Mike Maihack
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Moonlit Spiral: Quill
🕑 Added 2024-01-26 18:00:09 +0000 UTCHappy Friday, my friends! One more character from The Moonlit Spiral to look at before maybe taking a short break and moving on to some other things next week.
Quill is a 107-year-old magical foxicorn. But her personality is almost completely based off my now eight-year-old son. She's energetic optimistic, inquisitive, and while sensitive to those around her, has an extreme lack of sensitivity to what's around her. She has no sense of time, an extreme short-term memory and the attention span of a goldfish (unless she's journaling). All of which has been an absolute joy to write.
She's also a bit of the catalyst which propels all of my main characters to set off on their quest.
Here's how I described Quill in my proposal:
Quill is both verbose and curious about everything which means she never stops asking questions—often times questions both Rion and Zyla need to hear as they embark on their journey. She loves all the various creatures in Helix, cracking jokes, and running around in circles. Quill also has a mysterious past connection to famous treasure hunter Orion Theodorus Flynn making her one of the first clues to finding his final treasure. Unfortunately, she can not seem to remember anything from the past one hundred years.
The name "Quill" is loosely pulled from "Qilin", a type of Chinese unicorn. But that's about where the similarities end (they aren't even pronounced the same). First, rather than a lion or dragon, her fox-like look was inspired by this ancient Northern Wie model:
Which is more or less a deer, not a fox, but regardless I saw a fox when I first glanced at it and her curious nature just lended itself better to that animal. The fox also aligns closer to some mild Japanese mythology sprinkled in the book which tonally works better as well. Lastly, Quill writes in a journal for a large chunk of the story so naming her after a writing tool couldn't have fit more perfect.
I actually drew up the following expression sheet before figuring out the rest of her body. I didn't do a whole of of extra design work because she was already mostly fully formed in my head.
And here's one of the more goofier things I drew, trying to get a better idea of her body type and how a cloak or hood might drape over it:
The second, little more chunkier one up there is closest to what I ended up going with. I just ended up making her a little shorter.
Her clothes are a selection of random stuff she finds around Rion's room and I eventually scrapped the idea of her having a tail because it was a bit of nuisance. I did end up making a tiny plot point out of the loss of it though.
I mentioned earlier how there's a few Eastern philosophical themes that season The Moonlit Spiral (inspired by Miyazaki's films in particular). At the same time, it's mostly a nod to a lot of 1980's American fantasy-like stuff I grew up with. Rion is the head (or brains) of the story, Zyla is most definitely its heart, which makes Quill essentially the soul—helping to sort of bridge all those sometimes conflicting Western and Eastern ideas together.
She's also important because the book sorta hinges on the reader falling in love with her. Crossing my fingers I did a good job with that! All of you will get to pass your judgement on how well I succeeded when I share a few pages with her soon. :)
Have a great weekend!
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Comments
Mike Maihack
Thanks, Craig!
Craig M. Hinch
Aw. She looks like so much fun!
Mike Maihack
Hah! You're right. My pal Eddie Pittman did a book a few years back with a character missing a shoe as well. I suppose the difference with Quill is she just doesn't know any better.
Miy Eterp
Ya know Quill reminds me of Anne Boonchuy from Amphibia for only a shoe 👟 than a pair.
