#i just need to design bg characters

[alangdorf]

Finally, my (min qty: 1) requisite Funky Yabusame Drawing. Like with the Tsubakura pic, you don’t gotta read too hard into the symbolism; I was mostly just doing whatever looked cool lol

[gailynovelry]

The great thing about being in charge of our own book design stuff is that we can, in fact, decide to go through a ridiculous amount of effort to create custom headers for every chapter.

We've gotten about two thirds of the way through Shadow Herald's headers right now. Downside; every time a chapter takes place in a new location, we have to draw that location. Upside; every time we draw a location, we can reuse it later. My gods do the shop interiors take forever.

[raidenloml]

SQAOI ON MAIN?!?!? WHAT!!!!!!!!

[runefactorynonsense]

Cozytober - Day 21 - [MORE] LEAVES

[deathsweetblossoms]

But do Lorcan and Elide ever have a conversation about being mates outside of that Maeve induced nightmare?!? What kind of 😭😭

SJM if we ever meet in person it’s on sight for robbing me of what Lorcan did and for no follow through with the mates convo between these two. (EDIT; AND NO WEDDING SCENE. SJM. WHAT IS YOUR DAMAGE?!) I mean wtf.

[ackee]

y'all gon be mad at me when traversion has an antagonist thats griffith berserk and envy fmab combined? 😔

[lesbianshadowheart]

How I sleep knowing Aloy is a lesbian and HZ3 will not have dating sim-like romance options

[kathaynesart]

Replica Anniversary DTIYS!

Well, it was one year ago today that I started Replica!  It’s been a wonderful experience so far and I wanted to do something fun to show my appreciation to you all!  So in celebration I want to do my very first DTIYS, but we’re going to do this one a little differently. 

YOUR MISSION: to design a comic cover for the upcoming Replica Holiday Special that is all about the birth of Casey Jr:

The year is 2028, eight years before the start of Replica.  The Central Park Colony is still going strong and the turtles now must protect an expecting Cassandra Jones from the very people they are sworn to defend. 

As far as theme that is entirely up to you!  I’ve always found comic covers to be fun because they don’t necessarily have to show what happens in the actual story. So if you want Casey Senior holding up Junior on Pride Rock, Lion King style?  That’s great. You want to do an epic pose of the turtles battling Krang while trying to defend the Caseys?  Perfect.  You want to have Casey Junior bursting out of a Krang’s stomach like a Xenomorph???  Okay weird, but I’ll accept it so long as it’s not too gory!  Also the cover doesn’t  have to be Casey centric, I just want to see what you all come up with! (Note: please no NSFW art)

I have included character sheets and some visual development as reference for how the characters will look at this point in the story (though you do not need to strictly follow it. Feel free to give it your own artistic twist).  I will also include a PNG of the logo in case you have a vision for how you want it to be incorporated. Note you don’t have to use the logo but if yours is picked as the winner I will be putting a logo in there somewhere!

PRIZES: 3rd Place: an OC of yours will get to be a bg character in Replica (note the character cannot be an AU version of one of the main cast for obvious reasons). 2nd Place: a black and white commission of one character of your choosing. 1st Place: your cover front and center in the Replica lineup (with credit of course) as well as a 1-2 character commission w/ color (please no nsfw requests for either commission). 

DUE DATE: NOVEMBER 19 (gives you all 2 months)

IMPORTANT: please use #replica DTIYS hashtag for easy search Also please DM me with your finished cover on Tumblr (otherwise I might miss it!)

NOTE: while not mandatory you’ll probably want the piece to be around the typical comic cover vertical 2:3 ratio (10x15" for example).

DISCLAIMERS:

I’ve never done an event like this before so I’ll admit I’m a little nervous.  Don’t know if this will even gain any traction but I just want people to have good time and get creative :) 

This is all just for fun so please do not push yourself too hard!

Let me know if you have any other questions and have fun!

