Character Lore: Smiley

Character Lore: Smiley

Trigger warning: Suicide, abuse, neglect, alcohol abuse, murder. Its not like horrific but I have no idea how the average person feels about such topic so I’m warning anyway

Twenty six years before Ash fell through the veil in the cardboard house, a girl named Hailey lived in its parallel.

Hailey was afflicted with horrible luck from birth, her mother dying during childbirth, and her father being a piece of shit.

Neglected since infancy, its a miracle she made it to the age of six, where she entered the first grade having missed kindergarten.

She was severely behind her peers in academics and social skills, getting bullied quite a bit for this.

Bitter and alone, she met her first and only friend. The silhouette of the small girl grinned up at her from the pavement.

Smiley outlasted the average imaginary friend, with Hailey insisting they were real until the age of eleven, when she learned that lying was the best route to staying out of trouble. She stopped talking about Smiley, but not to them. The two still maintained a close friendship.

Around this time, Hailey’s anger issues began to alienate her from others. She eventually learned that relying on anyone else was not the best idea.

And so this was life for five years, until the fateful day when Hailey was sixteen. Her father was home and angry and drunk out of his mind. He hit her, throwing her across the room. At this point something finally snapped in the girl’s head. She took a kitchen streakknife and stabbed her father with it.

(God that sounded like a creepy pasta murder, I will show myself into the bucket of tacks I belong in for writing those last two sentences)

Horrified, she turned the blade on herself, ignoring her friend’s pleas, and she took her life via her wrists, hence why Smiley wears those red leather cuffs

Two dying people and a a crumbling figment of the imagination must have been of interest for a younger deity who had crossed into the “real world” that night, intent on seeing it for themself.

The veil had thinned to such a degree allowing Smiley to stumble over, their last look at the world behind was of Hailey’s dying body.

Over their time there, a gateway had begun to root itself in the house, long known by neighborhood children as haunted. The “real world” house had fallen into disrepair, no one daring touch the place where such a tragedy occurred. On the other side of the gateway, through the veil, a broken home of cardboard and sadness had built itself, with Smiley still lingering on the other end, playing the children’s games of pretend she and Hailey used to play.

Fun facts about the character

•Hailey and Smiley had one stuffed rabbit growing up, and after a few years in the cardboard house, it appeared there too

• Camilla and Smiley are like sisters, Camilla taking her under her wing

• There is a long running dislike between Smiley and Clover, nobody knows why and they refuse to explain

•Smiley is the first character introduced in the dream world

•They love tea, especially fruity ones, by any of them are great

•While relatively small, they grow about an inch in early morning sunlight or late afternoon sunlight

•Their original voice made me lose mine for like a day it was super raspy

Im not even sure this will stay the same because I dont know if it’s allowed to be depicted in a cartoon

• Smiley used to always smile, hence their name. They gained the ability to frown and stuff upon moving to the Othwrworld

Please please PLEAAse can we start referring to our romantic partners as our paramours or lovers it sounds FUCKING COOL ( boo thang works as well I suppose, shout out black people)

I keep thinking abt this comment and giggling

Fuck it, I couldn’t find proper markers so I used sharpie.

I wanted more earthy tones for Ash, to contrast with the bold colours of the dream world and the cool colours of the real world. The clothes were a Pinterest game of roulette, because fashion on there looks neat.

Smileys design has a lot to do with their backstory as an imaginary friend. I was going to keep with the full black but this looked more like a character .

A big part of the change in Clovers design has to do with changing him from a ringmaster to an inventor. I changed his head spikes to proper horns and removed the stitches to have a speaking character.

Camilla changed to blue tones instead of greys because they’re pretty, then to ocean blues because they fit nicer. And she has a pet snake named noodles! I was going based on my limited knowledge of a femme fatale and Elizabeth Swan.

I gotta learn digital at some point

Original designs for the cast

Ash

I was going for as boring as possible

Smiley

Accidental design, started out as a drawing base

Clover

Was actually the first design that came to mind, although it didn’t look quite like that up in the brain

Camilla

Another accident design, I was messing around with liquid graphite and ended up with this

Since these designs, Ash has gone through six redesigns, Smiley has gone through seven, Clover eleven and Camilla eight. I also learned how to draw, at least slightly better. The story has also changed so much. And to think I started this in like march is wild how much it’s changed in just a few months. I thought that was kinda neat

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