Evolution of Kazooa the Seagull
Kazooa the Seagull has always been seen by most people from her current appearance. There have been hints or some sneak peaks of the character's various appearances leaking out over the years, but yet the evolution of her style and ways of being hasn't been fully documented. This page aims to chronicle Kazooa's look over the years, starting from the very first sketch to her more recent style.
Due to the very fragmented order of my oldest drawings and that I didn't put any date on them back then, not all drawings on the page can be categorized precisely. For the ones I can determine where Kazooa's style last changed they will be marked as such.
Her times as a Kazooie the Breegull clone.
Kazooa was created in 2003, and was first called Kazooie the Breegull, similar to the breegull from the Banjo-Kazooie video game series.
2003
In her first design(pictured in the above pics) she looked like a typical bird with cartoon eyes, and somewhat badly drawn. Initially the character was created for a comic with Earthworm Jim and Yoshi, and this comic is where the character originally came to be.
Even so, during the making of this comic Kazooa's design started to change a bit, particularly during 2004, which saw her style being altered almost drastically.
This pic I can't really remember whether it's earlier than the Jim & co comic or slightly later. Going by Kazooa's very out-of-proportions look here though, it is assumed to be from either before or slightly after the comic was just started.
2004
During this year Kazooa's design started to change a bit, especially during the making of the "Jim, Kazooie, Yoshi, & Kirby" comic. While her design on the cover was the same badly-drawn version of Kazooa as before, the first few pages sort of alternated between the first and the then-new design of Kazooa. It is only in later pages where Kazooa's newer design becomes her standard look from here on.
In this comic Kazooa's shown to be living together with Earthworm Jim, a topic which would continue well into 2005 until eventually being phased out.
Yet some more of Kazooa's then-new design at the time. This little three-pages long comic strip was part of the Jim and Yoshi comic, and was made to tell the story of how Kazooa came to meet Jim.
While the plot kind of makes sense if put into context, the last few panels on the third page I now question myself about the dialogue(excluding the two last comic strips, as those are separate from the main story). Even so, this comic was made at a time when the Kazooa character had yet to evolve into the greedy seagull she are nowadays, and I no longer consider the character's portrayal in the comic canon.
In these pics Kazooa's looking pretty much the same. While the overall timeline is a bit foggy due to my old stuff having ended up in a mostly random order compared to then and no dates having been put on them, it is between these sketches(some of them taken from covers of comics that never really got anywhere) that Kazooa's design are gradually becoming more and more like the Kazooa of today.
One thing I still remember somewhat is that in most of these the character Kirby wasn't even part of the main cast of characters by then(consisting of Jim, Kazooa, and Yoshi). Even if he did appear on some covers, he almost never appeared in the comics themselves because those comics never really got off the ground. It wasn't until the "De Senaste Bilderna Hittills" comic that Kirby became a more recurring character.
The beginning of the "Characters having magical abilities" period
Or the start of the characters becoming more manga-fied, to be more precise. I was debating whether these ones were from 2004 or 2005. Due to the rather unclear timeline though, I assume these are from around late 2004.
In these pics Kazooa looks mostly the same, only difference is that her eyes have been made a big bigger. This is where Kazooa's appearance starts to more closely resemble her current design.
Despite this, the style of Kazooa's eyes tended to revert back to the earlier style every now and then, perhaps due to confusion from my side on how the character should look like.
In the last two pics Kazooa is shown to have magical attacks of sorts, one of them being a doodling trick of sorts, while the other shows her sending bolts of thunder at some small brain with a bird beak inside a glass bowl. Indeed, these last pics were made during a time period when my creative mind was starting to wander off in all possible directions and I simply had no clue on what things I should be focusing on.
The "De Senaste Bilderna Hittills" comics, of course, are where the "characters having magical, yet weird attacks" thing began. The above pics are from the first comic, all of which I assume were drawn during 2004. While Kazooa aren't shown to have any magical powers of sorts, at least Kirby were in one page or two.
This comic was pretty much a testing ground to see if my style would improve over time... which it did in the end. While the first 13 pics are from 2004, the last ten are from further into 2005 where my style had once again changed.
The 2nd issue of the "De Senaste Bilderna hittills" comic, while I can't remember whether it were made in 2004 or 2005, I'm assuming it was drawn between late 2004 to early 2005. Kazooa looked pretty much the same here as in the first "DSBH" comic and earlier drawings from 2004, but it wouldn't be the last time Kazooa's 2nd design would appear, because during 2005 it would get reused quite often until being completely phased out.
These images of Kazooa are from a comic that was started but put aside very early on, "TV Troubles". From what I can remember about this comic is that Jim and Kazooa's TV had recently broke, prompting Jim to go and buy a new one. After opening the box they discover the TV is quite tiny in size compared to them.
