I’m designing my own personal take on Silent Dusk, who is Twilight Sparkle’s Nightmare form in Destiny: A Tale of Unicorn Wings. The lineart is final (I know I’m missing the all important wings right now, I’d rather get the mane finished first), but I might change the way I’ve coloured the mane and the highlights.

Silent Dusk’s eyes are actually born out of a chance source of inspiration from many, many months ago. Whilst working on this, I switched off the layer that had the whites of Twilight’s eyes, leaving me with the night sky visible in their place. I decided all that time ago that Silent Dusk would have eyes like that.

In fact, I imagine her eyes to tell a lot of her power and her corruption, for she simply will not utter a word herself to describe it. Silent Dusk doesn’t speak in Destiny, I assume it is by choice, but for symbolism’s sake I drew her without a seam where her lips would meet, kinda leaving her without a definite mouth to open and express herself with. At this point I’m hammering out a nightmare I’m frightened of - the loss of one’s voice, the loss of their ability to smile, to frown, to bear their teeth in anger; being trapped inside a bitter shell with nothing but a pair of seething, glassy eyes to chill almost anyone who glances into them. To be able to put something that unsettles me into art makes me feel better about it, and I hope it contributes to making Silent Dusk a fearsome character to look at.

The reference in the bottom right is fan art drawn by mylittlepulmo. I love the design and have directly based early concepts of Silent Dusk on this artist’s interpretation. I have no intention of rehashing someone else’s design though, and I hope the end result of my efforts shall bring a distinct design I can happily call my own.

Will drop by soon with more progress shots!