Worldbuilding Wednesday: Series and Character Concepts (Patreon)

I've stated multiple times that originally, Poppy O'Possum started out as a videogame concept I had rattling around in my brain during my senior year at art school, so let's get into that original draft for a moment. Contrary to popular belief, it wasn't as a fighting game (although I'd once stated I occasionally draft characters by considering how their movesets would work if they were fighting game characters), but more in the vein of the many animal mascot platformers I loved as a kid, like Banjo-Kazooie or Sly Cooper. 

The original Poppy concept was so different from the final product as to be utterly unrecognizable aside from a few superficial elements, such as Poppy's character design and her super strength. However, even her strength was wildly at odds with the final work, as she got it from a set of huge magical gloves rather than being an innate quality. In this original draft, Poppy's goal was to climb up a huge magical tree in order to reach the moon, in order to confront an evil weasel witch who lived there and had sent Poppy several mysterious threats. It was far more comical and bizarre in tone, with the various branches being broken up into themes like a haunted dance club or an extreme sports training gym. Several characters would end up being repurposed from boss concepts, like Boris, a human in this draft, who was invincible unless you wooed his cheerleaders with feats of strength, and Ewe-Lala, whose fans would crowd together to keep you away from her stage. At the end of the game, after a multi-stage final boss, it would be revealed that Poppy totally misinterpreted the witch's threats as romantic gestures, and that she would happily accept her marriage proposal, leading into a comedic ending where everyone just rolls with it.

A couple of drafts in, however, I got so attached to the characters and setting that I began to start fleshing it out in earnest, and the tone quickly shifted closer to something like Final Fantasy IX than Banjo. It was at this point that Lily was created, as well as the idea of opossums facing a sort of discrimination, in order to give Poppy a more grounded motivation. Several of the following drafts focused a very different version of the current story, in which "Princess Presh," the prototype for Kit, was the main villain, who was secretly experimenting with dangerous potions in order to turn opossums into monsters. In the end, she would drink her own potions in frustration, turning into a giant monster that Poppy would have to feed antidotes to, culminating in a punch that would send her flying to the moon. 

As time went on, though, I realized I was unsatisfied with Presh's character, especially as the twist of "helpful character is revealed to be real villain" became more prevalent in children's media. It was then I considered how much chemistry Poppy and Presh had, and decided to revamp her into Kit Darling, as a full love interest. The setting also expanded greatly into a full world, with a creation myth and history, and the plot grew in scope into something far more complex, both in structure and tone. By about the tenth draft, after a year of development, I'd ended up with the story I'm telling now, almost fully formed, with just a few little tweaks to be made here and there as I went.

Ewe-Lala

As one of the older characters in the series, Lala went through a few oddball phases. Originally, she was just some weirdo pop star very loosely inspired by Monkey Pink from Ape Escape. As the story became more serious, though, she went from being a simple wolf-in-sheep's-clothing gag character to quickly being tied to the "fruits of life" concept as a character of mixed birth. Several drafts explored the idea of her having a corrupt manager, who planned to kidnap sheep attending her concert and have them shipped off to a secret underground carnivore ring that Poppy would publicly reveal to infuriate Lala for being used. While the plot would have been foiled before any damage could be done in-universe, the concept just seemed too dark, and I didn't really like the idea of Flora having predator/prey taboos other animal-based settings have explored in general. Ultimately, I decided to go with a story focusing on her nature as a mixed-species character, which made her much more interesting and relatable.

Mary Moonshine

Mary was originally created as a tongue-in-cheek "save point" character for the videogame concept. She was always a terrible nun and her general character basically hasn't changed since the beginning aside from being slotted into the greater setting. 

However, there's really, really obviously something weird about her. There's hard evidence that she drinks whenever possible, but she can effortlessly switch back to a lucid state when convenient, suggesting she may simply be feigning inebriation for unknown reasons.

Hallia

At one point, the various bird kingdoms were set to be an important locale later in the plot, and as a result, Hallia's original concept was a far more important character. Her predecessor was a sparrow assistant to the Quibbles who would later be revealed to be a lost prince that had run away from his home nation. I quickly fell out of love with this idea, however, as his side story was ultimately just distracting, and the main cast was already dangerously full of "secretly super special" characters, so I completely rewrote him into the Hallia we know now. To poke fun at myself, I decided to write Hallia's backstory with as many unique qualifiers as I could cram into it while still making her "sort of boring" as a person. She grew up homeless on the streets, she once worked for the mob, she had an illicit romance with a psychopath, she's a savant with architecture, she's physically disabled, she's transgender... And yet she ends up being the most normal goober in the group by merit of not being a super-powered freakazoid. Hallia's great.

Misc.

-Friedrich's final design literally didn't exist until the very first time I drew him into the comic. He's one of the few main characters who didn't undergo extensive design drafting, and before then, he only existed in script form.  

-Petunia and the Quibble-Rani family didn't exist until the second to final draft, and before then, Poppy's closest confidant was a giraffe character who lived in a compact pocketspace apartment. She was dropped for being too difficult to frame panels around.

-Humans existed within the setting from the very first drafts, although I allowed people's preconceptions about human characters within "animal settings" to make them assume they would be absent or otherwise special.

-Ms. Rufus was specifically designed as "Kaneoya Sachiko"-love letter character and if Kit's relationship with Poppy wasn't already a crucial plot element by the time I created her then I 100% would have made her Poppy's primary love interest. Yes, there's official non-canon art of it. No, I won't show it to you.