Well hey there. I'm Linzer, howdy howdy howdy.





I MADE A NEW CHARACTER.

...Again.





Counting the guy I had the idea for but haven't drawn yet, that's 9 so far this year. I didn't even manage that last year when, besides random new characters, I had to make a cast of 8 for a project!! (Partly because some of them were built on designs from the year before that.)





So anyway, this is Zazzik! He's a... uh... well, he's certainly a thing. I'd had the idea of a character with unnatural striped or chequerboard markings in equally unnatural colours buzzing around in my head for a while, and the idea developed into a mostly black character who was all pointy, and had glowing eyes and sharp teeth, and was really only ever seen in silhouette and could twist into unnatural geometric shapes. And then, well, I eventually tried sketching out what was in my head.

The ideas solidified pretty quickly! I instantly latched onto this really long tufty tail I'd drawn for the first sketch. I've also wanted to do a character with no neck and a floating head for YEARS. I first saw the idea done in the webcomic "Breakpoint City" back in like 2012 or 2013. And I thought it was so cool I'd have to do a character like that myself someday. And that idea has just lain dormant until now! I then added some antennae on the right, and finally made a coloured version. This was when the heavy-hitting ideas started coming in...





It was great fun to let loose and have fun with a cool concept. I really like how he turned out. (Although if you want to be technical, he's sexless and genderless, an "it", but "he" is fine to describe him with.) See the black and magenta colour scheme? Well... you know when there's a missing texture in Garry's Mod? If you haven't seen it, it comes up with this distinctive black and magenta chequerboard. (I would have put that exact pattern on his body, but they didn't really fit. The stripes worked much better.) So my idea for this guy was that he's from another universe that's... incompatible with our own. So when he tries to come over to us, his anatomy makes no sense and his skin is made of a missing texture, as if he's made of stuff that's just beyond our comprehension. (He also speaks in missing characters!) For this design, I took advantage of the idea of someone from another dimension with totally different rules to ours, and just did stuff that looked cool rather than, say, thinking logically about anything.It was great fun to let loose and have fun with a cool concept. I really like how he turned out. (Although if you want to be technical, he's sexless and genderless, an "it", but "he" is fine to describe him with.)





Following on from the theme of a malfunctioning computer game asset with the broken model and missing textures, I imagined him having powers over electricity and plasma (general computer stuff), being able to phase through things (the model clipping through things), and maybe shapeshifting too (the model distorting). His weakness is that he can "crash" if he uses his powers too much, and has to take some time to "reboot".







It's a bit early to say for sure, but he's definitely one of my favourite designs this year, and that's up against some STIFF competition! I love Sammi and Foosie, and I rather like Zinzer and Harper too.





Actually come to think of it, those are all the main ones. This year has been good for character designs! I'm proud of all of these, even Zinzer. He's just such a stupid edgelord, I love him.