[soft--dogs]

Hey friends! I'm running a small sale on full body commissions, I'm taking 5 slots at $85 a character (down from my standard price of $100). I need more examples for my website, and I just want to draw some characters :3c alsooo if anyone's interested, I'm offering discounts on commissions of your character with my sona Sammy! PLEASE NOTE, Your character *must* have a ref sheet or full body image I can work from. I'm not designing characters for these, sorry! ALSO, please have an idea or pose in mind! It can be generic, like "playing a switch" or "enjoying the outdoors" but I need to have an idea to work from ^_^ LAST THING, I'm changing my shading/background style a bit from my past work, I'm not going to be offering detailed cel shading or backgrounds. Minimal shading and simple bg elements are fine! I've just been way too overwhelmed lately to take on complicated projects. Sale prices are as follows: - 1 character: $85 - 2 characters: $170 - Your character and Sammy: $145 Some more rules: - my regular ToS applies! - sfw and nsfw allowed! (ToS still applies) - again, must have ref sheet or image of character. - payments through Paypal invoice only. - turnaround time will be 4-6 weeks! - I may be slightly more picky than usual with these, I might pass up more complicated characters or ideas. Feel free to run ideas by me though! DM me if you're interested in grabbing a slot, or have any other questions! ^w^ Stylistically they'll be similar to this! I can do a bit more detailed bg too, feel free to ask to see more examples.

[bonus-links]

Hey random question for you, but how do you decide when to draw the actual literal background in panels vs putting in a screen time or a design or a super simplified version? I've been doing a comic for a little while now, and I'm just realizing that I draw the literal actual background every single time lol

that's a good question! it's not necessarily 'wrong' to draw the bg in every panel, but it is a lot of extra work! it's not any one thing that decides it but mostly it comes down to: do I need the background in this shot to understand what's happening?

are we introducing a new place or area? are we establishing a new angle? does this pose make zero sense without context? probably need a full background

beyond that, it's a matter of visual balance. I think of those color/pattern/texture bgs as a kind of '"free space" or an opportunity to tie the color palette together. if the page feels like it's getting too dark or one color is too dominant, I'll use one of those free spaces to try and balance it. it helps maintain the reading flow. if the background is unimportant or i've simplified the characters a lot, I'll blur out the bg for just the impression of it, or I'll simplify it down as well to match.

you could also take out the bg when you want to emphasize an emotion a character is feeling. action lines, patterns and even your color choices can make the same drawing read differently!

[a-magpie-in-the-bi]

// rp idea stuff :3 A little while back I was talking to @witch-huntergeneral and @witchesandbirds about Philip and Jacob meeting in the human realm, ever since then I've had this scene in my mind and I just had to draw it ahah

I also ended up very slightly updating my character's design to add a grey-ish streak in their hair, I figured that since they took half of Philip's curse, it made sense that it would age them a bit too. The neck/shoulder scar is from the split spell too, AKA the shoulder injury caused by Spryth.

Maggie has probably seen Jacob being a weirdo before and sees him staring, and they're thinking, you better not try anything, you, LMAO Hunter and Caleb are both looking out the window amazed to see modern day Gravesfield 😆 I was trying to think of a scene where they could all be in the bus together so Jacob could be there too and figured maybe when they're on the way back to the house for the first time, they have to walk for a bit and decide to take the bus (since Maggie has a car but they need to get there first) I tried my best to position Caleb, Philip and Hunter in a way they can all have the window view because I know they'd really want to see outside 😆 Philip probably sees Jacob staring and is wondering if he did something weird, he's so confused lol

Also sharing the BG separately too in case anyone wants to use it to draw their own goofy bus encounter //

[ratcate]

I'm here to admit that I may have developed a hyper fixation on your OCs (especially on Zerion and Sir. Valentine) so can you perhaps tell us more about them? (And other OCS)

oh hey!! great selection of characters. Makes me really happy you wanting to know more about them! I love them a lot, but Sir Valentine more, as Zerion's personality and setting is pretty nebulous still. info about them both under read more!

