LOTG: Soledad's Story

"Legend of the Goddesses" headshots, segment 3: Soledad's story.

Main
1: The Old Gods
2: Discord's Story
4: Celestia and Luna's Story
5: Kolassa's Story
6: Early Years of Equestria
7: Okapiopteryx's Story
8: Song Li's Story

Soledad is the only one of the goddesses who is no longer living by the time of "Romance and the Fate of Equestria". Her story gave me a chance to explore an undersea kingdom... through the eyes of a completely static protagonist who doesn't learn a damn thing. I hope such an exercise in futility makes for a good story anyway...

Queen Soledad
In designing the seaponies, I figured, you know, indistinguishable from regular ponies from the waist up. Merponies. I assume that's how they worked in past generations, I don't know if there are any somewhere in the G4 expanded universe, but anyway - for a seapony princess turned undead monstrosity, I decided I'd give her features of an actual seahorse... sufficiently terrifying, I think. I've got a weird obsession with characters with exotic eye designs, and I definitely knew I wanted those for this character and her evil glowing eyes.

King Nimo
Here I was trying to design a pony version of Leonard Nimoy. It was difficult; the designs used by elderly ponies in the actual show just cannot look badass, so when I try to create a badass oldster, the only thing I can figure out that looks good is adding age lines to a regular pony face. I'm satisfied. Plus, he's got that sweet royal headdress which he later passes on to his daughter, I like the design on that.

Jolly
Jolly's appearance was inspired by Ariel, and her awesomely huge hairstyle that looks really good underwater. Probably could have done better here...

Dorado
I wanted Dorado to be a nondescript everyman. The texture of his mane is modeled on seaweed, in case we forgot he's a seapony.

Maol Straume
Here, I drew inspiration from the impossible hairstyles of Square-Enix. Add some excessive evil eyeshadow, and you get a guy you just know is a douchebag just by looking at him. The inspiration for the character was the guys who dated the girls I liked in middle school. Bastards. Petty, I know. His lack of eye highlights was intentional; I wanted his eyes to have a murky quality.

Siren, Selkie, & Merrow
Identical triplets, so... only drew one of 'em. Being the daughters of Jolly and Dorado, I reminded myself how ponies seldom have a color scheme that really matches their family members; their resemblance to their mother is instead found in their similarly huge hair.

Apkallu
Here I was just going for something even more generic than Dorado. I figured criticism was going to come from that direction anyway (if anyone actually read "Legend of the Goddesses" I'm sure that would be the case) so I copped to it.

Evade
So, a lot of characters in LOTG came from a creature concept before I ever figured out a way to work them into the plot. Some of them... just didn't work, but I put 'em in the story anyway. I call him a leviathan... he's a great white shark with some octopus tentacles. Least-inspiring leviathan design ever.