After seeing that the TV needs to be blown up to its full size in order to be used Jim startes blowing air into it. What would've happened during or after this I unfortunately can't remember, because the comic just ends with an unfinished panel of Jim about to blow air into the TV. I suppose the TV would've either become full size instantly, or something else might've happened...
By this comic Kazooa was still looking about the same as in the "De Senaste Bilderna Hittills 2" comic. It wouldn't be until sometime in 2005 that her design was being updated a bit, and then somewhat overhauled...
The Mangafication period.
After the years 2003-2004, a radical shift started to happen in 2005, where most of my time was spent on trying to draw my stuff in Manga style, with Kazooa being pulled into this weird ride as well.
2005
In these set of pictures, Kazooa's design was pretty much the same as her 2003-2004 counterparts. Compared to those though I started to fiddle around with her personality and way of being. This is also one of the few instances of Kazooa being shown as a greedy treasure hunter, a foreshadowing of how Kazooa was eventually gonna turn out like and stay as.
While mostly random in terms of chronological order, this set of pics appears to be the start of Kazooa's design being changed into a more manga-ish one. None the less, this period was more or less responsible for giving Kazooa the style she now bears these days. While still far away from her current look, it is getting closer.
The images these shots of Kazooa was taken from is from around the summer of 2005. By this point Kazooa's design remained pretty much unchanged, even though it's quite inconsistent between pictures. It is also during this time the character Amy Chiboyara was created. Kazooa was frequently annoyed by Amy's obsession with fashion, and often got into arguments with the latter. Kazooa and Amy would sometimes go out together. Not necessarily because they liked each other though.
It is also around this time that Kazooa becomes more of her own character, and her relation to Banjo the Bear gradually fading into oblivion.
In the unfinished "Jim and His Friends" comic, Kazooa's design from previous drawings was pretty much intact. Even so, her personality was still very different compared to my later works featuring the character. There isn't much more to say about this part, except for the fact that Kazooa still lived with Earthworm Jim, along with Yoshi and Kirby, who had since been made part of the cast of main characters.
To end the year 2005, here's one last pic of Kazooa from 2005, which introduced Miles "Tails" Prowler as a new character of the main cast... which came to be pretty shortlived, and definitely failed to generate anything else besides a couple drawings featuring Tails.
Kazooa abandoning her cap.
2006
2006 marked the end of the period of retooling the characters into manga-fied versions of themselves... and the eventual absense of Kazooa's cap.
The removal of her cap didn't come about overnight though. While two of the earliest drawings for the year did feature Kazooa without her cap, it was mostly because she had it stolen by a Dumb-Crow in a small hover-ship. It was only in october 2006 that her cap was completely removed, while gaining some minor refinements to the shape of her head. And for most of 2006 the character was kind of shelved as I started developing more of my own characters and fiddling more with them.
Kazooa being turned into a swearing drunkard.
2007
In January 2007 Kazooa finally made a bit of a comeback, this time with a new character by her side; Crystaly. Crystaly was basically intended as a replacement for the Amy Chiboyara character who had since never been used in any future drawings of mine.
The reason I invented the Crystaly character was because I was planning to make a comic based on the Ox Tales TV series. Wanting to give Kazooa a friend of sorts by her side to hopefully also introduce a number of gags and jokes, Crystaly was thus born. While always willing to help Kazooa in her everyday chores, Crystaly also had the odd habit of digging up dinosaur fossils, which unfortunately causes problems for not just Kazooa, but everyone else in the environment.
The comic never really took off besides a single unfinished page though, and was quietly cancelled.
Also in early 2007 Kazooa's design was set to be changed into a more chibi-fied version of Kazooa herself. However, this new style fell through pretty quickly and her design was soon reverted back.
Kazooa's Very Bad Awful Day
During the middle of february 2007 Kazooa started being changed into a swearing drunkard. Well, swearing that much she didn't, but drinking lots of beer she did, as well as smashing or chainsawing poor Dumb-Crows into a red pool.
It all started with this comic, which was intended as a showcase of sorts for how Kazooa's first new game would be like. The Kazooa seen here was nowhere like her previous incarnations, and it would be leading the way for Kazooa's first game which was originally going to be...
A Bad Strange Day...
In early March 2007 Kazooa's Bad Strange Day was born, back then known as "Kazooie's Bad Stupid Day". It was practically a sort of parody, as well as my personal interpretation of Conker's Bad Fur Day had it been developed as a 2D platformer.
It was during this period where Kazooa's design started getting closer to how she now looks like. Her Wario-like personality was still not there though. Even though KBSD got cancelled in late 2009, several other games based on the same project emerged between late 2007 and middle 2008, in particular Kazooie and Yoshi - Yoshi's Invention, Kazooie's Treasure Hunts, and Kazooie World(the latter being more like a Wario title). Neither saw completion though.
