This was originally uploaded to DeviantART on May 5, 2021.



Someone as new as he is spontaneous!

A few days ago while in a Discord server, we had started discussing the Super Mario species, Rex, and his very limited number of appearances in games and media. Along with that, how infrequent you see them. In fact, Rexes have appeared in about five games, the most recent being 2017's Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga + Bowser's Minions (unless you don't count remakes, in which case it's Super Princess Peach from 2006). So shortly after that conversation, I started sketching a Rex, but was only satisfied with the head; the body was quickly thrown together and I decided to not continue it. But Rexes were something I've wanted to draw for some time, since they're extremely similar to Yoshies, so it wasn't that hard to get something going!

However, I think one good look at my art gallery on here will tell you that I'm no stranger to experimenting with character designs. Some stick, most others do not. Even now, I still have some very experimental designs and concepts in mind, and you really could say this one is one of them. I've had a strange interest in making a character that was disabled in some way. Besides my own Yoshi, a character that had personal challenges of his own that he had to deal with every day, which I can relate to. But I've never had physical limitations, so I was trying to be careful and hopeful that I wasn't stepping into a realm that would offend anyone too.

I wanted to do both of these things over time, but a couple days ago, while driving to work, I thought about a way that I could have both (getting such ideas while going to work is agonizing when you have to wait until you get home to fulfill them). It was my driving force that day so that I could come home and draw it out, and this is the end result: Plum.

Story
Plum Tyrannosaurus-Rex is an Ioan Rex, Aunov Variant, and a resident of Aunov on the planetoid Ioa. He lives in the Lesser Deltora Foster Home by the river separating the town of Lesser Deltora and the city of Greater Deltora, Aunov's capital. His birthday is August 30, 2005, making him 15 years old (at the time of this upload).

Plum was born in Aunov to a Lunov Rex father and an Aunov Rex mother, causing to have a single toned body like his mother, but in a slightly darker hue of purple like his father. Unfortunately, the little dinosaur didn't enter this world perfectly. He was born without wings and with a muscle defect in his legs. Shortly after his birth too, his mother would sadly pass away, leaving his father to take care of Plum alone.

The boy's father treated him with all of his love, getting him everything he needed to succeed in school and be comfy, and sharing his passion of photography and videography, allowing Plum, as he grew, to find a way to express himself and find a calling that would let him ignore his disabilities. However, his father was struggling to maintain jobs, and was finding it harder to pay for everything he needed to help Plum, to maintain his medical services and his equipment. Ultimately, Plum's father was forced to give him up at a foster home, seemingly with the idea that one day he would return to reclaim his son. He has not been heard from since.

Plum was very broken to have lost his father, and at such an age where he knew about it and watched him leave his life, but thanks to the foster home, they were able to maintain all of his equipment perfectly fine. He was able to keep going to school, be around other kids, and he still found happiness in his passions, but it meant that he would usually be seen by himself, often lost in his own world, admiring sights around school, town, the foster home, etc. It was also common for him to be picked on by others in his classes, sometimes for being alone or that he was so different, especially from other Rexes.

During lunch period, Plum had rolled himself to a part of campus where it was quieter and without many teachers around, which was the perfect opportunity for bullies to come out and surround him. They lifted him out of his chair, dropped him on the ground, beat him up, called him names, the whole nine yards. Thankfully, the Yoshi twins, Junior and Rainbow, were in the area at the time and, having learned some martial arts skills, were able to take care of the bullies in no time, able to help Plum back into his wheelchair, but attracting the teachers at the wrong time, assuming the twins were the culprits of this bullying. Even with Plum's explanation that they were innocent, the twins had to walk away with a trouble slip.

From that moment on, Plum had found two new friends that he considered his closest. He would join Junior on the basketball court to play with him as best as he could, or go for a roll with his wheelchair on the track while Junior ran it. Or, if Rainbow was practicing music in the studio or out in the school courtyard, he would almost always stop to listen to her, and offer his compliments. The three of them were close, and no one would bother bullying Plum while they were around out of fear that they'd get beaten up again.

