I really like this character, and a lot of others like him, so I've seen a number of furry-ified versions in my time. Usually he ends up a cream or yellow cat. I've seen a few monitor lizards, and a number of snakes (usually not a specific species, but they tend to look rather python-ish in form). I really liked seeing people turn him into reptiles; I just think it works for his character. Though it does raise one important question: if, as a human, his eyes become that of a serpent or a cat, then if he's a serpent/cat, would his eyes become human? Food for thought.
...Anyway..
I thought it was a real shame I've never seen anyone use d'albertis' python (also known as just d'albert's python) as his design base.
All of the snakes have a lovely brassy tone to them and dark heads, but some are far more vibrant (fresh shed?) and look more golden or orange, while others are almost entirely black. They're very shiny and iridescent too! Very pretty snakes. They have just enough color variety that I thought it would work very nicely with a sort of timeline. The third design was meant to be even darker, but I didn't like it as much when paired with clothing. Maybe I can reuse it for endgame appearance?
This wasn't meant to get as complex as it did. I had just wanted to get the idea out of my head. Unfortunately this quickly became three different versions of him (instead of my original plan of two), technically four different versions if you count the scrapped one, and multiple outfits for each. I don't even want to draw him as a furry but I've put so much time into this I basically have to commit now.
My oekaki handwriting is horrible so here's the more important notes, plus stuff I didn't write down in there:
- designs 2 & 3 have a brown overlay layer above them at 58% opacity
- head, hands, and legs for 2 & 3 are painted on a layer above the overlay. Shoulders on 3 are also above overlay.
- hair, eyes, belly scales, and claws are above the overlay and not affected by it. aka their colors stay the same
- the only difference between 2 & 3 is that 3 has a darker head, neck, and shoulders
- the palette for 2 & 3 labelled "scales (colorpicked)" is so one can theoretically avoid having to mess with the brown overlay and just use those. as opposed to using a different specific palette and another specific color overlaid on top of it at a particular opacity to get the exact right hue. however it was colorpicked right from his scaly body so who knows how accurate they are :(
- 1 is meant to be 1998 and before (so 1960 - 1998)
- 2 is post-arklay (still '98) through to end of re4 (200...4? i dont want to look that up. 2004, 2005, whatever)
- 3 is like uroboros era, end of re4 through to the volcano whoopsies