Zerion is some sort of cartoony super villain, heavily inspired in the night of the bald mountain monster interpretation from Fantasia(disney)

(art from 2020)

I think he's a very strong dark mage or something. Right now I have him reduced to a joke. A cartoony villain living his slice of life, but always awaiting action, the smallest spark chaos, to join in, in a world where nothing ever happens. He has his sidekick, Vampina (I think that was her name). A vampire chick who lives in the moment and is Zerion's servant, as long as he provides him with some blood every now and then

(2023)

(2021)

she almost never pulls off that relaxed smile from her face, her brain usually has no thoughts more than "can i eath this?" "I can eat this" Both of them are pretty evil. I remember once i tried to sketch out a first chapter, where they had a visit of income tax department agents, coming to remind Zerion he hadn't paid his taxes, and both Zerion and Vampina made a whole intricate plan on how to get rid of them and torture them, to show the government they're not to be fucked with. Though, all their scare tactics were just confusing, failed magic tricks for the men, now tied to apparent non functioning electric chairs, looking at each other through their sunglasses, stoic faces, while confused to what Zerion is yapping about in his villain monologue, while Vampina eats a stale bread in the BG. ---------------------------------------------------------

I don't have much about Sir Valentine either, but I certainly have drawn him more. For now, His name is Sir Cannon Valentine, but we'll get to that in a bit.

(both from 2020)

This is the first art ever I made of him, and that's a lot of his vibe. (2019)

This MAN, is some warrior who died in his armor but is back by some whack magic, and he's impatient, easily irritated, screams instead of talking, and I've always imagined having him a strong accent. He's here to fight and go headfirst into everything bc he really cannot die.

As of 2024, Sir Valentine is Sir Cannon Valentine (you can still call him the first version), BECAUSE, besides him being reborn and inmortal, angry and ready to fucking obliterate anything in his way, now his body works as a canonball

He went through my manic episode of redesigning many of my characters, after getting a taste of Pizza tower's cartoony characters, and became this. Much more functional, easily drawn, flowy. he just works, i can animate him in a snap of fingers. Still consistenly working to improve his design even more.

I will probs change the story, but this guy is resucitated as a last resort for a war between kingdoms, as a mistake, bc they wanted to revive some other guy, but got mistaken and went to his thomb. This guy revived him, after a ritualistic dance and some lightning

and then he is like "oh wait I fucked up", and Valentine is like "TOO LATE BITCH I'M FREE!!" and blasts away from him, as a cannonball, fueled by his own fire and methane gas from the catacombs he is in lol. This story is very not much constructed, but I love Sir Valentine a lot, and the characters I can surround him with. I see him falling for a bourgeoisie woman, or a princess even, bc all my stories need the romance, I'm nothing without the romance. I am also thinking of including another character of mine, Sayen, as the daughter of this death guy

Sayen previously appeared as a participant in a nsfw comic in my twt alt account lol. I love her and her design very much.

[juubli]

Here are some process shots for this one of Raphael from BG3! That magnificent bastard...

So I started out with a sketch of Raphael. He's got such a charismatic swagger doing the whole "What's better than the Devil you don't know? The devil you do" scene. I just wanted to do a caricature study and have a bit of fun.

Moving from rough sketch to clean line art is always challenging for me as I often get bored or what was originally loose and fun can become stiff.

I had to redo the linework twice because I didn't like how the first one turned out! Second time is always the charm.

I initially only planned to draw the character but I love the design of House of Hope too much, so I went back into the game and took a bunch of screen shots and sketched out the rough bg.

Then I went ahead and cleaned up the bg. At this point is when I group the layers properly, so there is a clear separation between foreground, and background as well setting up the layers for animation. (Making sure the fireplace guards overlaps the walls behind it.)

At the next stage I adding in the flat colors. I wanted to keep the style treatment of this piece more on the cell shaded/cartoony instead of super painterly. So I keep the color treatment fairly flat with a small amount of texture with the intention to add lighting as a fx overlapping treatment instead of painted in.

