Fantasy Furry - The Tanuki Mercenary (+Plus a Refinement and The Tanook Squad)

I think an interesting idea with tanuki characters is the idea that they can summon/transform things and themselves, usually using leaves to help aid and channel their magic. I realised that I haven't really explored that idea too much, rather just having the implication that they could do something like this.

So I quite liked the idea of a tanuki mercenary that is a bit grumpy and flustered that they get summoned and can make their oversized hammer appear and disappear depending on if someone needs a world of hurt. With transforming things, this also made me think of our tanky tanuki. Perhaps they could do the classic transforming into a statue to take absorb and protect others from powerful hits!

With four tanuki characters designed now, I figured I'd bash them together to show folks what they all like and hope I did enough to differentiate between all three. Apparently tanuki in this world we are designing are just grown big. They are an rpg party all to themselves haha. A healer, a fighter, a bard and a tank, a pretty balanced party!

I tweaked the design slightly to our tanky tanuki friend with the hat as when I put them all together, the pure white and black clothes clashed with the earthern vibes we had set up with all of our fluffy magic friends! I also wanted to clean up the chest tattoo ideas a little bit ad add some simple patterns to the coat.

In a warm up sketch I showed on the patron discord of the one on the right, I drew him with a sleeveless coat to show off the ringed arm patterns. I'm still unsure as to follow through with this choice or not as the super broad shoulders the coat gives him helps create a silhouette that is distinct from the other tanuki characters and also implies them to be strong and tankier, like an american footballer.

I guess this is a good sign that we are coming to refining previous designs! With such a large cast of characters so far, it gives us a good jumping off point to explore potential ideas about the world they inhabit and the stories we can tell! c: