So earlier this week, I read Skulduggery Pleasant and COMPLETELY enjoyed it. It was such a delight and so much fun and I will most definitely be checking out the rest of the series. I especially loved Stephanie Edgley so much!
However, what I didn’t expect was to make so much fanart for the book. Don’t get me wrong, I loved it and genuinely think it’s going to be my fave book of the year, but I don’t usually do fanart for novels, ya know?
Early on in the book, however, it was quick to describe the main character, Stephanie, as slender, and her not-so-nice cousins as “pudgy”. To be fair, I kind of expected this, but the whole “bad” family members being the fat ones always irked me, so I went ahead and designed my version of Stephanie, where she’s fat instead!
I just meant to do a one of picture, but I had SO much fun with her design, I legit can’t stop drawing her. Since Stephanie is pretty goth, I decided to dress her in dark colors and if any color is needed, it would be in shades of purple. I opted making her hair a dark purple instead of dark gray (as I usually do for black hair) because the book kinda has a pop-surrealism feel to it?
(okay I just looked it up and I don’t think that’s the word I’m looking for, but also, I don’t think I’m wrong either)
Basically, it’s campy and I feel like color is necessary here. I wanted to play a lot with color, go full Coraline-Henry Selick-Tim Burton!
Once I got further in the book and was introduced to her iconic coat, I had to update a design with that as well! I keep her hair down when she’s in her coat, for that dramatic flair, but try to keep it up in a ponytail when she’s in casual wear (no real reason, it was just mentioned once and I liked the thought of keeping her identities separate this way).
Also, Skulduggery! I haven’t finalized his design quite yet, but he’s gone through many changes! Originally, I was gonna have him in a blue coat. I thought the color would fit him. But I flipped through his introduction again and saw that he wore a tan coat instead, and it hit me—Let’s put Skulduggery in warm colors while Stephanie is in cold colors.
So while Stephanie is in shades of black and purple, I have Skulduggery in shades of brown!
Truly, my favorite thing about this novel is the dialogue, it’s so much fun to read!!! The whole book is honestly very comic-visual novel-animation worthy that I’m shocked there’s no adaptation yet? I don’t think? I’ve been hearing about the book for a long time but don’t remember hearing about an animation going along with it. Personally, I would pay a bajillion dollars to see this animated even once. Preferably in 2D, but I’m open-minded.
Until it is animated, though, I’m gonna draw as much of Stephanie as I can, because I genuinely love drawing her design so much. Plus, I know if it was animated, it’d likely be with a skinny Stephanie and I just feel like it’d be nice to see more fat girls in media? And with all the action she does, I feel like her having fat and muscle would make more sense! But when does Hollywood like listening to sense? X3
Anyhoo, I just really wanted to put this art on my site because I really am happy with her design. I truly hope I can design more characters like her <3
You can take a look at the other art I have on my site here!