This picture is composed of two pages in my school sketchbook; hence the nasty line down the middle, and it’s all dedicated to Kejital. It is somewhat of homage to some of my favorite artists, in the species choice and the style. I included some classics, and tried some new ones; the species are Opossum, Dragon, Merfolk, Chimp, Leonin, Satyr, Snakefolk and Otter.

Opossum: I started at the top left with the Opossum, done as an inside joke between a friend, and myself but stylistically it was influenced heavily by zeMONKEYgland and his return sparked this whole thing. I’ve only seen one of these things in real life once, and it was more than enough.

Dragon: I was really influenced by dragons when I first started up here, you can blame Transryu, Geckomanz and other deviants who watched me when I was irritating. His design came directly from the dragon Niv-Mizzet, from Magic the
Gathering. After an issue in the past I haven’t revisited this form in a while, but maybe the future will hold another.

Merfolk: Bit of a new design, but this is a rehash of the last two, caused by eating a mostly-extinct species of fish. He has a both a free-tailed and feral merfolk form, in which he blows bubbles.

Chimp: doodling monkeys is a sort of stress-reliever for me, and the similarity of their form to humans, but with their obvious explicit differences makes drawing them very interesting. Weirdly enough I used to have a fear of these things,  luckyboy helped me get over that.

Leonin: It looks like a lion anthro. That’s because it is, another Magic the Gathering reference, the Leonin are sentient cat-creatures on some of the planes in that gaming universe (multiverse). A new set came out that revisited the plane where I was first introduced to them, the Metal world Mirrodin and was inspired to squeeze Kejital into that world.

Satyr: I asked a few people what they thought was “classic: for Kejital and this was the most common answer. While I usually borrow from mythology, not so in this case, I use the form, not so much their function. Though Kejital acts wildly in this form, he doesn’t carry off women to adventures they want no part off.

Snakefolk: I liked his Snakefolk form, so it made its way here.

Otter: This is where it all began. Kejital was originally intended to be just a lutraphobic otter shapeshifter. He was supposed to revert to this form whenever he was splashed with water. When I came on to DA, I started experimenting with other things, he’s had three dragon forms, scores of mythological and animal forms, and yet still retains a deep-seeded fear of Otters.

This took about an entire week to do, in midst of commissions and other school-stuff. I have never crosshatched on a scale like this or thought I’d enjoy it this much.
You know those Ticonderoga yellow pencils? I had two before I started this a few weeks ago. There were no survivors.

Niv-Mizzet, Mirrodin and magic the gathering are all © to Wizards of the Coast.
Kejital is © to me.