The Historical OCs Have Designs!

I've been saying I'd get this done for a while.

I have three ASMR audio series where I initially had no plans for the characters I portray in them to be actual proper original characters. No name, no design, no attachment. And the first one I did, the 'visiting king', was initially meant to be just a one-off audio. I had no idea these series would get so popular, and the first 'visiting king' audio is still my most viewed video on Youtube currently sitting at over 100k views. And soon what was a one-off audio became a whole series, and then I made others similar to it.

These three audio series ('Visiting King, 'Villain x Hero' and 'Guilty Priest') never had character designs or names. But as people started liking them and as I kept getting more requests for them I wanted to try and design them and turn them into proper OCs. But I was scared. People loved the audios that just had photographs of my outfits in them, what if my designs were a disappointment? What if they didn't live up to people's imagined versions of them?

Back in April-May 2024 I designed the Guilty Priest and named him Father Hawthorn. I added him to the OC stickers and keychains I have for sale on my Etsy shop.

And then I just never got around to designing the other two. And it felt more nerve-wracking to try and design them, especially the Visiting King as he's my most popular series of audios in terms of Youtube views (yes even more than Love Bites).

But yesterday I thought okay, enough, I have to design them. People have been asking for over a year and I keep saying I will, I have to try.

I had a much clearer vision for the Visiting King, so I challenged myself to design the Villain first. I really struggled. I erased so many sketches. And I only kept a few of the scraped designs on the final concept art sheet. Finally I got so frustrated I stopped drawing him in the basic standing pose I use for all my ref sheets and thought I'd try and draw a more fun pose and maybe that would help. And somehow it did. And then drawing the King was much easier.

(Thank you to mellon_soup for their free-to-use pose references, you can check them out on Patreon where they have free poses (with extra behind their paid memberships) that you can use to reference or use as a base).

I shared the work-in-progresses of drawing these guys with my 18+ Patreon-only Discord members to get feedback as I went along and they were so sweet. Me and my Discord members also discussed other ideas I had about the characters, including the fact that I... have started shipping them very badly. To the point I think it's canon now (not canon in their 'x listener' audios but in their regular stories). And thank you to my Discord members for letting me write just so many drabbles about them last night and how I think they would meet and get together.

And thank you to my Discord members for joining in on writing about them and in someone's case, instantly drawing fanart of their designs. They all already had pages on my fanart museum, but now the King and Villains pages are updated and there is a page for fanart of both of them together.

So below are their reference sheets. In order of when I first came up with the characters (which ironically is the opposite order of when I designed them). Lucien (the King) and Lysander's (the Villain) sheets are entirely new, whereas Hawthorn had one before but I've finally drawn a full body of him that isn't a chibi so the sheet has been updated. These are also on my fanworks guide now.

Thank you guys so much for the support on all my audios, and especially my original character ones. It always means so much when people listen to them, even if you came only for a fandom character and then gave my original boys a shot. It's always been a dream of mine to have original characters that other's like and care about and I can share with other people, and I'm so happy to have found that space with you guys.

The next time each of these characters have new audios I hope to have thumbnail art drawn that will replace the photographs of myself. I hope that change doesn't upset or disappoint anyone.

Anyway this got long. The men are below. I hope they're all kissable.

(PS. If there is an interest in my posting my drabbles about Lucien/Lysander on Tumblr please let me know, I've already written sfw and nsfw things about them and I'd love to draw them as soon as I get less scared of drawing romantic and nsfw art. If I end up writing a lot of drabbles or anything longer I'd put it on my dervampireprince AO3 too. I have a NSFW Leon/Dracula Castlevania fic (my first full fic I've written in 2+ years) I posted no there last week, and Alucard/Olrox NSFW drabbles and art I've been posting all week on my Tumblr).