The Newlyweds (and their Uninvited Guest).

These were my first drafts of the three from months ago. I ended up really hating how they all looked and needed a fresh start (I was also burning out at this point), so I took a break and asked Tulli to help with Cadance and Chrysalis. Tulli took Cadance in a drastically different direction, which was a lifesaver. I was originally too hung up on trying to preserve her original design’s sharp snout and enormous eyes, but Tulli moved Cadance away from the cartoony for something more realistic and historical.

You can read about Tulli’s process in designing Cadance here under their incredible illustration of her here.

For Samuel (Shining Armor), we decided to completely redo his character, as the original was, in all honesty, a bit too dude-bro for our tastes. I knew that I wanted him to be wearing his WW1 captain’s uniform. I poured over research and references from real WW1 captains (Aaron R. Fisher, a black WW1 second lieutenant, was chief reference) to uniform charts to wedding photos. It probably still isn’t 100% accurate; if you have more knowledge on military uniform history, let me know and I’ll be happy to make edits. I pulled his silhouette from Prince Philip of Sleeping Beauty’s, giving him a big red cape and making his coat look like a tunic-skirt under the belt. The red cape also references his original red coat uniform in the show (I couldn’t make the uniform itself red, as red is associated with the British military). The rose clasp on the cape connects him to Cadance’s flower motif. His medals are (in order) the the Croix de Guerre, the Distinguished Service medal, and the WW1 Victory medal. The badge underneath is made up, meant to look like his shield cutie mark with the three medals overhead as its three stars (I had to be subtle with that, as giving him three actual five-point stars would be uniform sacrilege). I toiled on his face a lot because I needed to have a balance of chiseled, handsome, and a bit weathered, yet still young, warm, and dorky (Shining Armor in the show is canonically a D&D fan). I’m pretty happy with what I settled on, especially because you can tell he’s Thea’s older brother.

(Fun fact: His uniform also intentionally parallels Thea’s outfit, with the large coat, belt bound high at the waist, and pockets. I initially wanted to strengthen the parallels by having his pants bunched up over a pair of boots, but we decided it made him look less princely.)

Finally, for Chrysalis, I knew I wanted to combine her original design with Maleficent and a praying mantis (Cuz the females eat the males’ heads when they mate. Hah.). This proved to be extremely difficult though, because all three have conflicting design traits. Chrysalis, despite being a villain, has a very cutesy design with the tiny snout and round head and big cat eyes.


Tulli and I worked through multiple iterations and ideas for Chrys. We wanted both a scary bug-monster form and a more sardonic and appealing human form, so we decided to combine the two of them, with the mantis head acting as a headpiece over the human face (this also keeps with the theme of witch deities having multiple faces). When transforming, the mantis head will close and open rapidly (inspired by Koh the Face Stealer from ATLA). Chrys’s robes always conceal her body, implied to be that of a praying mantis’. I added a waistband to give her silhouette the segmented look of a mantis’s body as well. The robes are pure black to signify her status as a villain of true darkness, a void that drains surrounding colors to hide her real form.

We’re having a lot of fun with the wedding arc, so I might post some thumbnails, boards, and comics of scene ideas soon. Thank you!