Tragic news, turns out the animatic I saw a year and a half ago (my first introduction to Magnus archives), the gorgeous stunning most evil looking man I have ever seen lording over a panopticon was not in fact Jon but fucking Elias. (Don’t tell me if I’m wrong, hell I want to be wrong, but I’ll be figuring that out on my own thank you) (much love seriously please don’t spoil it for me, mwah💞)
Thought I had my finger on the pulse but now my brain is just confused
I’ve been using Elias as a visual base for Jon’s facial structure and hairstyle and now that I’m trying to animate a lil TMA thing and the ENTIRE DAMN CAST is gonna be in it I absolutely have to know what everyone looks like.
And I can’t just change how I draw Jon because that’s Jon to me now, but now I know that design ACTUALLY screams Elias and I am between a rock and a hard place, so my plan is to
Yeah I don’t know, the goatee + mustache goes so hard and I feel it would be repetitive to use that for both of them, but (my) Jon is Jon (to me), but Elias EARNED that goatee by being a nasty scheming boss man
Ough I’ve never had wires crossed like this before and it’s giving me a damn headache
I knew it was trouble as soon as I realized I was hooked on an audio only, few and far between character description story format. Conjuring an entire damn human from from my mind feels like I’m unspooling my brain inch by inch
I must draw them
It certainly won’t be my legacy, but it whispers to me. Whispering like the sweet winds of fate and ignoring such a call would be tantamount to smothering the spark of a soul
I know there is no right answer, or rather, any answer is the right answer, though the turmoil in my heart whispers otherwise
I’m going through it homies, pour one out for me while I respool my brain
I was drawing the most beautiful Elias Bouchard and then got sucker punched and mugged by episodes 134-6
Goddamn, a little over an hour where I was just sitting in shock horror and awe good god, just got back to my canvas and I see smarmy Elias staring at me (1am)
It’s now 3am, Istg I set my phone down just to check how far I got and suddenly it’s 2 hours later and I’m almost done with the drawing
Tldr; that absolute train wreck of events resolving in Daisy talking sense into Jon had me wholeheartedly captivated
Then fucking Elias stole two hours of my life without me noticing
The institute never allowed statements about dreams
Bashing my head against the wall of red threads and newspaper clippings
You’ve got to be kidding me, I thought that shit was just an off hand joke
Since Jon had compelled that traffic cop in America I always mulled over how funny it’d be if someone had come in to give a statement about a weird guy prying open secrets, but good god
This was so much more horrifying than I had ever expected
I-
I am speechless with chills running down my spine
Istg the writer is The Buried themselves cause this rabbit hole goes straight to the earths core. I mean come on, I feel like I’ve been slapped
I’ve made the hard decision to temporarily shelve Elias so I can put a new dubious creature in the spotlight of my mind
I’ve always noticed that I gravitate to the villains in different stories, but it’s never been more apparent to me than in Magnus Archives
Like in s1 I was drawing Jon left and right, crazy scared little guy, in boots much to big for him, loved his frantic energy and especially the paranoia arc. I thought Jon was quite a lovable dashing skeptic lil shit head but as soon as Elias showed his true colors it was like a higher power yanked my focus to Bossman
Like I LOVE Jon, prolly one of my top 5 protagonists ever, but man, Elias, man, whoa, he has my whole entire heart
I really wanna know what chemical in my brain makes me do this, cause I had a helluva lot of Jon drawings planned, but now it’s just Elias Elias Elias
I’m rambling
TMA really brings out a certain mania in me, good lord
Finished animating Tim flirting with the police station over the phone, onto Sasha trying to pronounce calliope
THEN, FINALLY THEN
ELIAS AND HIS SCHEDULING TIMEEEEE YIPPEEEEEE
I’ll be done with the character intros 🥳🥳🥳🥳🥳🥳
(That being said I gave Elias’ scene double the frames of Tim and Sasha cause I am a biased individual and I wanna breath visual life into that horrible horrible Bossman😘)
Elias: “He’s my little guy, my small tiny fellow, my little sopping wet kitten, he could be killed by a passing summer breeze, my most favorite employee, the most fragile traumatized little mind in reach, he’s never done anything wrong in his entire life, he’s the coughing baby to my hydrogen bomb, the sickly Victorian child to my plague, my little discord kitten, my blorbo whom I must put through the horrors, he’s never had a day of rest in his life and if it was any other way I would be miserable, he’s a stress ball to me, my little archivist must be put in Situations so I may thrive off his suffering and moral confusion. He is a dark mirror to my brilliance, cut of identical cloth but the very model of weak qualities I left behind, the becoming and undoing of my being and my most precious arbiter of fear in 200 years.”
Jon: “Elias, the mannequins wanted to skin me, I’m scared.”
