Can I Ask A Question? I Like Your Sanders Sides A Lot And You Give Them A Lot Of Personality In Their

Can I ask a question? I like your sanders sides a lot and you give them a lot of personality in their designs! How do you make them like that? Or I guess I mean, what inspires you to make them the way that you do? I want to draw the sides but I'm not sure how to start other than their canon designs!

Oh my goodness I LOVE this question! For me, it's all about the feelings you get when you see them and the vibes I want to express. The Sides embody, to me, more than an aesthetic it should also encompass personality, role, and intention. In other words, I match their aesthetics to their function and the intent of what I feel like Thomas originally intended for them for their first short videos before they were actual sides.

Let us pick Roman, because even though people say he's not, he tends to be everyone's favourite to reblog fro me because he's pretty.

So I started by drawing him exactly as he was and to me he felt flat- in the show he's exactly as he should be but I am an artist and to me he feels more than what he looks like- it's dreamy, it's romantic, it's like he's giving childhood favouritre Disney Prince vibes, you know?

Inspiration 1: Prince Phillip

Hands down the biggest inspiration comes from him because he IS my favourite disney prince. Just looks a the hair swoop and the eyelashes- perfect. So I went ok my favourite Disney Prince is Phillip, let's start here. Before the CGI movies, there was such a romantic feeling about classic Disney princess movies and I've always loved the romantic feeling of Sleeping Beauty. The backgrounds are stunning, the way she's animated makes my bi ass give heart eyes and I loved that he was the only prince at the time who had a personality (until Beast but that's a whole other can of worms because he started out as an asshole/grumpy). I feel like modern Disney movies miss a lot of the romantic dreamy feeling of the older 2d movies because there was such care into the painted backgrounds being LESS realistic and more a fabulous idea of what a background should be and AHA! MORE INSPIRATION~! Let's make Roman a fabulous romantic idea of what a prince should be!

Inspiration 2: Faerietale Knights in Shining Armour

Our ideas of medieval knights are nothing like actual knights which are more reminiscent of hired military and enforcers. Our ideas of faerietale knights in shining armour are brave knights who would go off to kill a dragon to show their devotion to the one they love. Sword fighting heroes- is that not Roman if not an idealized romantic "royal knight wants to win the heart of the love with courageous deeds, acts of chivalry, selfless devotion" etc. Prince Phillip is a good model of this. Defeats a dragon and true love's kiss saves the day. A perfect romantic dream isn't it? Realistic? No of course not, but Roman isn't realistic he's creativity and romance which absolutely ignores practicality for the dream.

So we have this culmination of dreamy romantic disney prince and faerietale influence.

Now it's about aesthetics- Roman is reds and golds and whites, all royal colours typically associated with bravery, lineage, and strength and purity etc.

Inspiration 3: Media referencing

So let's find some movie or media equivalence I can reference. They came mostly in the forms of Narnia and Once Upon a Time.

So some aesthetic inspirations for belts and textures, missing the epaulets.... so to military garb!

Inspiration 4: Russian royals

Let's face it no one does embellishments like this any more <3

Inspiration 5: Lions

Roman's colours being red gold and white give me lion inspiration too so I looked up royal lion iconography as well (which ended up with a lot of lion king in the search because this was before AI but like.... it's not incorrect and the wavy flowy mane acted like hair. If Hamlet with lions is inspiring then use it, right? that have some AMAZING lion king-style artists on deviantart to get inspired by, it's a whole thing, mad respect) But ANYWAYS it gave me some cool stuff to be inspired by too.

Inspiration 6: Classic Golden Age Hollysood Leading Ladies (Note that this isn't femme fatales, because for Janus I used femme fatales as inspiration)

I knew that I just HAD to give Roman that Marilyn Monroe beauty mark, yes he paints it on every day yes it's in the same spot every day yes it's necessary.

Ultimately this culminated in a checklist of things that I wanted for him:

He must give the feeling of Prince Phillip in disney prince style

I wanted him to have flowey hair that makes him look softer and romantic and can be pulled up into a ponytail if necessary.

Must have a beauty mark and eyelashes that go on for ages reminiscent of old hollywood ladies, and let's throw in nail polish too.

I wanted him to have an outfit that would be his original but embellished to hell that can be like Narnia or OUaT in terms of texture and added stuff. It needed more gold, 100% needed epaulets (the shoulder things with the dangly rstuff), and it needed a belt where a sword could be attached. Danglies not always necessary, but look really good when done and is reminiscent of old fashioned military garb and Russian royalty.

He needed to look like he's used to wearing this outfit every single day and going out of his way to do so.

Ended up with this:

So yeah that's how I got to his design!