Strawberry Annie Intro

I was tempted to make the original drawing of my Annie a full body with regular proportions but I wanted to also draw a chibi, and when I saw the other MYO artists making chibis I figured why not? I'll be uploading a separate file with just the chibi as a png.

If you don't know what Annies are, you can learn more about them here: 


About the drawing itself, this is the theme Blackboard in the 100 theme/Pokémon challenge. I thought it would be a cute way to sort of introduce a new character and  show off his color palette. At first I wanted the strawberries to be drawn in chalk too but I wanted the colors to be easily distinguished from the board. I also decided to make the “drawing” on the board with something other than chalk so it would be easier to see, but a chalk brush would be used to color it.

I decided to name this character after Zemmy, my mascot. This is a make your own character I purchased as a contribution to the Anniverse, a universe consisting of closed species called Annies created by the lovely Yamio. You are welcome to check out the group here if you want to see more Annies:

Feel free to keep reading if you want to learn more about this character, if not, feel free to check out these other theme entries:

  

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Character bio

I always imagined Zemmy, my mascot, would be an androgynous being that both males and females can appreciate and/or relate to. For this Annie, Zemmy for the time being will be a male with female characteristics ie having long hair and a soft voice. For the purpose of the description of Zemmy as an Annie, I will use the pronoun “he.”

Zemmy receives his blessing at the usual age of around 8 years old. Because strawberry plants actually have a fairly short life span (5-6 years), it’s not the most admirable of plant blessings to receive (in his opinion). Being blessed by a tree who can live hundreds or even thousands of years (in my research I found there’s a tree that’s over 4,000 years old) grant a much longer lifespan to a fortunate Annie. Considering strawberries are a highly revered fruit and can still live as long as they do, it’s not the least liked either. However, living with a common blessing and knowing that he will only live for nearly the same amount of time as a normal human leads Zemmy to go through a small, but intense, phase of jealousy and self-loathing. It stunts the connection between him and his blessing for a time, therefore leading to the inability to manifest the blessing unto himself hence making the negative spiral even worse (it doesn't help that he's short for his age too during this period). Although his life will ultimately be shorter than many Annies, he eventually accepts his fate and tries to get back in touch with his blessing, later learning to manifest a hair accessory with some strawberry flowers and strawberry earrings. He does have a slightly different outfit before he establishes that connection with his blessing, but I’ll post that later. My goal with this picture was to show you what he will look like after his connection with his blessing is stronger and his mental state is relatively calm. I’m still working on personality development, but this version of Zemmy will not be an entire replica of my mascot who is kind of an overflowing bout of energy and love. I do still want this character to be kind and compassionate to many, especially those who may not have been blessed either yet or perhaps even never. He empathizes after being unable to connect with his own blessing for years. Of course, it could easily be misinterpreted as pity because at the end of the day he still has a blessing and they don’t. It depends on the individual.

Zemmy does not experience as much interaction with humans as a whole as an Annie among those living separately from humans and Asterglean is very strict about who is allowed to live there. He is taught conflicting things and for a while he’s a bit ambivalent toward them. Because of the harsh division, he sides with fellow Annies, but his feelings conflict. Deep down he doesn’t want to be like humans, a big reason why he was "disconnected" from his blessing, but he realizes how similar they are. He felt with Annies who never received their blessings, so are humans really that much different?

That’s really all I have so far. I'm not entirely sure if things will change, but this is at least what I had in mind for a backstory.

Thanks for reading. Until next time~