You've made many intriguing designs for various draconequui over the years and have a knack for marrying their diverse or even contrasting features. Do you have any advice on assembling their unique looks?

Thank you. Lets see, what suggestions do I have… Hmmm…

1) Theme'ing.
My big suggestion is to look inside yourself and say “What do I like?” Do you like Steampunk? Maybe lean into a steampunk aesthetic. Perhaps you like ghouls, you could lean into a zombie sorta theme. It’s important to have a clear idea of what you like, and what you like about that thing. Do you like shallow oceans, or deep oceans? And what do you like about the creatures that live in those areas? Any favorites?

For an example, here is Calypso, who I helped design with @silver-tongues-blog You can see the deep sea influence as a ship wrecking monster.

2) Colors.
Colors are always important in character design. It’s important to avoid clashing colors. Personally, I like to use shades of purple in my character designs. Usually with a more dynamic color for the main body/face, and then a more mundane color for the limbs.

You can see it in Echidna here. Her face and neck are very bright, abstract colors, while her additional parts (arms, legs, torso) are normal colors. The tail than finishes off the theme with a more dramatic color.

You can see it in Stitches as well. Her face, eyes, chest, and hair are more dynamic colors, but her arms and legs are more natural palates. (Spotted rabbit and Fox) with her tail and wings have more dynamic colors that compliment her main body colors.

3) Reiteration.
Never be afraid to try again or change something if you have a new idea later.

You can see the original design for Scraps at the bottom, with the reworks at the top. You can see how reiterating, and changing some aspects of his design helped streamline, and make his design a great deal easier to read.

4) Start Compact.
This one is purely subjective. You don’t need to follow my advice. But I find that when I make draconequui, I always start with smaller, more imp-like, or childish forms. You can see it with Stitches, and some of the others I’ve done.

This is because it helps me work on a smaller design that takes a lot less time to draw quickly. Also the compact form has a major read on design choices. Sure you can give your noodle a really complex design on the neck, but if you can’t shrink those features and keep them readable than what’s the point?

Features, parts, and patterns should be readable at any distance, and it helps you come up with a design that is easy to remember and keeps out clutter.

And sure, the larger design can have 50 eyes on the neck, but that’s adding up. It’s harder to compact a design than it is to scale a design up.