Took me a good bit of time to come up with a color scheme, but I managed to do it.

The stone areas were easy. I mean, they're stone. She's a stone dragon.

The eyes were easy as well. Every Ruby variant had red eyes (with the exception of "She-Ed" Ruby. She had normal eyes).

With the red eyes I've decided to give Ruby red hair as well, as well as red fur.

And since Ruby's design had a few design influences from Virus 20's Dilla the Armadillo character (she even once had a sports bra that read "TNT"), I gave her a red tube top and tan shorts.

Then, the rest of her body.

Gray was the first choice, but that would have been drab, so then I thought blue, but I didn't want such inversed colors, so I went to a sort of red-violet blend.

And there you have it: Ruby Dilla in color. And as you can see I'm not great with coloring.

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I said I would post a journal entry describing the conceptual evolution of Ruby and then put it in the description of a colored Ruby pic. That time has come. Also, if you just want to read about *this* Ruby, skip to the bottom.:


Now, saying how this is about Ruby Dilla as a character would be a lie. Some of my characters have long standing defining characteristics, Other are born through a number of character design concepts and, in turn, have various versions of themselves. Ruby is part of the latter. "Ruby Dilla the criminal" is a relatively new concept.

Years ago, in an early comic series I did, Ruby was a rather large alligator woman. In concept, yes she is based off of the Sly Cooper boss of the same name (Both were large alligator women with black hair and wore a hanker chief. The differences start there.)

Ruby was your gentle giant sort of character. She was nice, a damn good cook, and had a fear of wolves. Ruby was so named in the comic (as she was initially un-named) for her Ruby Red eyes. She also had a more monstrous form that sprouted up on occasion whenever she got very scared or angry. I would explain Ruby's origins but that's best saved for another time.

In this series, she was best friends with a small creature, Soniknuckles (pitchforks down, people. As I said, this was years ago). I mention this guy because he is important.

Ruby herself, as a character in the comic, went through a few changes (gaining brown spots, gaining an alternate form, "Shadow Ruby" after her brief stint being "possessed" and becoming Darkblood Dragon...) and after I stopped doing that particular comic series, I didn't use her again for a while.

Although she was in a short comic series years later, this, in particular, is irrelevant as she received no particular changes.

And a couple more years later, I was doing another comic series (a page from this comic series: http://www.furaffinity.net/view/2100718/). One of the character was Hedgechinda (an update on Sonicknuckles). Hedge, at least this version, was a heavily toned down version of his past selves, as now he only has ground manipulation and no other powers. However, Ed suffered from Golemnism, in which parts of his body are stone. This "Golemnism" has been in several versions of Ed, but this particular comic was the only time where this disease would actually kill him.

And it nearly did too. Artess, however, had a "blood curse" received from her "sister" (Sisters by blood, yes. Sisters by birth, no) which turned her into a dragon. Artess figured if she could pass this "curse" onto him, it would save him.

It worked, but with strange results. Additionally, this was also now my first transsexual character.

Yes, Ed became a female (a rather large one at that: http://www.furaffinity.net/view/1974282/ Ed was about the size of your standard sonic character. she-Ed was 10 feet tall.) Not only that, but in her transition from male to female she impregnated herself, but that too is another story.

As time went on I wanted to give Ruby a more... rounded look, so I looked to Virus-20's Dilla the Armadillo character and tried to make her body look a bit more like hers. But after a while I've also stopped doing that comic.

Some time later I had an idea for a new comic (which I barely worked on but still...) involving 2 criminals. One of which would be a far more refined (design-wise) "Ruby", and is the current design of Ruby right now. She was given the last name of Dilla as a nod to Virus-20's character.

This particular Ruby still has "She-Ed"'s Ground control powers, although she generally destroys buildings with it than anything else. She works with her partner Hyna June, and between the two Ruby has generally more qualms about killing people, and is a bit higher on morals as well.

Ground Control is what I refer to as the ability to manipulate earthen substances like Granite, concrete, dirt, stone, etc.

However Ruby is far more limited in use. Doing it, especially large buildings, can take a lot from her. In fact, the reason she's overweight now is so she can effectively destroy building. The amount of damage potential the stone dragon race has is proportional, in some aspects, to the size of the one using it. Of course, practice is needed, and she can't become so overweight as to be completely unable to escape when she needs to.

So her current body shape is from years of practice, trial, and error. Still, moving a lot can take a lot of energy and she generally minimalizes movements and expressions (which makes her a bit deadpan). Mind you, she is faster than she looks at best, but generally she doesn't move more often than she needs to.

As for her story, well,  Shouden did a request of mine involving how Ruby and Hyna met up, although he took a number of artistic liberties, not that I mind. I like what he did with Hyna. http://www.furaffinity.net/view/2570701