I work on the characters and the bgs at the same time to keep the values and color temp consistant, constantly adjusting as I go. From habit from work, I always paint the entire BG JUST incase I need to make changes or make adjustments to subject in from. Here is the bg all done, with fire painted in as a place holder.

And finally, adding the final lighting layers added on Raphael. I keep it simple here, just a redish/purple multiply player with the areas in the light masked out, and inverse mask on an orange/red overlay layer of the areas in the light.

Animating the fire took ironically the longest, the animation tools in photoshop is clunky and I haven't animated since school days. I looked up a lot of references and tutorials! It's not perfect but good enough for me!

[project-sekai-facts]

Since you uploaded that MMJ Miku beta design, do you know if there are other beta designs of the characters?? I'm curious since there's a little bit of concept art of project sekai.

Ah well project sekai featured in this one issue of a Japanese magazine called CG WORLD which is where I got that art from. That magazine is more focused on the costume designs though but it does have some concept art, but aside from WIP costume designs using the final character designs, all of it is blurred out unfortunately.

You can find some WxS beta designs, a Shiho beta design and some low quality MMJ beta designs out there (not entirely sure how people found these, I think they were left in a beta release and got datamined), but that’s all the unblurred stuff you can find.

And there are no VBS beta designs available. There’s some WIP costumes for Akito, Kohane, Miku and MEIKO (i posted her one ages ago), but there’s no actual concept art of them available anywhere.

I can go through what we do have though because they’re probably too low quality for me to post as an actual fact.

So these three images were in the CG WORLD magazine. You can tell who the members of Leo/need are based on the instruments (L->R: Saki, Honami, Ichika, Shiho, Miku), and MORE MORE JUMP! (L->R: Miku, Haruka, Airi, Minori, Shizuku) isn’t too different from the final designs aside from Shizuku, who’s blonde (probably because Shiho is). Niigo is harder to identify outside of Kanade and Miku. This art was also uploaded on TCRF and whoever put it there said that Mizuki is the brunette, Mafuyu is the one sitting next to Kanade and Ena is the one in the purple cardigan. It's not stated who is who in the magazine.

And here’s some actual beta assets. You’ve got WxS and Miku (there's two people in the back) here. Emu didn’t really change much aside from the eyes, but other than her...? (I edited this since it was posted don't mind the change)

We have the leader, who is literally just a palette swap of Rui's initial 2* with Tsukasa's face (excl the eye color which was given to Rui) and hairstyle. Possibly Tsukasa bc leader, possibly Rui bc design, possibly a scrapped character who was split in two

There's someone in the back behind leader boy and blonde girl wearing a pink-purple shirt and white jacket with a yellow tie. Clearly their color palette was used on Rui later down the line. Other than that there's nothing we can tell about this character, not even their gender. Possibly Rui, possibly Miku, possibly a third character who was scrapped/reworked

We have blonde girl, who's hair color and eyes seem to have been reused for final Tsukasa. Usually this is assumed to be Nene due to not resembling any finalised designs for the most part. I think she was probably scrapped, or heavily reworked and became Nene with some design elements passed onto Tsukasa (or Tsukasa was a girl?)

And in the back behind Emu is a girl in a green blazer and grey skirt that looks like a school uniform. Maybe this is Miku because the costume doesn't really match with the others? She doesn't have pigtails though, but no one here has pigtails. There's literally nothing identifiable about her.

Whoever these people are there were clearly a lot of changes made to WxS and these might not even be Nene/Rui/Tsukasa. That's definitely Emu though.

And here's a gacha bg and live bg demo for MMJ. The screen on the first image seems to be displaying a less-blurred version of their concept art. For the record, the illustrations in the second screenshot are from idolm@ster, they are not MMJ concept designs, but part of Shizuku can be seen to the right of the pink haired girl.

