CharSheet: Ixkin Io Coyotl

"It's about five leagues down the trail, by my reck."
"Your reck? Your reck? Oh, well, allow me to prostrate myself in gratitude that we can all navigate safely home by the 'reck' of a nine-year old taint pup. I daresay: shoot, shucks, and dang it all!"
"Know what else I reck, rich man? You're layin' in poison oak."

First of all, little kids are hard to draw. I'd never really done kids before, and they're not just scaled down adults, y'know. Teenagers are a heck of a lot more popular, because they have abs and boobs (hey, they make easier shapes!) I also don't write kids, either; teenagers tend to be a lot more interesting. But Ixkin had to be equal parts brat and innocent, and that can't happen after puberty, really. I wanted a scrappy little kid, akin to the kind of coffee bean I was when I was 9 and running around Texas barefoot. And freckles. I've never done freckles.
I'd also wanted to do petting zoo people for a while, but couldn't think of a real justification for why they'd just have the vestigial tail and ears. But this time around I came up with a pretty good excuse that fits with the spiritual riot the fantasy world is in. Ixkin's kind are called "taints", this is, tainted by another spirit before birth.
I have to admit I was pretty pleased that I got her sunburn to look like the orange patch on a coyote muzzle. When I started work on the characters I knew two things: one, that I wanted reference sheets, so I wasn't going to kill myself drawing and redrawing bits and pieces of the characters and praying that they'd all fit together in a new drawing (my old technique; did you know?); and second, that I wanted very strong silhouettes and I'd be damned before I moved forward without them. Ixkin was the only one that needed no modification whatsoever. I wanted a coyote girl, and the outline of a coyote's ears and ruff became a girl with a little bob to her hair. (Don't think that would've worked with any other animal.) Her costume is definitely Southeast in flavor, but it was born of the traditional Peruvian dress allowed in the rings at Peruvian Paso horse shows. And her last name is the old Aztec word for coyote, not a typo.