Inkscape Electra
Of all the SPACE characters, Electra was the hardest for me to develop personality-wise: Aqua was always the empathetic leader, Chlora was always a shrinking violet, and Pyro was always honorable. Prior to the Inkscape era, Electra was the mischief maker while Shadow was the engineer, only for their roles to switch. Electra became a moody workaholic while Shadow became the sour supporter with a hidden heart of gold. This change seems minor, but believe it or not, this was the second major change he went through: Electra and Pyro were originally women in sketches prior to 2018, but both of them had their genders changed to balance the gender ratio. I will NOT post those sketches here, as they were drawn traditionally rather than digitally.
With Electra's gender flip and personality change during the Inkscape era, I wasn't sure what to do with him. I didn't know what kind of person he would be after his character development, so I stuck with a punk rock outfit with some lightning motifs. For reference on how stuck I was when designing him at the time, Electra's outfit is near-identical to Voltox's outfit in 2018, having similar shirts and jackets, but the devil's in the details with their shoes, pants and glasses (or lack thereof) being different between them. After Electra's 2019 design, I barely drew him until his unofficial redesign in May 2020. His 2019 design lacked personality, originality, and inspiration, so I wasn't motivated to draw him. 2020 was a turning point for not only his design, but his character as a whole.
2020 was when I began reusing the trickster aspect of his personality; When reading my notes, I realized that everyone was too high-strung or too anxious, so a wild card was necessary to balance them out. I gave this role to Electra, since he had the least characterization at the time, and I used the opportunity to combine both facets of his personality. This resulted in two personal extremes with no middle ground between them; the workaholic burning the candle at both ends, locking himself in his room and refusing to sleep until his work was done (or until he passed out at his desk), and the smug trickster who loved to show off and pull pranks for his own amusement. His pranks were harmless, serving only to make people laugh or catch them off guard, with his workaholism actively working against him by distancing him from others and negatively impacting both his mood and lifestyle habits. After rewriting his personality, inspiration for drawing Electra followed suit: after a full-body pose study and having his face framed in silhouette, his official redesign made its debut on May 28th, 2020.
Electra's redesign gradually evolved into his modern incarnation; his hair was simplified, as it suffered the same issues as Aqua's in terms of consistency and his bangs were redone twice. His modern incarnation has prominent eyebrows, expressive eyes, brighter yellows/oranges, cooler blues, and a new wardrobe. His leather jacket was replaced with a tattered lab coat, his shirt combined his star emblem and lightning motif, and the rest of his wardrobe took a turn for the steampunk. His visor was swapped out for steampunk goggles, he wears fingerless gloves, and his pants and shoes are inspired by clothes from that era. His steampunk clothes give him an air of quirkiness that simultaneously highlight his intelligence and is easily covered up by his lab coat. Changes made for his modern incarnation are minor on an individual level, but significant as a whole.
After reflecting on Electra's Inkscape, I've realized that although his design originally featured recycled assets from another character of mine, they served as placeholders for character Electra had yet to become. I also realized that a character is recognized not only for their looks, but for their personality. Electra gained more life once I gave myself time to sleep on the ideas surrounding his ideas and personality rather than pressuring myself to redo them. The changes occurred naturally, and when they did, I was satisfied with the result when all was said and done. It took about a year for me to come up with his modern iteration, but I couldn't be happier with the result. Art evolution moves at different rates for everyone, so just because it's slow doesn't mean that it's unnoticeable; what isn't immediately recognizeable to you may be easily recognized by others.
Fun fact: There are some easter eggs on his holographic screens that are hard to see with the white background. The lowest screen on the left has pictures of the Tetris blocks, the screen closest to the top of his hair includes the star emblem, the screen diagonally to the right of it has a yin and yang symbol on it, and the screen below it near Electra's left shoulder has a completed eclipse emblem on it. They were easier to see when the background was transparent.