Concept

merkind

A third FORM — and the first that is HALF of an existing one. A mermaid is humanoid above the waist, so merkind's core is iconkind's core with the legs taken off: the same silhouette path, the same arms, the same eye line at 129. Which means every face, badge, hat and prop already fits, with no redraw and no new measurements. Only below the waist is new.

The core, halved

Bare: body and tail, nothing worn. The head and torso are iconkind's path with the two leg rects deleted — not a similar shape, the same one. The ear pads become swept-back fins, because the brand keeps something at eye height on the head edge and on a mermaid that something is a fin. Everything below the waist is a SLOT: the tail is most of the character and it is never the skin's colour. Three flukes share one tapering stock, so the waistline never moves. A fourth, curl, leans — it is in the library and off this page, because a lean fights a body mirrored down the centre line and in a straight-on portrait the body wins. It is waiting for a scene.

Fan

A broad symmetric fluke. The storybook one.

Split

Two long lobes with air between them.

Veil

Trailing veils and hip fins. The ornamental one.

Six, dressed

Six seas across three flukes, four heads of hair in six colours, and two tops — a scallop pair and a wrap — drawn for this form, because every iconkind costume paints boots on. The scallop cups sit in the clear strips the contract reserves either side of the badge, so the badge covers only their inner halves. Names and traits here are placeholders to see the form carry a character; nothing is in the register yet.

Tide

Steady · Constant. Comes back, always, twice a day.

Reef

Builds slowly. Shelters whatever settles on them.

Pearl

Makes something lovely out of an irritation.

Kelp

Grows fast, bends with everything, breaks in nothing.

Fathom

Goes further down than anyone asked them to.

Ripple

Small thing, travels a long way.

The same form, carrying weight

Not a second core, not a wider body, not a different rig. The merkind core is fixed and it stays fixed — that is the entire value of having one — so everything here is slot values, which is the brand's own answer: the FORM does not change, the CALLING does. The read comes from four places. The BROW: one heavy bar per eye, angled down toward the nose, and the strongest single mark on the figure — the same stroke as a lash, moved up and straightened. The BEARD, which is the largest new surface and does what a jaw would do if the silhouette were allowed to change. The SHOULDER: pauldrons sit outside the silhouette at x 30-78 and 122-170, so the core stays 42-158 and the armour is what reads as wide — the only honest way to broaden this figure. And a BLADE fluke with a spined ridge, cut in straight lines against the curves everything else is drawn in. The trident goes in the prop zone the form already reserves for a held object. There is no moustache anywhere in the set, and that is a measurement, not a taste: the eyes sit at y 129 with a radius of 6.2 and the mouth starts at 142, which leaves seven units of face between them. Anything drawn in that band lands on the eye line and reads as a bandit mask, which is exactly what the first two attempts drew.

Keel

Holds the line. The part of a boat nobody ever sees.

Brine

Older than the argument. Has the scar, and has stopped mentioning it.

Gale

Arrives loud. Leaves things moved.

Anchor

Stays put on purpose, so that somebody else is free to move.

What changed

The proportions could not move — this is a plush core with a head more than half the figure, and slimming it would break both the form contract and the toy. So the work went into line, light and colour, which is where the difference lives anyway. Three tones in the hair instead of two, with the same crown shine on every style so it reads as lighting rather than decoration. A lash sitting ON the eye's upper rim, never floating above it — a floating one is an eyebrow, and two eyebrows tilting inward is a scowl, which is what the first attempt drew on the whole set. A cheek as an ellipse, because a round one trips the eye-line rule. A band of light down the tail. Eight seas instead of six, each carrying a fourth value: abalone puts a pink sheen on a blue tail, which is the whole trick of the shell, and moonlight is nearly colourless so the sheen is all you see.

Before

The first build. Flat hair with a hard seam down the middle, iconkind's neutral eyes, no light anywhere.

After

Same core, same tail shape. A lash, a cheek, a crown shine, hair longer on one side, a sheen on the tail, pearls on the hairline.

The same person

Side by side, and deliberately in the same kind colour. Above the waist there is nothing to compare — it is one path, shared, not two paths drawn to match. The frame is the only measurement that changed: 200×272 instead of 200×240, because a tail is longer than a pair of legs, and the first build kept the 240 box and shipped flukes that ran off the bottom of it. merkind carries its own form.json and passes the same brand contract as iconkind, dinokind and palkind.

iconkind

Root, as he ships. 200×240, legs to y 236.

merkind

The same Root. Everything above y 184 is the identical path.