#since they range from festive fluff with no real relevance to borderline crack

[angermango]

Magax (Neopets) redesign

Got inspired again after the Gilly redesign from before for another fun take on an existing character. Here’s the original edgy old cat who was woefully neglected by TNT in terms of character potential given he had a whole ~mysterious dark past~ and a documented rivalry with a fairly popular villain.

I was doing something more on the consolidation of designs path as Magax has had a load of designs over the years (and/or TNT was inconsistent in their art and designs sometimes...) so I tried to keep the elements of his core look while adding little embellishments or flairs. I like to think of Magax as a weary old soul who lives in a graveyard hunting ghosts and monsters every night so he looks kind of mangy and mean from years spent out alone in the deep Haunted Woods - but I’m sure it’s just his face, he’s probably an okay guy.

So yeah I kept most of Magax’s iconic features like his earring, eye scar, and goatee seeing as those seem to be staples in his look

Since I made him scarred all over I tried to make Magax’s famous eye scar stand out more so it’s a bigger, more raw-looking mark rather than just a thin line. I like to think that he got it when he fought Hubrid Nox for the first time after he turned his back on the way of evil, and during the battle Nox nailed him in the face with something that later became a trademark of his look.

Added on more scars and a chewed up ear to up the Edge on the look and show off that he’s a fighter, the old grizzled lone warrior type

The scarf is a nod to one of his prehistoric designs where he had a red cape and totally different armour - maybe it’s the same cape, worn with age and repurposed to keep his neck from getting chilly without his mane now

Clawsss

Does Magax wear manacles? Gloves? Neither? The NeoTeam artists can’t seem to decide, so why not all at once in a fingerless-glove-with-braces combo?

Magax has always worn this kind of vest thingy in some form and it’s changed colours from grey to black to green so i settled for a dull near-black green since green seems to be a part of his thing. He also kind of just wears it as one layer without anything else underneath, which I mean fair enough when you’re a magical warrior you probably don’t worry about that stuff. I put a kind of singlet underneath you can barely see just so he can say he’s got some layers

The belt combines his old design buckle and new design where he has a random bag on it but i figure a guy’s allowed to have somewhere to hide his... whatever is meant to be in there

His green magic is just rendered like that because I was having fun with layer blending modes and filters. The Flash-era effects don’t really give his magic powers much in way of visual flair nor are they that consistent: They look more or less like solid green bars and orbs in his games, while in other official art it’s rendered either like flames or lightning (plus his Neopets TGC card had him down as a Fire element alignment). I did a bit of both because Rule of Cool but I imagine that his magic is unique in that it manifests pretty much however he wants as a kind of pure raw energy magic.

His trusty Darklight Axe I gave it a little bit of a makeover too with a heavy battleaxe design and engravings on the head just because it looks sick. I assume it’s made out of the same green magic he wields so it’s kind of like a solid power construct or something (like Green Lantern? idk) I find it weird that his axe is only shown in art and alluded to in his Neopedia article as if it’s a normal if not staple part of his arsenal - heck, even his name suggests it’s like his signature weapon of choice, yet he doesn’t actually use it in his games to fight and instead just uses shooty beam spam

Bonus: OG Magaxes for comparing -

#neopets #neotag #neoart #magax #redesign #>>mango(t)art #oh magax edgy cat man who has been ignored soundly by TNT as a potential plot-interesting/relevant character #TNT straight up made a bunch of OCs some of whom had hinted complex and deep back stories or history and then just forgot or ignored them #maybe Magax's weird unrevealed dark past and heinous crimes worthy of exile transcend the fourth wall #so he is doomed to rot in stagnant creative limbo where even his creators refuse to interact with him #seriously though in the era of neopets straight up making random characters for game and world building fodder i used to find magax cool #and i did wish and hope for more explanation on his whole reformed villain past and rivalry with Hubrid Nox #I mean it was weirder that Hubrid was a character who had a number of game appearances or was alluded to #yet Magax only was shown being opposed to him in his own game and even then couldn't even fight Nox there just get inconvenienced #then they straight up murdered Nox in one of the plots and only showed Magax in an Advent Calendar animation #where he was reacting to Nox being dead #and later got a few weird ones where he's apparently gone and befriended ghost!hubrid and frequently goofs around with him #and even then i find the canonicity of the Advent Calendar animations dubious #since they range from festive fluff with no real relevance to borderline crack #not to mention the quality got so absurdly bad in the recent years it's painful #anyways that's enough crack in the tags