Umino Redesign. (Patreon)

Okay, look. I need to preface this with saying that I've been thinking for the longest time now about Umi's head things. At first they were there for no reason seriously. I made him when I was in like 5th grade and "The Ninth" as an idea didn't exist then. I just never changed it 'cause I thought, "Weelll I've already been  drawing him this way for so long, and removing them would be weird to me so deeply in my soul." I've tried. I've removed them. Had different looks with Umi just as a normal boy with hair, it wasn't Umino. Lol. 

So I said okay... this shit is so weird. So weird in fact that it requires a literal explanation on sight. Like, "What are those ...things?" IDK, but then I figured okay? What if I changed them? Kept them, but were actually identifiable in some way? Something that makes sense within the context of his story?

This is literally the first thing that came to mind. I'm not sure if it's more horrifying yet.  In color it is very weird. The sketch, not that much? 

The idea is that Umino has a sort of celestial form, the one he formed naturally when he manifested himself from the combined spirits of the Divine 8. This form was a bit animalistic at first, and had ears! As he became more human like over time, he always maintained those ears, and thus Umino — but ...different.

My thought process went to look at animal ears to use as reference with this new "actual ears" idea. Some of them have a bit off rabbit in them, others are like pig ears. What I'm landing on personally are Fox ears. Mainly because they're fairly easy to draw, and because they don't look very different from what he had before which will help my muscle memory. lol. The pattern on them, however, something just isn't quite right with that so I want to keep iterating on that. My only hang up with that is I don't want them to be completely just his skin color anymore. It just looks a little to weird now. 

I'm also strongly debating whether or not to make them literally ears, with the indent in them and everything. Gonna see what's up with that. Anyway! these are all of my drawing I've done thus far. The last one is of Umi and Polka, his fox companion!