This is the version of Rudolph I created on the discord roleplay where Petroshka (known as PeterTheZombit there) was first created. I didn't create this for Christmas and this was actually made around August 20th of 2020.
In this version Rudolph is an eternal fawn who has remained young for some 80 years. He was gifted eternal youth and longevity by Santa Claus in case he ever needed him again. He is basically "retired" and doesn't really pull Santa's sleigh anymore. Instead he mostly hangs around "The Farm", a cult run by other magic reindeer and lead by a retired goat, Krampus (yes that krampus. Giving coal and terrifying children fell out of style so Krampus was out of a job. He took up the teachings of a modern prophet, Thaalthuulselah, and his supposed third testiment and formed a church around it. He is also an extremely powerful magical being).
Rudolph is only loosely affiliated with the church but he uses his literal lightspeed agility to run worldwide errands for the farm (like delivering a letter to the other side of the earth in a literal fraction of a second ( He can probably go at least 99% c if he needs to, he is also the fastest reindeer by a long shot in this continuity, even faster than Dasher).
Why are Christmas Icons running a cult? Interestingly the cult and its connection to christmas was where everything started well before I came up with Petroshka/Peter.
Basically I was thinking of a hillbilly character who advocated for the "Fat Earth Model", a parody of flat earthers. Their three most basic tenants are (1) The earth is highly massive, is far more massive than believed by "NASA", the true mass containing potentially trillions of trillions of digits in any mass unit you might consider (pounds, kilograms, atomic masses, it doesn't really matter although they have preference for using atomic masses in their calculations as some kind of fundamental smallest unit of mass). They also believe the mass of the earth is dynamic and constantly gaining mass which brings us to (2) all the stars in the universe are constantly losing mass to the earth and are unimaginably light being trillions of trillions of orders of magnitudes lighter than a single atom (how this is possible when the stars contain many many atoms I won't elaborate here but its related to something they call the "product mass law"). (3) The earth is highly oblate to the point of approximating a disc while still being slightly round instead of being very slightly oblate and almost perfectly spherical as "NASA" holds. Connected to this is the idea that both Globers and flat earthers are technically wrong and right at the same time as the earth can look like a sphere or disc depending on various factors that affect the degree of oblateness perceived in ones frame of reference.
There is a lot more to their scientific theories and religious beliefs (they have both and consider the truth being a mix of science and religion) but I'm getting ahead of myself.
Anyway the roleplay was a universe of predominately furry characters, so when I thought of this hillbilly character Leroy the Redneck reindeer instantly came to mind. That's the connection. Leroy became the senior pastor of the church of Thaalthuulselah (derisively known as the fat earth movement), although in the Roleplay he was called "Earl" instead to hide his origins. Earl's family became part of the governing body of the church, especially Earl/Leroy's cousins, Rudolph and his brother Rusty. Krampus, a kind of anti-claus for punishing naughty children, became the church elder because "christmas theme" and it expanded from there.
Anyway to make a long story short (and to not totally spoil this convoluted storyline I might publish later), when the christmas theme had pretty much been exhausted the next logical step was Easter. Petroshka is ultimately based on "Peter Cottontail, The Easter Bunny". He's obviously a darker and far more cynical version. Unlike all the christmas icons that retain all their standard lore, I have never quite figured out if Petroshka has any connection to the original easter bunny lore. It may be that he once was but if so he has forgotten. Rudolph, Rusty, Earl, and Krampus all know their pasts but no longer live in the north pole and work for Santa in any capacity. They are all essentially retired.
Petroshka does eventually meet this version of Rudolph when he joins the farm, so I tried to make this Rudolph as humanoid as possible to match Petroshka. I may have to develop his design further. This was made to simply be an icon for Rudolphs comments in the RP, I had no intention of making a full design at the time.
Anyway that is just a little sneak peak into the crazy world of Petroshka/PeterTheZombit.
The images (1) and (2) are actually computer images. I took my inked drawing and turned it into a monochrome image. I did this because I wanted to test out different color schemes and I can use the computer image to quickly try out different color palettes. (1) is designed around the idea of giving Rudolph red eye lids, and (2) on giving him mint eye lids. I couldn't decide which one I liked better so I asked people on discord. The red eye lids were preferred so I went with that version as Rudolphs icon for the RP. However I think both are actually pretty cool looking. I generally don't like facial make up on boys, or even on girls for that matter. But I think it's tasteful here. Image (3) is the original finished ink drawing before coloring.
I did eventually chose a color scheme (red) and colored the original sketchbook image with markers, but I didn't take a picture of it before it got damaged from water. Some of the marker from the next page bleeded into the image. This can be seen in image (4). Image (5) is a marker sketch on my whiteboard I drew before coming up with the final design.
Keywords
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rudolph the red nosed reindeer
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3 years, 12 months ago
27 Dec 2020 22:03 CET
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