AZURE: OLD ART, DESIGNS, AND SCRAPPED CONCEPTS.

Many things have changed with Azure from her conception just as many things have remained the same.

I find her silhouette has not changed much although several design details have. Initially Azure had head-wings rather than a feather crest. I felt like I needed to differentiate her design from characters such as Velox and that a crest retained the avian inspiration I was going for. Initally I had the concept of her wings sprouting from her mid-back but I dropped this, settling with them protruding closer to her waist instead. to provide more readability with her wings + her long hair.

I had a dream one night I was watching television in the living room of my old residence. I sat on the couch, unaware of someone attempting to scope out the place and break in. On the TV was what looked like a bizarre rip-off of the Amon: Apocalypse of Devilman (2000) OVA series. In place of Akira was an equally muscular but female main character whose design struck me as an inverse of Devilman's with avian traits instead of the iconic bat-like traits featured in his design. Various crudely-animated frames flashed on screen. Then I heard tapping on my window.

Amon: Apocalypse of Devilman (2000) Stills for reference

I spent the rest of this dream trying to evade and survive a home intruder as they messed around with my sanity. Despite this, the main thing that resonated vividly with me after this dream was not the concept of an intruder breaking into my house, nor the concept of being pursued by a dangerous individual, no. It was that avian protagonist's character design that stuck out vividly to me for whatever reason. Where Devilman has black fur she had white fur, and the top of her head featured feathery wings, and she was about just as muscular as him, with pale skin, white feathers, and blue eyes.

If you are familiar with Devilman you might be thinking of Sirene at the mention of a female character with avian traits. I do think my subconscious pulled from her design somewhat and made this weird off-brand fusion for a nonexistent television show exclusive to my dreams. I actually drew out a sketch of the character design as I remembered it after I had this dream, but at some point I lost the file without noticing. I do not think I bothered to back it up as it was a sketch. I would not call Azure a direct portrayal of this character, but rather extremely loosely inspired by the concept of an avian fantasy main character. The similarities end about there.

Here are some early concept art sketches featuring Azure's early design concepts.

These are extremely crude but I finalized my design choices rather quickly. As you can see not much changed in terms of overall silouette design.


I drew all of these in probably about a 15 minute slam sketch session (15 minutes to produce all of these sketches, not 15 minutes per sketch. I actually had more but I straight up trashed some of them for their low quality. These are the only survivors)

This drawing is quite silly. I played with the idea of her having a degree of feralness early on but I struggled to find a balence I liked in demenaor and expression at first.

I still kind of like the concept of her with talons instead of humanoid feet but I remember finding it a pain to redraw over and over, I might return to this concept for an alternative form of hers however.

DEPHOSTE: OLD ART, DESIGNS, AND SCRAPPED CONCEPTS.

COMING SOON...