Concept History: Krynn (Patreon)

Hello again, supporters. Today I'm focusing on the secondary protagonist, wildcard, and androgynous anti-hero that is Krynn. And boy do I go way back on this one!

So, firstly, his name. I've always felt that Krynn is the single thing most likely to get me in copyright trouble someday, other than the comic's title which it shares with Polish PC strategy landmark Spellcross: The Last Battle. Krynn is the name of the world the Dragonlance series of books take place in, and while I loved the book series by Tracy Hickman dearly and wanted to use the name as a reference, to be honest copyright was the furthest thing from my mind when I first designed my Krynn in 2008 .

This doodle was made on receipt paper while I was bored out of my skull working the front desk at an Ashley Furniture Store in 2008. Spellcross itself wasn't nearly well formed in my brain at that time, so it was just me playing around designing characters for fun. However even this early you can see that I locked in immediately on the jacket with straps. I feel like I must have been in my Shaman King phase around that time as well, which is likely where the magatama came from that never reappeared. I should also note that I only started drawing frequently for the first time in 2006, so this was only about 2 years into actually trying to become a better artist than the crappy doodles I always made as a kid.

I turned this doodle into digital art about a year later in 2009.

It genuinely cracks me up to remember when I used to draw like this. I was figuring many things out at the time, and relying on crazy angles and bold designs in order to try and cover up my lack of fundamentals. I wish I could go back and force myself to do real practice, but art was just something I did among many other pursuits at that time.

What emerged here was the core of Krynn's design which still carries to current. The green hair with "ears" on the sides and the red cloak with collar and clasp made of straps are the most important. The description I may have written at the time is unfortunately lost from when I deleted my dA account, but the title of this image was "The Soulstealer". This early though, Krynn's weapon was still a black and white sword with a unique shape as laid out in the previous doodle.

April 2011 was the apex of my journey in OCT participation as I entered the sequel to the tournament I'd used Caldwell for, Artists At The Ready 2. This was the last OCT I entered before I quit the scene entirely to work on Spellcross. I could post many screenshots of Krynn from my entires, but for the sake of brevity I'll just post these snippets from the character sheet. Yes I admit I am too cowardly to show my writing from 2011, it's already wounding enough for me to show old art but revealing old writing would kill me.

It's overall a smoothing out of the previous drawing, and bringing the colors into harmony. I really love the look of Krynn's weapon from this time. By now, the concept of Krynn's blue-magic styled monster souls were better established as well. I wanted to pay homage to the concept of Blue Magic from Final Fantasy. The cloak retained its looseness, but I more sensibly kept a strap across the front so that it would stay on. Krynn's personality also emerged through the writing here and established them as a loner who was willing to risk everything for their strong personal beliefs.

Good time to talk about Krynn's gender now. At this point, I considered them a girl. Later, I started writing them as a guy. I flip flopped on it so much that I decided to just leave their gender indeterminate and call them whatever I felt like. I feel like Krynn's androgyny was a way for me to subconsciously play around with ideas of gender back when I was still very repressed myself.

Then in 2015 I decided fuck it, Spellcross is already a big collection of things I love. The sword already reaps souls, and I love Soul Eater to death, so why not just make it a scythe?

But I was having a lot of trouble coming up with something that A.) Had an unusual design to mark Krynn's unique style of fighting and B.) Would not make me tear my hair out drawing it over and over in the comic. I kicked around a bunch of ideas for a few months, before I had the idea for a bone-like scythe with a distinctive zigzag. This first iteration was a bit straighter and got more ziggy the more I drew it.

Krynn's role in the story was already decided by now, and giving them a scythe really made the rest of their character fall into place neatly. It also meant that the very important slot of a polearm user in the main party was now filled, and her weapon wouldn't have any overlap whatsoever with Sil's swordplay. This also made their personalities play off each other better, as Sil is an "outward" chuuni and Krynn is an "inward" chuuni, if that makes any sense. I still needed to settle on a final design for her, and I was considering overhauling her entirely by July 2016.

Going backward from the end, 4 was going for a Castlevania feel. 3 Was leaning fully into the Dante aesthetic, but didn't feel right. 1 was a throwback to the initial design with the jacket vest, but felt out of touch with her character by now. 2, however, was just right. This was the design that I went with when she appeared in chapter 16 of Spellcross in January 2016, with her gender swapped one final time to make her a boy. Probably.

Hi, Falconus. Maybe you'll get a design history some day too.

And so, we have Krynn in his current form. One of the things I really wanted to do with Spellcross was change the cast's gear and entire outfits over time, with some characters like Sasha changing every single arc. Krynn however is tied very strongly to this single outfit. I bet his closet is just all dark tops and red cloaks, what a nerd.

My favorite illustration of Krynn is still the cover for Chapter 23, which brought things full circle by my naming it "The Soulstealer". I was channeling something great here, I think. Probably because the other eye is hidden (lol).

And so we come to their current design, and the end of this retrospective.

Krynn is cool, maybe the coolest, but his demeanor masks a lot of emotion boiling beneath the surface. His flat demeanor isn't an affect, he's just constantly exhausted from dealing with life's stresses. I like to think of him as a Tiredness Elemental. He exists as an outlet for many things I love, like blue mages from FF (I love you Kimahri) and the soul absorption giving spells in the Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow games. The Soaring Armor soul that grants Krynn limited flight is a very heavy homage to the first boss of Dawn of Sorrow, the Flying Armor.

But at the same time, his character explores a lot about feelings of self loathing, isolation, and fear. He is Haphephobic and has a fear of being touched, but also has a dulled sense of pain from the price his magic takes out of him. He feels that he has to handle all of his problems by himself, and in a way being forced into a team is the last thing he ever wanted. But finding acceptance and exploring within to find his genuine self ended up being the crux of his character development in this part of the story. There's lots ahead for our taciturn soulstealer. I can't wait to show you all of it. 'Til then.