July #30 - Girl/Effra

Posting the "Top 3"/finale here too. Bear with me The rest are still over here -> kanusketches.tumblr.com/

Number 30 is Girl/Effra, the panda German Shepherd.

Perhaps rather unexpectedly, she is second on this “list”.

She was actually named after a lion! A tribute to my idol, George Adamson. I adopted this design a couple of years ago and she was assigned the role of “Closest friend of Rip”. Beyond that, not a lot happened with her, until recently. I don’t quite know why, but I suddenly thought that I should go on and develop her some more and bam! Apparently new favourite character. I’ve kept her close over these past, very emotional, months and I think that that has a lot to do with how much she means to me now. It’s difficult to explain. But Girl definitely has turned very significant over the course of this year. I’ve projected a lot of emotion onto her and had her go though the same things as I.

Aaand I’ll stop being vague there, haha.

Girl as a character is calm. Intelligent. Her best friend is Rozia (#25) and Girl is often the one keeping her “in check”. Girl is kind and loving, but fierce when protecting someone or something. She works as a guard dog and lives with her masters in the Scottish mountains. She has a great need for freedom and hates being shut away. She loves the open spaces of her homeland and often wanders on her own.

Her main story (and the one that has nothing to do with what was written above I shall add, haha) is about how she gets caught in a storm and gets lost in the mountains. With the help of the new friend she meets - Rozia - she looks for her way home, facing many trials on the way. This is the tale I’m currently thinking of telling through illustrations, so I don’t want to give away too much in detail… xP After this comes “the tale of  Girl & Rip” and “the tale of Girl & Alair”. If you’ve read about Rip (#22) you’ll already know the ending of the former and if you’ve paid attention to other parts of the blog you may already know the ending to the latter too… But I’ll leave it at that for the time being

Well, then. We’re nearly at the end of Character July!

I bet you can’t guess who’s coming tomorrow…