes gaining the trust of others, making them think she's actually quite chill, but then unleashing her chaotic, borderline feral quirks when they least expect it, like making them think she's actually going to eat them. Willow spent most of her years studying traditional arachnid changeling artworks and cultures from neighboring kingdoms. Despite having no parents, Willow did not have to raise her little brother, as the spider changelings had a socially organized community to raise any hatchlings left behind by their ancestors. She has a special interest in dendrology and identifying different trees, and which trees are best for creating a den.

Salix, on the other hand, was once given an actual personality, but it was very "word salad" esque with no correlation to anything other than making him a feral mothman vampire thing. I'll drop a quote here to have y'all be the judge...

Quote

This kid is the sin of the Earth. He can't go three seconds in public without causing an actual war over gogurt in walmart. He has zero common sense, acts out at the most random of times, and can't stay still for jack. This is the face of the colt who will attempt to eat and choke on a plastic wrapper just because someone told him.

Oh yeah... I cringe looking back at this, but that was how I got writings done back in the day... or anything done, for the matter. Just meme the life out of it until it looked like something. Didn't have to be good or anything. After all, those delusions of becoming a super popular internet artist were just that-- delusions.

Anyhoo, Salix's new personality is quite the opposite. Being a scorpion changeling, he's more likely to be a lot more moody than the communal arachnid that are spiders, and prefer to be left alone, lest he threatens you with his stinger. He took up martial training and discipline to help control his urges to sting anybody and everybody. He tried to become knighted, but was disqualified due to a disorder that gave him a fragile shell. This devastated him, since he wanted to use his bloodlust for something good for once. The revelation led to him taking up warriorhood in third party, and sometimes illegal guilds, which caused him to spend a lot of time away from his home. His training makes him a much more organized hunter than his older sister, but his younger age makes him inexperienced and unable to use more primal methods when needed. Salix doesn't like to admit it, but he does appreciate the warmth and comfort of having others to fall back on, even if their background isn't the cleanest. That counts the members of his current coven, the Marrow Carvers. Which, as you could guess, harvests the bones of other intelligent beings for underground bone trade. Oh, and one quirky trait he originally had that I'm totally gonna keep is that he HATES bananas. Smelling them will make him react like those cats that gag when they smell broccoli. Most fruits make his stomach turn, but bananas are a "danger food" to him.

 

As you can also see, theses changelings also don't have horns, preventing them from changing at all. This kind of defeats the purpose of making their species "changelings," instead of some pony-bug monster hybrid, but there's a reason, I swear. With the existence of prismatic changelings being half-reformed changelings, there are also the subrace of "static" changelings, who evolved past the need to shapeshift at all. These usually count changelings that have traits similar to predators in the animal kingdom, such as arachnids, odonates, vespids, aphids, and phasmids. Sometimes, prey-bug changelings who live in the same kingdoms or territories as these changelings may also loose the ability to shapeshift, especially if the society is particularly advanced. 

The first old drawing/reference in the left corner was also something meant to accompany a very short story I once wrote about Salix meeting up with his sister in her den. I wonder if I should rewrite that...

Edited September 21 by seiko yume
Forgot to add image notes.

[LumenNightlight 46]

Yooo, new Changeling morphs. You love to see it. 

I like your redesigns, they have their own identity both design and colour wise compared to the OG designs. They`re simple enought to be memorable, yet sufficiently dense to still be visually engaging. Willow`s predatory nature being translated into her personality is just a neat attention to detail. Although I do have to critique Salix`s design a little. His shape language isn`t that distinctive or telling when compared to his sister, plus I don`t really get why he has wing covers when he`s supposed to be based on a scorpion. ...Unless he DOES have wings, which would be absolutely terrifying Also I get that you made his eyes a lighter shade so it doesn`t clash with the hair, but it makes him look like he just smoked a fat one. Although that would help with his anger issues, so maybe it`s for the better

Cool concept all around, I`m a huge sucker for all things bug related if you couldn`t tell by now  I`m giving this my unofficial official Alterling thumbs up of approval.

[seiko yume 23]

8 hours ago, LumenNightlight said:

Yooo, new Changeling morphs. You love to see it. 

I like your redesigns, they have their own identity both design and colour wise compared to the OG designs. They`re simple enought to be memorable, yet sufficiently dense to still be visually engaging. Willow`s predatory nature being translated into her personality is just a neat attention to detail. Although I do have to critique Salix`s design a little. His shape language isn`t that distinctive or telling when compared to his sister, plus I don`t really get why he has wing covers when he`s supposed to be based on a scorpion. ...Unless he DOES have wings, which would be absolutely terrifying Also I get that you made his eyes a lighter shade so it doesn`t clash with the hair, but it makes him look like he just smoked a fat one. Although that would help with his anger issues, so maybe it`s for the better

Cool concept all around, I`m a huge sucker for all things bug related if you couldn`t tell by now  I`m giving this my unofficial official Alterling thumbs up of approval.

OMG I love your changeling guy!! He’s so cute and sillay!!! Thanks for the unofficial official thumbs up!

 

Also, I didn’t realize that thing on the changeling’s backs are wing covers. I thought it was really like extra body covering like how on some bugs the upper exoskeleton is harder or a different color from the soft underbody. Maybe I’ll change it later on to look more like the upper body segments. As much as I do enjoy making terrifying amalgamations of creatures, Salix isn’t like royalty or a god, so he’ll have to unfortunately stay a lowly un-winged scorpion. I’ll also take the shape language thing to heart and try and see what I can do to make him a bit more distinctive to show he’s a lithe, trained bug warrior (I am a character design fanatic and I like designing and redesigning things)

[LumenNightlight 46]

Alright, so I`m not sure if this is a good idea or not. I know that I can be VERY adamant about my designs using my ideas and my ideas alone , and I would absolutely understand if you feel the same way. 

When I was designing Stigma (my avatar) I went through a lot of ideas for body parts. I`m ...not that experienced in character design, so this was a trial and error operation. Among these was an idea for a carapace that was be stylised like armor. Individual plates would overlap and could even function like the tail of a rattlesnake. This was done because I was unhappy with his soft outline then, I really wanted to preserve the "essence" of Changelings- and for me that was their literal edgyness. 

All of this just really reminded me of Salix and could still work within his thematic frame. At the end I took the armor out, since I had many other ideas floating around and wanted to take my OC in a completely different direction conceptually. They also ate a lot of visual attention, something which unescessarily cluttered a design already far too crowded.

My attached sketch isn`t very good, it`s far too bulky for a what is supposed to be an agile warrior type and doesn`t expand all that well on the concept. Maybe you can pick up were I failed, I imagine you`re probably already on the lookout for something that could replace the elytron. You seem like a creative type, so I imagine you could develope this concept into something that really pops 

 

 

[yuyu_ 376]

oh my goodness these designs are so cOOLL!!! its making me wanna make an oc omg