Meilin - Blog Posts

Heroes of Erdas, all together!

(You can kinda see an erased Uraza next to Abeke. Animal heads are beyond me for now unfortunately. I thought about making another guy too, but ehhhh)

Happy four days late Valentine's Day from Rollan and Meilin!

PS: You ever have that moment where you realize that you messed up in your drawing but you already lined the part you messed up? Doing traditional art sucks when you don't have a back button...

Meilin of Zhong [Spirit Animals] Doodles

A doodle session of Meilin from Fall of the Beasts in really inconsistent art styles. (And an unnecessary story below about her clothes)

According to Google, Zhong (Meilin's country if you're unfamiliar) is based primarily on China and a few other Asian influences. While looking at the cover art on some of the Spirit Animal books, I've determined what Meilin is wearing kinda resembles a white cheongsam under a blue puffy parka looking thing.

(I'm not an expert on clothes, just a rabbit hole diver)

Looking up what dynasty would have their women wear cheongsams and blue parkas, Google says that women apparently wore cheongsams in the Ming Dynasty. So I said great, I'll base off her clothes off of the hanfu (Chinese historical clothing) from the Ming dynasty.

But then I got deeper into the rabbit hole and thought, "Wait... The Tang Dynasty looks pretty cool and pretty accurate to her outfit in the beginning"

You know the fancy ceremony outfit that Meilin wore for her Nectar ceremony? According to the book, she applied gold flakes, rouge, and white face paint among other things to her face. Tang Dynasty women wore gold flakes on their faces too (I looked up Ming Dynasty and their makeup seems totally different)

Tang Dynasty is also more accurate to what I imagine Zhong was at the time, open to the other three countries and flourishing in trade. It reflects in the fashion, as women's fashion became more diverse with so many different influences. I've also read articles that the fashion was seen as more aggressive, which suits Meilin.

However, I cannot ignore that the cover art Meilin's fashion was most likely made in the likeness of Ming Dynasty clothing. (As it turns out, the not-cheongsam is actually an ao)

And that's how I ended up deciding that (headcanon) Zhong's fashion is mainly inspired from the Tang Dynasty, especially the outfits popular in the imperial court, but there's Ming-esque athleisure I guess. (Conveniently ignoring that women wore pleated skirts and preferred pastel colors)

For her court outfit, I decided on a qixiong ruqun, which uniquely has the waistband above the chest paired with a scarf. As for her casual Hero of Erdas outfit I have her wear a double layered top called an ao (well, ao is the shirt in aoqun the word, so I'm assuming it's just called so), which is worn untucked above the waist over a skirt or in this case a pair of pants.

Obviously I took artistic liberty in literally everything, so please forgive me if I am inaccurate in anyway in the explanation. Just looked up a bunch of stuff and tried to piece everything together, so don't take this explanation too seriously.

Note: @ziseviolet is a good source for those who want to learn more; I simply browsed through their stuff this time, but I plan on reading more cuz it's super fascinating

…. i don’t think sarwat chadda understood the assignment…

to the six people in the spirit animals fandom, i need it to be known that tasha is literally the reilin child.

the way i had a whole fic quartet that was essentially a spirit animals rewrite but the four fallen were actually animals summoned from our world as it was suddenly ending and transported to erdas right in front of these kids out of the blue.

but here’s the kicker: the animals have no freaking clue they aren’t on earth anymore or that their homeworld was destroyed so they recruit these kids to help them find their way back home. the animals speak to their kids telepathically and it’s very hashtag found family with the core four and the four fallen it was so bonkers actually.

could you imagine how good spirit animals would be if it wasn't written as a children's series