in blackest envy

Haa, finally summoning the gumption to post these!
I have been wanting to post “my” Cecil for a loooong while, but I have continually chickened out every time.
This is because 1) Well, my Cecil isn’t anything like the Fandom!Cecil at all, obviously. So yeah. *shrugs* 2) There are already SO MANY AMAZING & VARIED Cecil designs out there, it’s hard to summon the nerve to put mine next to them! and 3) I can’t quite get past the idea that because we have no canon description of Cecil, our designs are really direct representations of what goes on in our heads. (Relatedly, I think this is why I’m so eager to make friends with Night Vale fans. You look at how they present these characters and it’s like getting this perfect, lovely little peek at their heart and mind.)
So yeah. I’ve been keyed up about it for a while. Thanks to branwyn-says for helping me get beyond the intense self-analysis last night. (She is also the reason I included the schmoopy Cecil/Carlos, too. I was planning on just making this about our darling narrator.)
Anyway, I talk way too much for Tumblr, so here are some of the thoughts I had while coming up with “my” design.
First things first, for me, the most important part of the design is that he needs to LOOK like he has THAT VOICE. Deep, resonant, and masculine. So I started off by emphasizing general “secondary sex characteristics” like a strong brow and jaw. (I may have gotten a bit carried away with this part, but I’m still learning the fine art of exaggeration!)
“Not short or tall, fat or thin. With hair… a nose… and eyes…” So much to go on, right? But I wanted to be as canon as possible, so that means my Cecil is around 5’10-11 (average height of the American male) with relatively narrow limbs, but a little bit of a belly. Enough that you wouldn’t call him heavy, but you also wouldn’t think of him as skinny, either. (Hey, you sit in a recording booth for enough years and see how well your midsection holds up, ok?) I also think my Cecil is one of the few that doesn’t wear glasses. To my mind, if Cecil wore glasses, Kevin would have probably noted that as one of his features before commenting on their similar/dissimilar eyes.
Lastly, I wanted Cecil to have a face that could embody both aspects of his personality. As “A Story About Them” said, Cecil is “innocent and kind.” We’ve gotten to know his sweetness and depth of feeling as the show evolved, and it’s given us example upon example of how friendly and connected to his community he is (separate even from the tremendous affection he is capable of directing at his scientist bf). So he needs a face that you would trust and confide in, right? But then, well, sheesh, he has to be able to be freaking scary as shit, too! I mean, Cecil can be outright MENACING, not to mention OMINIOUS or SINISTER. Which means his face needed to be able to capture that forbidding depth he so often taps into, too.
Click on the images for more notes, because holy gosh I just wrote a lot. (And I have even more I could talk about, omg, I am the worst kind of fangirl.)