The Chronological Elijah - Part 1: 2009 - 2015

Hey everyone! As part of this month's character spotlight, I'll be posting some art from throughout the years so you can see how Eli has changed! There's some art here that's never been posted online, so I hope you enjoy! 

Elijah is one of the two I struggled with most design wise, it took several years before I felt like he looked ottery enough.  His design had lots of little changes because I was never quite satisfied with him, but looking back I have a soft spot for almost every variation in same way. Except maybe 2009.

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 2009

These are the first couple of Elis that I drew, and wow, that first one was like I’d never seen an otter before! I’m pretty sure he calls himself a pain in the second pic specifically because I struggled drawing him.

2010 

Apparently the next time I drew him was in 2010 - poor guy was just a head for at least 5 months. He still looks like some kind of weasel more than anything, but I feel like that smile in the middle of the first sketch page has carried over all the way to today!

Once he finally obtained an entire body he wasted no time establishing his friendship with Annie and Rory! I still like this pic with Annie even though they both look quite different now. Notice Eli doesn’t have his necklace yet.

As for Rory - that’s a post for later!

2011

The necklace appears, and he’s been wearing it ever since. And for the most part he started buttoning up his shirt, finally. Unfortunately we’ve caught him as someone unfriended him on LetShare - but it was probably nobody important!

This one is fun - One of the bigger changes in personality from when I first created Eli is that originally the main focus of Eli’s affection was Wheeler - who wasn’t entirely thrilled about the whole thing and found a little Eli annoying. The idea was after some time Wheeler would come around the two would end up better friends. For the life of me I’m not sure why Eli had that fixation on Wheeler,  I probably didn’t think about it all that much. Today, Eli and Wheeler are… vaguely aware of each other’s existence? They’re at least LetShare friends.

The last one I drew on the first page of a brand new sketchbook, with the intent of re-drawing it on the last page once I filled up the rest. I ended up not finishing the sketchbook for quite some time… remember this and come back later!

Also… your necklace… you dropped your necklace!

2013-2014

I genuinely could not find any Elis from 2012… did I really go a whole year without drawing him? That seems so unthinkable now!

This was the first bigger redesign I had done for him - changing the shape of his muzzle a bit to be more otter-like, and his fur is more floofy rather than spiky.

I tried a bunch of variations within this basic design but he kinda ended up looking the best the first couple of times. At least some of the expressions came out fun!

2014 is also when Eli officially became the most fashionable of my characters somehow - this was the first time I drew his summer outfit and I really enjoyed drawing it! At some point he did stop wearing most of the things on his wrists though.

2015

Puberty hit him like a ton of bricks! He’s about 60% leg and 10% nose. Did a bee sting him in the face? Are you okay?? The one thing that did stick is that his head and neck are more animal-like, which is something that carries over to his current design. I don’t think I ever posted this anywhere, so please enjoy ending on this particularly awkward design, haha.

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That’s a wrap for part 1! I hope you’ve enjoyed this so far, let me know what you think - especially if you think I could present the posts in a better way - is it too many pics in one post?

Next week’s post will cover Eli from 2016 to present day, I hope you look forward to it!