Possibly might've been named RE:START given the neon lights in the second image. Has some backing: their first event was called RE:START from Here!, and NaytalieN said in an interview that there was extremely little development on MMJ outside of character illustrations when he was commissioned for that event (and a couple statements imply the game was still in fairly early development too). Or it might've just been a catchphrase for the group or something.

And this. High quality beta-Shiho. This was used as a placeholder card art (surprisingly finished for a placeholder) for MMJ!Miku’s initial card, which by the way, looks exactly the same as the final version only it hasn't been finished yet. I’m pretty sure this is Shiho and not Shizuku because of the side ponytail and image color. But Miku is wearing a similar costume to the one in the MMJ concept art. I mean it was marked as placeholder and was not intended for use, it doesn’t really have to make sense. Also what seems to be a costume for Miku based on this card was left in the game and is on TCRF I added the screenshot below.

I haven't finished translating the CG WORLD article yet, but there's not a huge amount dedicated to character design, as I said earlier it's mainly about costumes. What I can tell you though is that VBS and WxS apparently took longest to finalise, specifically Akito and Tsukasa.

TCRF page for anyone interested

[minas-linkverse]

As requested I’ll share some of my comic making knowledge. Keep in mind that I’m not a professional and have been self taught when it comes to making comics, SO take my tips with a grain of salt. Also English is my second language, I dont know some words.

First of all I think a very useful thing you can do is study film, especially how shots are designed. The way film makers decide what is in a specific frame is very similar to deciding what should be in a panel, and in general improve your visual language skills.

Still, comics are a different medium and have different advantages and disadvantages to keep in mind.

Second thing I wanna share is that often there’s a lot more thought put into what is inside the frames and not the frame itself, when they should work in harmony. In the above example are two versions of the same exchange, where character A is making character B upset. The first works, but lacks impact, while the second one uses visual language tricks like being bigger and leaning over the other to show who is in charge.

Now, the first example might work better in different scenarios, it’s less about what’s always right and instead about knowing your options.

I recommend dividing a comic page into two or three segments, any more will be cluttered. Clutter CAN be very useful to drive home a joke or a sense of anxiety, but most of the time I’m guessing you arent doing that.

But what’s also important is to not necessarily use stock page layouts. There are only so many ways you can put squares on a bigger square, but you need to understand what each square can bring to the table.

I’m sharing some general tidbits, but remember that when you start learning the rules, you also got to learn to break them when appropriate! If you want to show how ineffective an attack is, maybe dont give it the flair of a cool panel. If you want to have a big panel full of small snappy speech bubbles to express a group chat kind of conversation vibe, why not! Experiment!

Finally what’s better than learning from the real deal. I’m gonna show off my own stuff here, but remember that the more varied your study topics the better. Look at manga, western comics, newspaper strips, all of it and see what you like and dont like in them! Or how they approached something you want to tackle.

Full comic here

Full comic here

Full comic here

Full comic here

I just noticed a bunch of spelling mistakes oops. That’s other people’s problem now, I can’t be bothered.... 😭 

So in conclusion, focus on making things readable, visually interesting, and have fun or smth. If you are doing things correctly, each element should feed into each other. Visual interest should help in clarifying whats going on, and so on.

PS. I didn’t include more basic tips like how to make panels that flow in the right order, or the fact that level of detail and line thickness can tell whats in the foreground and whats in the bg. Consider this more of an encouragement to study things, and less of a full tutorial.

[onesunofagun]

The implications on Ganondorf and his background in TotK suggest some very interesting things to me.

First of all, like. I love him. He specifically did not disappoint me. His JP audio fucks so hard. I love his design. He's glorious.

And Hyrule as an imperialistic divine hegemony is not a new concept in the slightest, obviously, the Ganondorf corner of the fandom have known and discoursed about the potential story ramifications of those themes since OoT, but Fujibayashi really went ham on it in his run. (And look. Zelda is made in Japan. Framing a divine imperial authority as a good thing narratively is pretty par for the course JP nationalism, to be really blunt. It is what it is. Grain of salt.)

