An illustration for one of the more exciting challenges of my HN-tSotL 2.0; applying ’Brandon Sanderson’-levels of structured creativity to a cartoon lacking that consistency.
In the ”Happy Ness” cartoon, one kind of Nessie magic is the Ness Bless: characters can cast from the Loch-ets a spell specific to a Ness’ theme e.g. Dark can produce purple EMP fog while Happy can cast what is basically a target seeking Care-Bear Stare. Besides from being unclear if all Ness have a Ness Bless (if they all do have a personal spell, what kind of powers would Sneaky or Rich have?), the effectiveness of Happy’s Ness Bless have been portrayed inconsistently: In ”There’s a World of Nessies” she could effortlessly turn Mean temporarily friendly in order to stop an confrontation, while in ”It’s Not Bad To Be Sad” Happy tries to lift Sad out of his depression only to find out the Ness Bless is completely useless on him.
Since Ness Blesses is part of the series and have the potential to create intriguing plot hooks, I had to polish the magic into something more rational so that it feels less arbitrary and contrived, yet complex enough to allow new discoveries.

I call the new magic system Exo-Pneumatics because it manifests as an pink ionized gas which affects the domain of the soul, and I wanted it to sound as more like a field of alien physics. Even though I have a very solid idea about what the components are and how they interact with each other, I don’t want to to spoil everything about it before starting the story plus I’m curious if you can deduce the context of the illustrations.
Using terms from TV Tropes ”Functional Magic” the only thing I want to say about Exo-Pneumatics is that it’s basically a blend of Alchemy/Device Magic, Mentalism, and Theurgy.

Loch-ets, Ness Blesses and "Happy Ness - the Secret of the Loch" belong to Abrams-Gentile Entertainment, C&D, and AB Productions.
Exo-Pneumatics, Nervous Plastic, Memetic Gates and Daemons are my ideas.