Hey there, my name's Mellow.

And it’s almost been 1,500 days since I’ve made my account! I’m currently sitting at… 1,492 days, meaning that I’ve got 8 more to go. No idea how many years that is but eh, it’s not important. How about we start off this stupidly early celebration with a history lesson?

Genesis

Meet Mellow! This little guy here is a jester, as I’m sure you can tell. While this may not be the first iteration of his design, it’s certainly the first time he had any semblance of his own identity.
The jester motif stems from my love of the “Spark the Electric Jester” video game franchise, though it’s a theme I’ve unfortunately lost as I made more designs for Mellow from this origin point. I think I made Mellow a jester because I knew that I couldn’t keep him as a tall shy guy ripoff forever. I think it paid off, for the most part. The Genesis design holds up even today, and in retrospect he probably should’ve been a key reference to use for designs moving forward from there. But hey, a little exploration and experimentation never hurt anybody.

Classical

Meet Mellow! Again! This design was intended to be a true evolution from the original. It’s very much so similar to it with parallels that one could easily pick out.
The face this Mellow has actually came first before the rest of the design. Funnily enough, the face came from a meme I made that caused me to want to give him a proper cute face just like the one in the meme. You can see it below:

Classical came from me using the new face with the previous design for a while, and eventually wanting to expand on it to create this one. It was always meant to be a jump in logic from old to new, with aspects that mirror old one in certain ways. The jester theme was beginning to lose its grip, but in retrospect I think that’s fine.
Over the course of these designs, Mellow started to look less and less like a jester. Some parts of the jester motif were disappearing, just like that. But I think the idea of something jester related being present is enough to communicate to a person that there’s something quite whimsical about this character.
If say, a random character, had a jester hat on and everything else with their design managed to seamlessly fit in with that, it damn well works. Because it’s not the design that’s the jester, it’s the character. And Mellow is a jester. That is all but false.

Melody Remix

Meet Mellow, once more! This design is quite a jump from the previous one, ridding itself of almost everything the last design stood for. And wow, does it work. The Melody Remix takes even more inspiration from the designs of the characters in Spark TEC, especially notable in his face. The jester motif is present, but to me it feels like it sticks out a lot more than the last one. The rule of cool is in full force with this one, and in good balance with the jester theme too.
I can’t say I truly remember how this design came to be. All I know is that I was tired of the old Mellow and wanted to flip him on his head. The Melody Remix was basically a big leap of faith, aiming to be nothing like what I designed before. I think I succeeded, and very nicely too. Something I’ve noticed is that while every Mellow is different from each other, they’re all still pretty similar with some things about them that just won’t disappear. The shoulder pads are definitely one example, and I imagine that they won’t be disappearing anytime soon.
This design doesn’t really stick out in my mind too much compared to the others, despite it being submitted to the site and it probably being Mellow in his most recognisable form. It honestly feels rather unremarkable in comparison to the others. They all had a little something going on with them, but I can’t say the same for this one. Perhaps this is a sign of the mistakes to come.

Ultimate Melody

And last but probably not least, meet our final Mellow! This design had a similar goal to the last one, and executed it better if you ask me it’s definitely a stark improvement from all the other Mellow’s. But even so, it’s not the one I’m the proudest of. In fact, for all of its successes, there are quite a few blunders to consider…
I had the idea of this new Mellow design when I redesigned another character of mine, Medley. Oh, he’ll get a post like this too someday. I was quite proud of his new design at the time, but I felt that it was too good to go along with Mellow. At the time, the Melody Remix was a bit old and didn’t make any use of the newer figure creating techniques I had at the time of Medley’s redesign. I gave it an upgrade, but I didn’t think it was enough. So, I had the idea of remaking Mellow once more, just like how I did the Melody Remix.
When it comes to theory, I actually did it worse than the last design because I neglected to give the Ultimate Melody any proper themes. Hell, even the jester aspect was teetering on the edge of its demise. I was not aware of any of this and thought it to be better than anything I’ve created before, and when it comes to practice it was.

But in retrospect, it wasn’t good. And it was a step to me eventually questioning my artistic identity as a whole and subsequently leaving the site for a while. I was in a slump for weeks, not really being motivated to do much, and if I was doing something it was incredibly minor. There was even a time where for a while I was looking for things to develop my artstyle with, not even aware that it wasn’t the issue.
The Ultimate Melody was not the cause of all these problems. I was. And the way that I approached figure creation harmed me as a result. If not for a good friend of mine, I wouldn’t have realised that.

I think I eventually grew to be far too concerned with every Mellow being a step forward from the last. I set an expectation for myself that I would always be improving, even when it came to doing just one thing. I did not consider what I’d do when I stopped improving after focusing on it so much.
And then I shot myself in the foot because of that. My hubris was my undoing.
When creating the Ultimate Melody, I was so focused with improving him that I completely forgot to make anything about him resemble that of a jester. He’s got a cool design, yeah. But that’s literally it, that’s all there is to him. He’s just cool, he rides a bike, and wears sunglasses. And that’s the Ultimate Melody in a nutshell. You could not look at him without context and say “that’s a jester”. If someone pointed it out to you, you’d question it and then maybe accept it. But that’s just not good enough. It really isn’t.
The Ultimate Melody lacks any notable visual cues, and that’s hurtful to the character.
He was my biggest mistake, and I’ve failed Mellow for it.

Mellow and I have come pretty far. I think I finished him on March 15th 2021, so he’s a year old at this point. He’s been a lot of different people, from an inter-dimensional traveller to a mercenary, from a nobody mechanic and to a world-leading roboticist prodigy. And yet, he’s always been our same little red jester.
Moving forward? Mellow’s cancelled.

I kid, of course. But the Mellow as you know him is over. No mask, no more hoodie, none of that. But don’t you worry, the Jester still remains.

M0-773W. I’ll see you soon.