More \"reviving forgotten characters\" art, this time featuring Fernando, a lil deer guy that I designed back in 2013 and maybe drew 10 times in total since.
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Fernando's main relevance comes from his association with another minor character of mine, Ricky Silverfang, with Fernando being Ricky's boyfriend. I originally designed Fernando specifically to be a boyfriend for Ricky, and he is a deer specifically because of the predator/prey species dynamic, with Ricky of course being a wolf. Neither Ricky nor Fernando are particularly well characterized, however, with them both being best summed up as the others' boyfriend, but that is something I can hopefully fix someday.
What little characterization he has is fairly simplistic. As his appearance here would suggest, he's friendly, outgoing, and a bit more outdoorsy. He's a bit more on the adventurous and spontaneous side, and while not particularly physically fit, he's nowhere near as round as most characters I draw and he's definitely on the more active side, preferring walking or cycling to driving or riding a bus when possible. He's also a bit on the shorter side, coming in at 5'6\" not counting his antlers, making him one of the smaller cervine characters in my cast.
He's also far more flirty and romantic than Ricky, which combined with his spontaneous and energetic nature, means he's the one that will often propose dates and activities.
His name was also a spur-of-the-moment thing, with me naming him after the ABBA song since it was on the radio when I first drew him. As strange as it may sound, I have considered maybe trying to work the lyrics/theme of the song into his backstory in some small way. Perhaps he is named after his great-grandfather, and the idea of this little deer playing an old guitar or holding an old rifle, either of which have been a family heirloom for generations, is rather interesting. This would also mean he and his family hail from whatever passes for Mexico and/or the American Southwest in my worldbuilding, which is somewhat underrepresented in my cast and could add some much-needed variety to my primarily American Northeast/Midwest cast.
I have yet to decide on a surname for him, but given the previous rambling paragraph, I may go for something Spanish. I am considering \"Cervantes\" (because \"cervine\") but I know someone in real life with that surname, but then again knowing a Della in real life never stopped me from naming one of my raccoon characters \"Della\" simply because her brother's name is Dale... \"Fernando Cervantes\" has a nice ring to it, though.
As for his fashion sense here, I decided to try the \"use pride flag colors\" thing I also do with Ash's clothes for Fernando's outfit--he's always worn green shorts and a white shirt, so I decided to lean into the gay male pride flag aesthetics, making use of the greens used in that flag. Since Ricky typically wears a blue shirt and jean shorts, it wouldn't be too difficult to update Ricky's fashion sense to represent the shades of blue used in the flag, which I think would be an interesting way of showing they are a couple.