Firefly Cross

Author notes

30 - 04

dragonsong12

on Nov. 14, 2011

Well, now we have a face to the mysterious voice…or do we…? Though I suppose a phoenix isn't really all that shocking, haha.
A note on the phoenix's design, however. See, I know the mythological phoenix tended to look more like a pheasant or peacock and that my version here strays a bit from that. When I was a kid, I read a lot of various myths and legends, and many of them used very simple language without many descriptors. So when I read stories involving the phoenix, often it was simply described as being "beautiful" with nothing else, and to my mind the most beautiful birds were raptors - hawks and falcons and eagles. So I automatically imagined a firey hawk, which I naturally thought was awesome. So even when I later began to see the more accepted version of the phoenix, my brain still defaults to phoenix looking like a bird of prey. So I decided to go with that for Firefly Cross since I've already messed with a lot of legends and plan to mess with more, and anyway, a raptor better fits this phoenix's nature.
What I usually envision, though, is a hawk made entirely out of fire, and for a long time that's what I meant to do, but I realized pretty quickly that that would be a nightmare to depict, not just for all the lighting, but trying to give it some expression and character would be massively difficult. So I compromised on the fire, limiting it to a few places…and I really think I like this better. I'm pretty pleased with the design as it came out.
…and that's a lot of talking on the appearance of a bird, but hey, it was fun to think it all through. :D
Thanks for reading! See you next week!