I am in love with the wha cross guild designs. Can you say something more about them? Like the thought process behind them and stuff.

sure! What I focused on first is how Mihawk, Buggy, and Crocodile's motives and personality would translate into the WHA world (I need a loose story first to be motivated before delving into the design!)

tbh I think with one piece's characters so focused on freedom and living without constraint, all pirate characters would technically be brimhats LOL (and Coco's arc of realizing the flaws of the current insitution is quite similar to Koby and the marines).

Devil fruit powers are easy to translate into seals tattooed on the skin (hence wha!Buggy's seal on his chest letting him split his body and wha!Crocodile's on his hand giving him sand manipulation). Mihawk is more interesting since he doesn't have a devil fruit, so naturally wha!Mihawk also doesn't have tattooed seals. Another way for a witch to become a brimhat is dabbling in forbidden seals, so wha!Mihawk has cursed seals on Yoru instead (which makes him a brimhat without modifying his body)

As for cornerstone character traits in the original: Mihawk is the greatest swordsman, Buggy is… just vibing LMFAO, and Crocodile is ambitous/power hungry/looking to rule his own kingdom. Obviously the greatest swordsman title means nothing in WHA, so wha!Mihawk instead is a great artificer, with Yoru being the strongest magic imbued weapon in existence. I'd like to think Yoru's seals were initially within guidelines, but Mihawk felt those rules were suffocating Yoru's potential, which is when he started using cursed and forbidden seals instead, all for the sake of Yoru becoming stronger.

Buggy I'd imagine is kind of like how Iguin is introduced in Coco's past- as a solo traveling witch mingling amongst common folk rather than being in a community of fellow witches. I think he'd be addicted to that feeling of superiority he'd get from being a revered witch in the eyes of the common people, so he's probably the head of a traveling circus troupe (where he's the only witch) touring the countryside (keeping a relatively low profile in the realm of witches, never staying in one place too long so the Knights Moralis don't go after him). Buggy's definitely not as altruistic or eager to help those in need as witches are supposed to be in WHA society, but of course he'd put on a good show to entertain the masses.

Eolio mentioned something interesting in chpt 53 ("We can be as in the tales of yore. King and witch, side by side"). There might've been more references to this concept of a monarch/person in power with a witch as their advisor (I just can't find it at the moment a;sldkfs) but I'd imagine that's what Crocodile would be doing. Like Buggy, I think he also gets a sense of superiority by being alongside commonfolk (vs Mihawk who's goal is to genuinely just make the strongest weapon possible and not interested in mingling with others). But instead of Buggy's route of mingling with commoners, Crocodile would definitely go the more sinister route- find some easily manipulated king or high lord and get into his good graces, eventually becoming the witch operating in the shadows and whispering machinations in his liege's ears. We don't know much about the pennisula yet and how far the witches' institution reaches so I don't know the exact position of power Crocodile feels safe aiming for without the Knights Moralis coming for his ass (a ruler might be too obvious lol but then again Crocodile tried to take over Alabasta right underneath the World Government's noses so who knows).

As for the designs themselves: Mihawk's fluffy plume being reminiscient of a brushbug is what started this entire idea for me, so I knew I had to add that in somehow. For each character I picked an overarching motif/theme I wanted in the character design, as well as adding in WHA design elements. WHA characters all tend to have large cloaks to cover their body while writing seals, and even though Cross Guild is all brimhats, nobody starts out as a brimhat so I'd imagine a large cloak or something top heavy would still be familiar to them even if they don't care about covering seals anymore.

For Mihawk I leaned a bit more into the vampire theme than his usual (cloak silhouette is bat like, plus the additional crosses everwhere. His sleeves aren't exactly attached to his jacket (like OPLA) and I also added that detail in the pants haha. I think Yoru is the real star here with all the seals on it, the two big ones are actually modified seals from the Ars Goetia (since they're supposed to be cursed after all); the top one is Glasya-Labolas (manslaughter and bloodshed) and the bottom one is Ronove (taker of old souls). The flower pattern on his sleeves is also not as paisley looking since it doesn't fit with the WHA artstyle, but there's so much hatching that at the end of the day I don't think it mattered lol. His cloak is the least cloak like since he needs to be able to swing that sword HAHA also he's not interacting with normal humans much anyways, usually he only interacts with witches that try to challenge him. Personally I think wha!Mihawk is quite bad at drawing seals on the fly- his specialty is being able to carve complex ones on metal perfectly so they'd be suitable in a fight later.

Buggy I went full medieval jester mode (I always tend to lean toward that aesthetic for Buggy rather than Joker Batman anyways haha). A couple of star motifs here and there, as well as slashed sleeves to reinforce the slicing and dicing of his body. Overall there's just a lot of vertical and horizontal lines on his body for that purpose. I really wanted to let Buggy's beautiful hair down since WHA's style is lovely with that kind of flowing hair. Oh all three of them are also wearing slyph shoes!

Crocodile's coat is directly inspired from Iguin's (esp for that scale motif); overall I wanted to incorporate flowy ornaments for him since I'd be drawing a lot of flowing sand; hence all the tassels on his cloak and sleeves. Cutouts are there for him to use sand manipulation more effectively. I know in canon both for him and Buggy the clothes also are affected by devil fruit powers but I don't think that would be the case here- Buggy's clothes also probably have seals in them and no one would be able to see if he's on stage but I think for Crocodile, since he'd be working with normal humans more he does have to be more cautious about things (hence why he also has a more traditional cloak compared to the others). Sand hat for coolness also for convenience bc he can just dissipate the sand if he's trying to disguise himself (like how Ininia's ribbons can appear normal instead of brim shaped). I also gave him a smoking pipe instead of a cigar because the pipe can be used as a red herring of sorts- to outsiders it might appear the pipe being the source of power (like for Mihawk's sword) but Crocodile's sand manipulation ability has the same scope as canon.

ANYWAYS that's probably a way more detailed response than you expected but hopefully that was interesting to read my thought process behind things! even though i captioned it Cross Guild I guess it ended up being more East Blue/Alabasta saga personalities than actual post Wano Cross Guild dynamics haha