However, Plum would be saddened to see his best friends not return for the next school year, out of a trouble trying to get them reregistered for that semester. Cinnamon would have to pick up teaching the children of the Tower, but it meant that Plum was ultimately by himself again, as he would be for about a year before he was reached out by the twins again, able to invite him over to the Tower to spend time together. Since then, Plum spends every second he can with his best friends.

Plum refuses to acknowledge or tell anyone that he's a foster child; not even the twins know. He wishes not for anyone to know about it or to feel bad for him, but he sometimes wonders about the condition of his biological father, while in the meantime wondering if he will ever find a family outside of the foster home. Until then, he uses his passions to live life to the fullest.

Personality
Plum is polite, kind, energetic, ambitious, playful and curious, but he can sometimes be quiet when by himself, sometimes upset or downright depressed, he can sometimes cry himself to sleep in the foster home knowing what position he's in. But he will remind himself of who he idolizes and what he was told by his father to not give up, never let anything bring him down, and to keep being who he is. He has a picture of his father taped to the inside wall of his wheelchair, along with His Majesty the Fourth, King Excalibur, both of which he holds in the highest regards and uses as his inspiration to keep going every day.

The Rex has an undying love for photography and videography, a trait he often ties with his father and wishes not to let go of. He enjoys taking pictures of the world around him, along with videos and share them with the foster children or his friends. It's likely he one day wishes to be a professional in these fields.

Appearance & Abilities
As stated previously, Plum is the Aunov Variant of the Ioan Rex: he is physically the same body size and shape as a Pure Rex, but his body only has one skin color as opposed to two, so his body is all purple. He has one large nearly-white horn on his nose, with two more smaller horns near the tip of his tail, and lacks wings. His eyes are a deeper shade of sky blue.

In Aunov, Rexes are automatically considered Natural Softies, due to their Pure counterparts already having some amount of malleability (as shown in Rex's appearances in Super Mario World and Super Princess Peach). This makes it possible for Plum to be taken and sculpted into a different shape, or simply flattened for example, but due to a Rex's natural malleability and difficulty to spring back from it easily, Plum can often take alot longer to reform from transformations than most other Softies, even with the aid of Reform Potion. He usually requests others not to engage in any squishing, not because he dislikes it, but as a precaution because of how long it takes him to pop back to normal afterwards.

Equipment
Finally, Plum is often seen wearing a sea green neckerchief, although he does have a bowtie of the same color to wear to formal events. He usually wears a pair of bright pink boots.

The Rex is almost always seen riding around in his trusty wheelchair, most of it colored dark green. He is almost never without a camera of some sort, which is usually his phone (that may or may not look very similar to an iPhone), but can probably be around with a proper photography camera or a video camcorder. Not seen but usually around is a cane for Plum to use in order to walk around in case he ever has to, or to practice strengthening his legs in hopes that one day, he can possibly walk and leave his wheelchair behind. Until then, he wants to try and earn money to pay for a fancier wheelchair, one that comes with lots of storage on the side or back so that he can easily carry his cameras around and have them when he might need them most.



And there you have it! He came to mind just days ago, and all at once, but the ideas for him were just too good to leave alone. On top of that, this was probably the most challenging drawing I have ever done, and the most likely reason for that is the sitting position, and then the wheelchair to accompany it. However, what made this all the easier to push and do is my recent upgrade to the iPad Pro 4 in combination to the Apple Pencil. This really should belong in a journal entry but to summarize, I am in the process of transitioning from pencil/paper to the iPad and my drawing app of choice, Autodesk Sketchpad. In fact, this is the first drawing I've made that used my iPad to sketch it! I hope that one day I can color on there as well but I still transferred the finished sketch to my computer to color instead, as the visual of a clean and uniform flat color still appeals to me. I very much appreciate being able to utilize iCloud to pull up the sketch image from my computer rather than having to scan the image first and then save it; saves quite a bit of time.

Anyway, thank you for watching and reading! 💜