I really, really wanna app Optimus Primal to
damned. And I really, really know what I want him to look like, except something about it keeps rubbing me in a "you should feel wrong about this" way, but not in any way I can rationalize.
You see, I want to make his human form really, really dark-skinned. I'm drawing him from S1, after all, and he has an organic primate form there, and it's really, really dark-skinned. Because it's a gorilla.
"Ugh, that doesn't ring quite PC, Alana," the back of my brain warns, "just 'cause he spends 59%* of his time as a dark-skinned African primate and the Axalon crashed in Africa, doesn't mean he should look like he's some flavor of POC."
But then I go, "But wouldn't it be worse if I took this guy who spends all his time as an African primate in Africa and whitewashed him just because I'm a pasty white girl?"
And the back of my brain goes "YOU'RE DOING IT WRONG" and neeners at me while I flounder and try to tell it that I'm just designing around what he looks like, why SHOULDN'T he be a big guy with a tubby middle and geek glasses to make him look science (can't you just see Optimus with a novel in one hand, pushing up blue-rimmed reading glasses with his other hand?) who happens to have dark skin?
Arrgh. I can't figure out why it feels wrong, because it felt so right when I first designed it. D:
*
percentages not based on facts