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Freedom Ferrets: Neera, Dail, and Spade

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i.imgur.com/T9WNs6C.gif

Alternate title: The Emo Trio XD

You guys can thank my best friend, MikeDarklighter, for this one being done so soon! I've been wanting to do this sort of thing with these three for a long time but his comment that he made on my Freedump Planet: Lilac Concepts really made me want to finally get to it. XD So, here we go!

Ever since I was little kid, there have been issues I've had with certain character design situations (specifically with non-human animals and anthros): offspring of two different species being one parent of the other's carbon copy instead of a mixture of the two parents, characters barely resembling the animal they're supposed to be (coughKnucklestheEchidna), and design choices that make no sense to the character. These three characters from Freedom Planet (2) fall into the last two categories. ^^;

 Neera, Dail and Spade are labeled as "pandas" but they are extremely unfitting for the role of a bear character with how frail and skinny they are (they don't even have the panda markings!). The only character from Freedom Planet I can comfortably call a panda is General Gong. He's the only one who actually fits the role of a panda.

One thing I always loved about fictional anthro non-human animals is how you can emphasize on certain traits and talents with what species of animal you choose to make the anthro character.  Different animals are known for representing various things; non-human animals have always been strong with symbolism in tales since the beginning of human history. 

I'm not saying that characters should be doomed to their animal stereotypes but I'd like a non-human animal character to at least look like what they're supposed to be. In a world like Freedom Planet where (especially in the second game) characters resemble their animal quite well (unlike a big chunk of the Sonic cast), I'd at least like to have some consistency with that. Neera, Dail, and Spade literally have no reason to be pandas. They look so un-panda like that you could simply put any color on them and they'd easily be a completely different species. With Gong, however, no matter what color you put on him, you could still easily say he's a bear of some sort. ^^;

Now I'm not saying I'm better than the designers of these characters, I'm just sharing my opinion on their designs with this and I was curious on how I would handle them, myself, if I were to alter their designs in any way (since you guys know I love playing around with characters' designs haha!)

So, as you can tell already, instead of altering their anatomy to look more like bears, since it's apparently illegal in the game-designer world to make characters of their roles anything but skinny, I simply added a tail to them and decided to call them "ferrets."  I personally find that they could easily pass as ferrets simply with a tail added to them because their colors and markings already look ferret-like, they have slender torsos (like ferrets), and they are swift and agile (like ferrets) as well.  However, being me, I couldn't leave their overall designs alone so I definitely did more than slap a tail onto their bums and call it a night! XD

With Neera Li, I guess you can call her more of a ferret/stoat hybrid with her markings and fur color. She has more of a light blue-ish hue to her to better fit in with her theme of being an ice element character (though her fur is still natural in color). I altered her clothes as well at the last minute in sketching because while looking through references and doing additional research on the character, I remembered how she is both the adviser of the Royal Magister and a character of ice magic. For this reason, I decided to play around with the idea of the colors of her clothes resembling that of the Magister since she works closely with him and also because of the ice theme that's supposed to be a part of her character. In Freedom Planet, she comes across as a sharp shard of ice of a character (pun intended); she's cold, dutiful and serious and she does ice magic. That sounds like a character whose color palettes would have more blues than purples in my personal opinion haha.

With King Dail, I kept in mind that he is a king in the FP2 and a few years have passed since the events of Freedom Planet. I gave him a more royal shade of green to wear because as I did research on royal colors, I noticed how "royal green" is a bit more blueish than yellowish. I also gave him a beard with the thought that perhaps to honor his father who had a pretty long one, he'd let grow his out. It also makes him look older and more regal so it could be fitting to his role as the king as well. He also has a giant crown-like hair piece that I swear he didn't steal and slightly alter from the Fire Lord /shot. 

With Spade, I didn't really do much. I simplified his FP2 outfit and made it look a bit more like what he wears in the original game for no other reason than how I thought it was strange that his pants were the same color as his fur. It made it look like he was naked down there and had super saggy legs haha. I also darkened his hair a little bit simply to see how it'd look. ^^; Hair being the same color as the base fur color feels more like a Sonic thing, too. Freedom Planet characters tend to have hair color that is darker and is more like the color of their markings? Something like that XD Spade also has a series of claw scars on his face that are actually from Carol and originate from a headcanon situation I made up in my Freedump Planet: Lilac Concepts

Besides what I've described above already, the only other alterations to their designs are how I made their "mask" markings meet at the muzzle with Dail and Spade to better show how they are masked ferrets. I also think it's fitting to how Spade is a sneaky thief ninja! :la:


These characters belong to Galaxy Trail (their original designs are not mine)

The poses seen here are directly from this thingy here!
Image size
2730x1528px 2.1 MB
© 2017 - 2024 Flora-Tea
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Doodles626's avatar
Yeah, it always bugged me that these guys don't look anything like pandas.  Maybe GalaxyTrail should take notes from you.