Character File: Cobalt

    Two of my main kinds of inspiration came from video games and movies/TV shows. Cobalt is kind of a mix between 2 characters I love very dearly. The first character is Gregg from Night in the Woods, a video game I would highly suggest to almost anyone, that's kind of the reason why Cobalt used to be a coyote (you'll see). The second character being Nick Wilde from Zootopia, this is more personality based, I find Nick to be a flawed character who grows throughout the movie and I highly enjoy his friendship between Judy and him. As you can see, a lot went into making Cobalt's character, I wanted to be very careful with him specifically, as shown in some of his chapters. I do want to point out that blue wolves do not exist in nature, but I like to think that it's more of a lighting thing, I imagine that Cobalt, in real life, would be more of a gray color that is slightly blue kind of like a Russian Blue cat. Anyway, on to the character designs!!!

Prototype: This is the first drawing of Cobalt ever, it is a full body image of him and it has a lot of problems. Mostly in the fact that I don't know what species he is in this image (Spoiler: probably a coyote). This design has him with short ears, a short muzzle, and in general, a short stature. He is standing next to the prototype design of Caspian (who in canon is shorter than Cobalt), and this drawing of Cobalt is a lot shorter than Caspian. Prototype Cobalt is wearing a long sleeved collared shirt, versus the short sleeved ones, but he is missing the sleeve on his left arm. I have no clue if he has shoes or pants on. He is missing his tail and I cannot tell if his right ear is supposed to be torn or not. Something that was retired from Cobalt's design that will likely never come back is his baseball bat, sometimes it would have barbed wire, sometimes there would be nails. He is also wielding a knife. I believe that this Cobalt was supposed to have beef with the mayor of the city and in general was a bad kid committing crimes. I am not sure if he would have had a relationship with the prototype of Mac or not.

 

Incarnation 1: I honestly cannot express how much I hate this drawing. It's old and retired and I can't get over that face! This is probably more of a prototype than anything. I knew there was going to be a mean kid character, but this is all sorts of wrong. Plus, I didn't even give this character a name, he was just, "Coyote." This was also around 8th grade as well.

 

Incarnation 2: OOH! This is where I have some real issues, this is the exact same time I did Mac's second incarnation as well. It is so bad and also he is still a coyote. There is still some Cobalt in this design as well, the second incarnations really were just in between the first and final designs. At least he has a body now and is not just a torso. >:)

 

Incarnations 3: This version is both the sketch and digital drawing of Cobalt (and Monty). The sketch was made on September 8, 2020 and the digital drawing was posted to my Instagram on the same day Mac's was posted. I played around with some shape language with this drawing, I wanted Cobalt to use a lot of triangles and squares to give off a tough and slightly villainous aspect to his design, which is a key plot point in the second book (sort of). Cobalt's colors could be lightened, but I wanted to give him and Mac a similar color palette in the end, I think it turned out fine.

 

Incarnation 4: -coming soon-