Project #2 – Different, Not Less: “He With Sight Beyond Sight”

In spite of lacking functioning eyesight
Uninhibited is this warrior’s might
Sensing others’ aura when on the ground
Nobody’s safe even if they don’t make a sound
And even if sent flying off his feet
His superb hearing will have foes beat
So with sight beyond sight to triangulate
His flaming blows seal his foes’ fate

For the longest time, I wasn’t quite sure how to tackle this project as I had two different ideas for it. One was for Asperger’s syndrome (which I myself have) where I’d depict it as a strength, not a weakness as some might see it, but the other, and the one I eventually decided to go with, was blindness, where I’d depict someone who has overcome their loss of sight and now “sees” in their own way(s). I have seen many characters in fiction that have a way of seeing their surroundings when blinded or because they’re blind, so I decided to make a depiction of something like that for this project. What exactly the character would be was quite the question, but in the end I gave the character in the photo, Sir Duke (named after the Stevie Wonder song), elements of animals known for their blindness such as bats, what, with his huge ears for hearing the smallest sounds around him, and a species of blind salamander called Olms, most notably with the frill-like growths on his ears, long tail and reptilian feet- the rest of his features were based on the Pokémon Lucario, who was shown in the movie Lucario & the Mystery of Mew to use aura to see and detect other organisms when blinded. That depiction of sight without sight is what inspired how I drew the rest of this piece, alongside Toph Beifong from Avatar: the Last Airbender’s way of seeing, where I drew a dark background with figures looking like bright wireframes with distinct outlines of their bodily features and buildings or inanimate objects in a duller sort of color, a mashup of both of their styles of seeing without sight.

References:

  • “The Top 10 Animals With the Best Hearing”: https://www.hiddenhearing.co.uk/blog/2018/the-top-10-animals-with-the-best-hearing
  • Toph vs. The Boulder (Clip): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MxwV9iavAm0
  • Lucario’s demonstration of “Sight Without Sight”: https://youtu.be/mbg3X8OBQDc?t=250 (Starts at 4 minutes 10 seconds in, ends at 6 minutes in)
  • The Olm: The Blind Cave Salamander That Lives to 100: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/the-olm-the-blind-cave-salamander-that-lives-to-100