After what feels like months of workshopping, finally a result! It wasn’t so much the drawing this time, though I did want to make a cool way to show both forms of this character in one image, so that took some fiddling with overlap and avoiding tangents. This is Hercules, a brother to Perseus in name only, as he spends most of his time antagonizing him instead. Let’s just say having difficulty with him is very in character for him, he’s not a nice guy and likes to cause trouble!

I knew the general direction for the colour scheme, mostly orange as an opposite to Percy’s blue, but actually finding a good combination and proper placement took a long time on this one for some reason. I found that it either ended up too complicated, too much like other characters I have for this series, or too much like other interpretations of Hercules in general, on top of having to make sure that the colour scheme and placement worked for both forms. Adding the stone colours on one of them was definitely risky in an already delicate balancing act, but it was necessary for the concept and I think it still turned out well.

The base idea behind Perseus and Hercules is the same, current incarnations of their constellations take on the appearances of creatures their namesakes have killed, but Hercules takes it a step further by actively using his kill count to add to his own power, allowing him to achieve his larger form. I deliberately repeated some elements of Percy’s design to connect the two even further, and I wanted them to contrast not only in colour scheme but in ideology as well, as their idea of what a “hero” is diverts rather drastically.

Considering that the majority of his conflict is with Perseus for this reason, I’m still deciding on how much (if at all) Hercules appears in the main story. He does have a lot of beef with a good portion of the zodiac and their companions for a variety of reasons, and his quest for power would make Cassie a prime target for him later on in the story, so we’ll see. I really like the story potential of his dynamic with the other characters, especially Perseus, so he’ll definitely be a key player in at least one side story in the future.

Separate detail shots on my Tumblr if you’re interested: https://akysi.tumblr.com/post/668431633466163200/hercules

The constellation symbol for Hercules was originally designed by Denis Moskowitz and released to the public domain. https://www.suberic.net/~dmm/astro/constellations_t.html