Dragons & Dragons (part 2)

Second four! You all seem to like my thoughts about these so I’ll continue to detail them :)

For the first one, I already knew I wanted to pick the multi-eyed and multi-winged character of Starswirls. I could have done the wyvern route because of the bat-like themes but I thought it’d be cool to see it on an eastern dragon (and it’s Starswirl’s preference). Kinda scary or mysterious looking rather than the usual majestic vibe of them with the multiple wings more as an aide to gliding or just for looks.

Wani is already a crocodile so there’s not a lot to change about him to make him look like a dragon. I did get inspiration from feraligator and the hunch on its back and make it bigger than crononaw and totodile and the idea was a more feral Wani, a swamp dragon. The moss is now on its back and partially the head because of the swimming on the swamp and I have this image of this boulder on the middle of this foggy swamp and it seems to get bigger only for something gassy and glowy appear from the waters and wings stretch out. So why 4 small wings? well… I thought it’d look cool and a bit different ahaha? I did Wani right after Beorc (the next one) so it felt odd to me to do somewhat the same structure one after the other.

Beorc, the third one, for Darko is pretty straightforward. He’s a big bully hyena/wolf (?) that is more fitting as a western dragon than eastern. It’s a top (or front?) heavy design with rough spikes on the back to replace the back fur of the OG design and a horn on the snout like a rhino. Wanted to give it the tough and imposing vibe as big wings are the cherry on top. There’s a popular design choice sometimes with big/heavy things having small wings (dragonite and gronckle dragon in HTTYD) but they fit more with sillier vibes.

BuiWareU’s buizel sona is one I picked over Tulin since I’ve already drawn them before. Basically the idea here was how to make Buizel an aquatic reptile rather than an otter. I initially wanted to add wings but there’s a lot of fins on the design already that it seems crowded if I added them. I could remove the fins on the tail tips but I chose those over wings because it makes more sense to have them as an aquatic creature than have wings. The change I did with the tail was instead of using it like a propeller, the tail can be used like how humans paddle with diving fins or have them together and swim like a mermaid fin. Also I was having a hard time making buizel look like a dragon even after doing everything until I added the horns. They make a lot of difference.