Kazooa, the new Ren Höek
December 2007 to March 2008
In December 2007 Kazooa suddenly changed yet again. Her design by this point is similar to her current Wario-like self, but her personality's still not quite there. In fact, compared to her appearance in Kazooa's Bad Strange Day, here she acts somewhat and speakes more like Ren Höek from the Ren and Stimpy Cartoons.
This change was made purely as a experiment to see if I could do something similar to... well, the Ren and Stimpy series. Even if these pics don't demonstrate that many similarities, the last piece is actually from a comic I was planning on doing, that was going to be in the style of Ren and Stimpy. Aside from the cover, it never got anywhere.
Yoshi(the one seen in my drawings and comics from 2003-2005, that is) was cast in the role of Stimpy, and like the character just mentioned Yoshi would've been just as stupid, and would've often lit the fuse on Kazooa due to his stupidity. Compared to my earlier drawings Yoshi's design was altered, and removing the cap on his head.
Despite this period lasting for almost half a year, this depiction of Kazooa was soon forgotten about, and the Yoshi character, despite having been brought back again, was soon put back into the back drawer again.
Kazooa the Greedy Treasure Hunter
Middle 2008
After the failure that was the Ren and Stimpy experiment, work on Kazooa's Bad Strange Day continued. However, in the middle of 2008, about August or September, Kazooa was changed into a character who was like Wario in both personalities and traits.
In fact, the next Kazooa game I started on, Kazooa in The Treasure Land, basically set the standard for how Kazooa has since been seen as from here on; a greedy, selfish, and yet a bit stupid Seagull.
Kazooa had on a few occasions been portrayed as a greedy seagull in earlier drawings of mine, but even then her personality wasn't really fully decided on. I suppose it was my work on Kazooa in The Treasure Land that came to fully solidify the traits that are now common to the character.
Kazooa the phantom thief and microgame maker.
2009-2010
Between 2009 and 2010 the traits and personality of Kazooa had been pretty much set in stone, so much in fact that she gained two new identities; Kazooa the Phantom Thief, and Kazooa the Microgame entrepreneur. These versions of Kazooa have barely been used outside of concept art, but Kazooa the Phantom Thief was lucky enough to get at least ONE comic strip by the end of 2010.
In 2010 most of Kazooa's time was spent on alternating between her thief and microgame-maker identities mainly for purposes of concept artwork. In only a single drawing is Kazooa her regular self.
2010 was definitely the year of Kazooa assuming her position as the chairman of her own company KazooaWare, focused on making short minigames lasting only around five seconds. Whether her company did as well as WarioWare is still up for debate to this day, because the success of her company was barely reported about.
Kazooa in the Treasure Land, and after that.
2011-2013
By this point my time and resources was mostly devoted to Kazooa in The Treasure Land. Because all my artistic talent went into making all the graphics for that game, I barely had the time to keep drawing Kazooa herself on paper anymore.
It was also in june 2013, ten years after her creation, that her name was finally changed from Kazooie the Breegull to Kazooa the Seagull. While I wasn't asked to do it, I felt that I wanted to avoid confusion between Kazooa and the breegull from the Banjo-Kazooie games.
2016-2020
In 2016, just because I felt like it, I decided to try drawing Kazooa the Seagull again. Because it had been a couple years since I last drew the character though, the first drawing of her turned out a bit... well, quirky. I also tried to make Kazooa's shoes smaller. In the end though it didn't just look right to me, and it would take me another year to even think about drawing Kazooa again.
As can be seen by these pics Kazooa's appearances had grown rather sporadic over the last few years, since most of my time during 2014-2020 was spent on making GTS(or giantess) art, maybe the occassional piece of concept art every now and then for other ideas of mine.
2021
2021 might as well be marking my return to drawing Kazooa the Seagull a bit more often. Even after over 10 years, Kazooa's design remains pretty much the same. Some things I didn't mention earlier was that in 2008 the nostrils on her beak was omitted, and the shines on her eyes have since been removed. The former I can't remember whether it was accidental or if I did it on purpose. In any case, the nostrils on her beak has since never been seen again.
Summing it up, Kazooa the Seagull sure have changed quite a lot over the years... well, the first five years or so anyway, because by 2008 and afterwards her personality and character hasn't changed a bit, and I would never change her again, either back to how she first were like or otherwise. I've grown pretty much used to Kazooa being a greedy, selfish treasure hunter that I don't even have the heart to make further changes to the character.
As for why her red color remains even if her name was changed, it is likely that a bucket of paint was dropped on her by accident when she still was little, turning her red. However, the paint came to glue itself to her feathers, making it extremely hard to wash off, and even if it could be washed away, the very same color will still be left on her body.
Image below showing how Kazooa has changed in appearance over the years(will eventually be replaced with a more better looking version):
