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Thanks for asking!

‘Canon’ is funny in DD9 isn’t it? It’s there but it isn’t. Kind of magical.

 I don’t think any other characters have such a widely established look, partly because I don’t think anyone else has been as aggressively developed as Garak and Julian.  I’ve spent so much time and effort on Garak and Julian and my drawings of them were the first DD9 illustrations, so they seem pretty widely accepted, which I’m pretty pleased about, honestly, haha.  It contributed, I’m sure, that DD9 first spread among the G/B shipping corner of Tumblr and mostly stays there since G/B is part of that ephemeral ‘canon’ along with the lack of deaths.

But as it stands, no one else is nailed down as hard as those two. Feel free to design things!  Or ask to see my ideas of people if you’re not the designing type and are just curious. 

incoming paragraphs of DD9 rambling~~

 A lot of what I do with Garak and Bashir hinges greatly on their story and what sort of people they are, which explains a bit why I don’t have a lot to go on with everyone else, but I will chat about G/B (with some links!) and everyone else as much as is true for me.  

I first started taking real steps to a design for them in this post from a year and half ago. In general my ‘dd9gb’ tag contains a fuck ton of images of them.  I’ve also been making this dress up pixel doll to do a lot of work on Julian and Garak’s wardrobes.  It’s good at showcasing what an odd couple they make, mostly.

With Garak, and with any of the ‘alien’ people actually, I try not to just draw the human actor under the prosthetics, but to draw a human resulting from a merging of the actor and the makeup. So this is smushing Andy Robinson together with the ridges and other stuff on Garak’s face and still coming up with a human on the other end.  So DD9 Garak has a bit more brow than Andy to give him some of the shadow having ridges would cause. His nose is a bit more bulbous and slopes into his upper lip a bit. He’s got a bit more bulk on his jaw and his earlobe connects to his jawline a bit more than Andy’s does. His hairline is a bit high, but not inhumanly so.  Granted, this is all when I’m really working at it, sometimes things get lazy, but in general, that’s what I aim for.

I like to give him an ashy sort of skin tone that’s still acceptably human, but a little unusual looking, like it’s lacking an overall warmth.  In my mind he also has some poor circulation, which can lead to some weird coloring on his hands and feet, but that doesn’t get drawn often.  There’s skin tone variation among Cardassians just like everyone, of course, so some people are darker and warmer than Garak, and some people are paler and ashier.

And then clothing-wise, since that’s an important part of a character reference, Garak wears lots of layers, asymmetry, lines that make him look leaner and longer than he is, and styles that might be considered anachronistic but also sort of popular niche fashion. (Fancy vests, elegant shirts with billowy sleeves, etc.) Expensive, elegant, and eccentric taste. Long sleeves, always. I keep him sort of ‘alien formal’ as much as I can, though sometimes it’s just ‘Here’s a vest, here’s a shirt, other people probably wouldn’t wear these colors, but whatever’.  No jeans, no shorts, no tshirts, no hoodies.  He’s easier to dress when it’s cold, as much as that must pain him.  These are, again, ideals, and I don’t always pull it off as well as I’d like. 

Occasionally, he also has reading glasses. This is both a gentle call back to the shape of his eyeridges but also a logical thing for him to have as a man in his forties who does a ton of fussy up close work for a living. He only wears them when working or reading at home, as he’s a bit grumpy about how his body has changed since he’s had to become a tailor.

I also, very occasionally, paint his nails black or blue.  Part of this comes from the episode in which we saw Garak with the female Cardassian blue paint, and part of this comes from how much androgyny is inherent in Garak’s character in canon and finding a way to express that in DD9.  

Initially, I kept his colors a bit desaturated, and I still wouldn’t put him in Crayola yellow, but he’s brightened up a bit from association with Julian, I think. 

Because Julian is a poor college student, and the last thing on his mind is fashion. He is constantly running between work, classes, and things with friends/Garak, so he has only the most minimal extra time available and he uses none of it on clothes.  All of his shirts are things he picked up for free at university club tents, or from clubs he was involved in, or even as gifts from Quark for free advertising, because Julian does not care.  He has ugly shirts from fundraising efforts, a free shirt from the First National Bank of Ferenginar when he opened an account there hoping to get a toaster, a Quark’s shirt, a shirt from orientation on his first day at campus, a shirt from getting a question right at a radio station’s quiz show, etc etc.  They’re all generic crew neck shirts that don’t flatter him because he’s long and bony and clothes hang from his shoulders like they’re on a hanger.

Julian’s hair is less controlled than Bashir’s. Bashir’s slicked back sort of wave is not happening in pizza land.  I took a lot of ideas from the pictures of Sid in casual wear and even some of him from summer conventions where’s he less Starfleet helmet hair.  So there are stray twists and loose curly bits that poke out on DD9 Julian.  He’s kind of puffy in summer humidity and wearing a hat at work gives him the wonkiest of hat head.  He doesn’t have elaborate space age stuff to give him perfectly product’d hair every day, and he probably can’t afford to buy hair stuff all the time, so he looks a little less put together than Bashir. 

Obviously, I didn’t need to incorporate alien facial structure into him since Bashir is human, so the ways I indicate DD9 Julian are with how he presents. 

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This ended up rather large, so close ups were called for, I suppose.

(Weyoun in #7 it is! There’s a Damar in #11 coming up eventually if that’s any consolation!  Forgive me, I have like four other requests stacked up for #10 and I’m growing a bit weary of it!)

incapable of siskoing minus baseball

(Well, I’m not sure how terrifying he is, but he’s Elim at least!)