Bec's Design Progression

So for this post, I'm gonna go over how Bec came to be the character she is now, and some of the choices for her character design.

One of my earlier drawings of Bec

I wanted to eventually introduce a secondary "main character" to the Echoes Saga, and after watching Samurai Champloo I took to liking a fiery spirit to counter Kelly's watery, fluid nature.  While she had originally started from a lot of ideas, the Bec she is now came after exploring my ideas about the character and how she fit into the story.

I wanted Bec to be a lot like Kelly as far as being an Archon goes, but was struggling with how I was going to express that.  While Kelly's expression is through art, I wasn't sure that I could make it work to have her "cast" through dance or song, which are two important things to Bec personally.  She doesn't express herself in her own music, but dance is something more expressive for her.  One of the first times Kelly and Bec really connect, it's after Kelly interrupts Bec, who had been thoughtlessly dancing while dealing with her emotions.

Bec tends to be withdrawn
and standoff-ish

Bec enters the story upon transferring to the same school as Kelly after the death of her own parents, being moved to stay with her aunt and uncle.  Bec's father produced music and she got her love of it from him, and while I hadn't thought about the professional career of her mother, that is where she inherited her love of dance.  They were financially sound, and Bec went to a private school when they were alive.  She resented the uniform, and often wore her favorite sweater over it.

Music, dance, and her old uniform are some of the things that Bec clings on to emotionally while trying to cope and continue after losing her parents.  She never had to think about how to dress for school before, she didn't wonder about if people would like her(she never cared, but still), she had a routine, a life.  While she wasn't a ball of sunshine before, she always did appreciate the life she had, and loved her parents very much.  That was all gone now.

Bec tends to be a little more toward the shy or distant side, but she is also a very passionate and excitable person.  The way she wears her hair was a

Bec channeling that fiery spirit

design choice I made early on to try to help convey her withdrawn nature.  While she may be shy in some ways, that is not to say that she's terribly concerned about what others think.  If she doesn't like you, she probably won't bother with you.  If you do something she doesn't like, she's likely to let you know, for better or worse.

As far as Bec's expression of spiritual power, I settled on the notion that she had a powerful fire spirit that had been bound within her(possibly a lineage trait), and she could channel it in varying degrees.  Bec hasn't been doing this since she was a child, and doesn't learn it about herself until after knowing Kelly for some time.  After an event where Bec is abducted by a bloodmancer, she is awakened to her own powers, and the spirit within her.  She sometimes struggles to control the spirit if she channels too much at once, and its fiery and consuming nature becomes harder for her to stop.

Because at some point, this is bound to happen in the story

And that's Bec for you.
Trot On Everypony,
Alturiigo