But I do appreciate that it revisited some OoT plot beats even if it... really drove that point home again in retrospect

I guess new fans are in for a treat unpacking that;;;

Anyway in the BG of that, I'm interested in the particular minutia of what was happening with this Ganondorf specifically to flavour his particular brand of 'fuck you'

And a few important points that give broader context to things are these and I'll put under a cut bc spoilers obviously--

Rauru's repeated 'invitations' to join Hyrule and benefit from their protection (presumably some advanced technological access or strong magical allies as part of that promise, which I believe is probably anti-monster focused within world context) which Ganondorf as a King has very much ignored (and good for him tbh).

Clearly, he has an interest in keeping Gerudo independent.

Ganondorf is acknowledged as a Hero to his people. Not only does this heavily resonate with the very particular themes of his actual character design and both its Buddhist reference and Samurai trope homages, but like-- we're actively shown an explanation for WHY he may be considered such.

Being who he is, he's already magically inclined with a kinship to monsters. We are unapologetically shown him in command of a Molduga Army. Trained Moldugas, under his command-- and not under specifically his mystical command, either, but musically conditioned. Trained to follow sound based command cues, which makes plentiful sense given Moldugas are sound sensitive and Ganondorf usually has musical inclinations. Plus it's Zelda franchise, magic command music is also very much a thing but--

Moldugas are, at least medicinally, very important resources. On a larger scale, they're also a very present threat to desert dwellers and travellers, and from the looks of it in much larger numbers, back then.

Given the context of everything, Ganondorf was a badass even before 'he took a magic relic and fucked up the Hyrulean Royal Family' as he tends to do. Sporting as ever, he fights Link one on one as just a Gerudo, also showing once again that he does in fact have some personal code of honour when it comes to fighting worthy opponents. But it gives us a yardstick of how capable he probably was even before he nabbed the tear.

Capable enough of tangling with most big uglies in the desert, such as Moldugas, which he has at least trained and at most maybe even raised.

Exemplified Power as he ever is, I'd like to point out that in this case, he's demonstrating a flipside of what Power looks like-- benevolence, protection, guardianship. Once again, we have the pieces that indeed he is capable of that and showing that to his own people. He also flexes the Molduga Army as a show of Gerudo and its own power.

To anyone other than Rauru, who is an incredibly powerful Sage already, a Molduga Army would have absolutely won the day, I think. The reaction of the other Gerudo is pretty telling.

Ganondorf's faction were deeply shaken by the display of Rauru's power. And as a guy that's been knocking on your King's door and saying 'you should come and bend knee to me' when Gan already has the worst problem in the sands sorted out?

Very understandable.

From their perspective -- what do they need protection from, exactly, if not Hyrule itself? Their monster problem is a non-issue. From the viewpoint of Gerudo loyal to Ganondorf, everything about this looks like a pressured threat.

Which comes back around, of course, to what Ganondorf plainly lays out to Rauru when he gains the tear-- this is because Rauru tried to control him. And yes, that's Ganondorf and his pride and his nature in full tilt too. He will not be pulled beneath anyone or anything.

But that's the point about that hubris on Rauru's part, he felt superior and he underestimated both Gerudo and Ganondorf-- as a warrior and a leader, and as somebody who was likely managing things very well on his own.

But I mentioned factions. This is something that should be made clear.

Pointed ears are, canonically, associated with faithfulness to Hylia and/or the worship of Hyrulean spirits. This gets debated all the time, but that's the fact of it. We have been shown again and again that humans from outside of Hyrule have round ears (as long ears are associated with hearing the voices of the gods; ie being open to them). Exposure to Hyrulean aligned divine elements can lend pointedness to previously totally round ears. We see this happen.

It has been doubled down upon that the ancient Gerudo (such as in oot and FSA, with FSA having the introduction of the floral association in Gerudo design and OoT heavily centering mirrors in their spiritual practices) worship different deities, whether derivatives of Din or Hylia or completely different myth. The Goddess of the Sands has been confirmed as a deity that Hyrule itself views as evil and false.

