More random art for the masses k, Sketches from last night and today

First off, we have the evolution of Yours Truly. Back when I started drawing Kitsune in 1997 was when I started getting into Sonic characters. He was at the time part fox, part hedgie, which actually kinda sucks out loud as far as cross-species mating goes today. I don't know what came over me, but I decided to bring him back in 1999 (didn't use him much at all after the first time I drew him) and he's been changing ever since. The two arrows branching from 1999 Kitsune indicate the evolution of his character into "Kitsune the Fox" (2000) and a separate evolution into everyone's favorite, "Kitsune Yamato Yamashiro" (2004). Kitsune also underwent several name changes as you can see here, since I stopped using the character's species name as a last name. And for you, Kritter, X means 10. It's not a power level.


Next, it's the evolution of GDA's poster boy, Goshi-Dan. Goshi-Dan came about in 1999, as I was making up a bunch of new characters and he was one of them. I didn't keep his 1999 design the same for long, as a friend of mine told me he thought Goshi-Dan looked gay (seriously). Changed looks a couple of times between his present look. Now to tell you the truth, Karashi (same one from RFF1) was integral to Goshi-Dan's evolution, simply because I got tired of Karashi's kiddy look and since he and Goshi-Dan were both rivals in the original game, I didn't want to have an 18-year-old squaring off against a 14-year-old. Therefore, I changed Goshi-Dan's look and upped his age.


Kitsune, Goshi-Dan, and Daisuke's uncle Tsurugi Keitsuken. For those wondering, I actually thought of this character long before I played Soul Calibur, so don't go saying I stole the look or the name from Mitsurugi. Anyway, Tsurugi is about 65 years old and spends most of his time estranged from the rest of the family. Whether he'll make an appearance in RyuFox Legends or even RyuFox Fighters is yet to be seen, but despite that his nephew carries a monstrous sword, Tsurugi is the better swordsman and has taken Kitsune down more times than anyone can remember. He's THAT good.


Miyoshi Keitsuken, Jr. (a.k.a. Kiyoshi) and Kitsune Yamato Keitsuken XI (a.k.a. Kitsune 11). In the Yamashiro! story, these are two of Kitsune and Miyoshi's three children. Originally, I was going for the angle of Kiyoshi being significantly older than Kitsune 11 (three year difference, perhaps), but I decided to make them twins, Kiyoshi still being the oldest. For Kiyoshi, it's somewhat irksome that he was named after his mother (you would be too, if you had a chick's name), so his parents gave him the "Ki-" from Kitsune's name and called him "Kiyoshi" as a nickname. In the original Keitsuken's Diamond story, these two actually travel through time and into the past to help their parents return God's Diamond to its rightful place.


It's Elliott's mom, Liz, in her younger days. I went through several style changes with Liz and found one I could settle on easily. For some reason, I have a very hard time sticking her with someone in the Project Hyperion series because her personality clashes with so many of the other characters. I almost even considered making her a lesbian, but seeing as how I've avoided going that route with my characters for the longest, I decided to keep it that way.


Oh look, it's Elliott's Aunt Tracey in her younger days as well. Tracey is Liz's kid sister. She's got quite a lot of book smarts, but isn't exactly as sharp as a tack (I'm going to avoid using blonde stereotypes, seeing as she's blonde). Anyway, she's one of the cuter human characters in my franchise of over 500, thus making it incredibly difficult to get her to stay that way when I draw future pictures of her.


Oh hey. It's Jiro.


I drew a Yamato-ized version of the South Park characters after watching the new episode on Wednesday. They didn't quite come out looking as I expected (Cartman especially), but you can pretty much tell who all is who (especially TIMMEH!)


As I stated before, Karashi was integral to Goshi-Dan's evolution. Anyway, at when I first drew him, we got Diddy Kong Racing the previous Christmas and I wanted to have my own DKR-ish franchise as well (it dissipated though, so it doesn't matter anymore). Karashi's original name was Whacker (after Conker). Anyway, after my little DKR-ish franchise dissipated, the characters I liked made it into different series. Some went back to the series in which they originated, others I gave up on because they honestly looked gay or didn't interest me anymore. Whacker was one of the ones I liked, so I kept him. Then, for a school project, I did something on anime and it involved my characters, so I had Whacker change names for the sake of the project to "Karashi". Some time after the project, Whacker sounded stupid, so Karashi became his permanent name. Then later, I started drawing older versions of Karashi. I eventually was having so much more fun with the older Karashi, I got tired of the younger-looking Karashi and made this one his permanent look, which sparked one of the evolutionary stages in Goshi-Dan's development.

You yamatozoed.. SOUTH PARK CHARACTERS?! O.o

But yeh, it's good.

I love your style! nice artwork Kitsune!

Wow goshi-dan looks extremely weird in his first look. XD

Awesome pics and I love the southpark-lookalike characters pic.

Eyes, eyes, I love the eyes. They stand out to me for some reason. Awesome work, maen.

I love how original most of your characters are, the drawing is just fantastic too

Any reason half your characters have Japanese names?

Maybe he likes jap names. I know I do.

So do I but I wouldn't call my characters that.

It's like "how can I make my characters cool? I know, give them a Japanese name, huge sword, big Japanese anime hair and make then an anthropomorphic creature with all those things".

Too much culture influence, the pictures are very good, but I can't stand the names.

I like the art, it's very good... but I think the names are a bit too long. Three complicated Japanese names each is a bit much to remember. Why can't you just use one or two simpler Japanese names?

Because more names sounds cooler.

They get nicknames. For instance, you could call Kitsune "Kitty." Those long names are for fact banks, when you need some extra material in a game and wanna overanalyze your characters.

Yeah, or I commonly refer to their first names perhaps?

All my characters have first, middle, and last names because I do have some characters with the same names as others. And keep in mind that I have over 500 characters I've created since 2nd grade, so characters with Japanese names aren't even the tip of the iceberg.

And besides, when I'm thinking of names, I don't just use Japanese names (as is the popular belief >.>). If the name fits, I use it. And usually, I derive the names from words, a name I've heard and have always wanted to use for a character, or mangle bits and pieces of other characters names to get names.

This post has been edited by Kitsune Yamato on Mar 12 2005, 12:40 PM