I generally interpret this to mean that part of the reason boils down to this-- Hyrule's main concern is that pointed ears are living lives closer to the gods, and therefore more insulated against corruption and demonic influences. Rather fittingly, their patron's foremost spiritual antagonist tends to find his reincarnation in unprotected, non-Hyrulean tribes who are 'open' to demons.

Now that may be another layer to what Rauru means when he says protection, also. Worshipping the 'right gods' affords certain protections (and certainly supports the security of Hyrule itself).

In SkSW, by the way, there's a really cool point of questioning early human society too-- the fire temple depicts demons and monsters and snakes quite a bit, and these were built in a time when I suspect the humans were mostly a large proto-people.

Sidenote: I think Hylia's faithful went to Skyloft and generally shook out to be the Hylians we know later, where some stayed on Earth to serve Hylia's plan and became Sheikah, many more people were transformed into demons in a reverse-Batreaux situation, and some humans just scattered far and wide to avoid conflict.

Anyway that temple depicts Bokoblins making hand signs and long story short, the overall motif and meaning of that temple shows demons offering to teach things, approaching humans with a different kind of enlightenment. Whoever built that temple was very much in a state of open spiritual and mystical curiosity.

Now the takeaway there is, ultimately, the ancient Gerudo very much seem to be descended from such a sect of people. They have their own gods, and they're not part of Hyrule proper, and they have round ears because of it.

Botw departed from that very clearly, but in doing so, also erased and replaced almost all traces of the ancient Gerudo deities with new Hylian analogues.

The Seven/Eight Heroines count as Hylianised deities, and I believe the reason for this-- first suspected in botw but I feel it's weightier after totk-- is that they represent tear holders / Hylia aligned Sages in the seven group (edit: and apparently a Hero in the Eighth) such as those in the decline timeline. They are functionally the reason that the Gerudo of modern day possess long ears-- even where they are selective in what they worship, they are still worshipping Hylia aligned aspects of Divine Hyrule.

And in case this wasn't absolutely irrefutable to me beforehand, the ancient Gerudo Sage from Rauru's time is both loyal to him, and possesses pointed ears under her camel mask.

I would also point out the Hylians of Rauru's time seem to have longer ears in general, probably owing to having a Zonai King, ostensibly a Hylia aligned Deity himself.

Ganondorf's ears are rounded, of course. He clearly doesn't believe in Hyrulean worship even in lip service, and it's little wonder why.

But following another beat of OoT, that ancient sage is a very obvious Nabooru type character. And, in much the same way, that suggests that even when Ganondorf was King of the Gerudo only, there may have already been factions splitting up amongst their people based on spiritual practices.

I don't think it's beyond the pale to speculate there may have been a mixture of Gerudo at the time who had both pointed ears and round, signalling the confusion from and conflict between their spiritual leaders.

It seems likely that a schism probably existed, regardless of ears, but that schism-- and the sage who may well have been leading it-- may have been caused by people who decided respond to those calls from Rauru and join Hyrule without their King.

Which gives a lot more context to why Ganondorf would be in the mood to send a giant Molduga shaped "back off" Rauru's way, also.

I take particular note that Ganondorf's destruction intentions are faced towards Hyrule and her allies, and specifically those who oppose him in that goal. And while I concur that his whole Red Inheritance party ran hard and may well have had a decent hand in frightening the bejeezus out of the Gerudo who were previously faithful to him-- maybe even inadvertently sent some running for camp Hyrule-- it seems he considers modern day Gerudo, fully converted to pro-Hyrulean status, to be traitors.

We have no idea what happened to the Gerudo who followed him, so that's really up in the air as to how messy that may have gotten.

Even the woman who plays to summon the Molduga has pointed ears though, so I tend to lean that his camp got converted to Heroine worship (or at least those with pointed ears mostly did if the mixed ear situation was happening).

But heck, it would not be the first time some Gerudo got ran outta dodge after a King went belly up.

Food for thought.