Sketchbooks apr-aug2016 and aug2016-mar2017 (Patreon)

Hey everyone! I just bought a scanner so that I can scan my latest completed sketchbook and realized all my previous ones aren't on here. I'm going to be uploading them periodically in full and posting a few highlights to talk about them. You'll find the 2 sketchbooks in PDF form attached below. But first!! Some specific pages.

I remember that around this time I was trying to be more self indulgent and make characters that were obvious homages to things I like so I was making a really on the nose Zelda design, and this is Margot's original form! Margot is a character that is now part of a trio of punks that are the main characters of a music adventure game idea Mariel and I have been revisiting lately, her design shortly evolved into something much more modern. here's Margot on the couch with Ken and Dusty in a collab between me and Mariel:

This page has my very first attempts at Edgar when he was just the idea of a nerdy scientist! I didn't have any specific ideas so he kind of has an Otacon vibe to him. His look gives off such a different feeling, I think he looks pretty out of place for what he ended up being! I think in Red Muscle's earliest stages Scarlet was working with the police and Edgar was a scientist as part of their top secret division that created the suit to fight kaiju. It changed pretty fast from this idea, haha.

And here's the earliest Ula explorations! Ula was probably going to be one of many villains that Scarlet would battle against but I've never been that imaginative, so after I created her she became the one and only character to go against her. I was looking at a lot of Sentai villains from japanese shows and liked one character's aquatic theme but there aren't any of the fish aesthetics until a tiny bit later.

Onto the next sketchbook!

A few updated Margots and a lot of explorations for the world for the music game. I've been really honed in on japanese narrow and tall city streets for the location, but this page was mostly about the main trio's practice space. It's quite messy! I was just trying to copy some refs to get shape ideas but I didn't have a lot of confidence in my mark making for drawing scenery so I'm sure if I tried some things nowadays it would read a little clearer.

Here's some drawings of Rasbi, another character for a game idea that was originally a Yoshi's Island style platformer but with magic bubbles in place of eggs. Currently she is the main character for a simple Sanrio Smashball style clone that Mariel and I think about making as a stepping stone for learning to code games. Rasbi here was already a design that was heavily tweaked from the first version and I was having a hard time making her feel iconic and have pleasing shapes. I've drawn her a few times more recently to repurpose her for a smash style game that I want to make, here's some draws of what she looks like now:

Here's some beach studies that informed the beach scene in chapter 1 of Red Muscle. up top was a layout of the police station that didn't get used because I wanted to have Edgar constantly getting arrested for his inventions going haywire and him getting locked up for it, but this idea got scrapped by the time I started chapter 2. There's still a tiny hint of this origin in chapter 3 when Scarlet talks to the cops but it's really not as severe. 

It's really strange to see some of the ideas seemingly out of order! There are a few drawings of things that didnt make their way into Red Muscle until I restarted it officially, but most of these drawings and explorations are in the earliest stage as I was drawing up the one shot comic. I've considered putting that original Red Muscle pilot on patreon for you all but I think it might be funner to revisit when I've gotten a few more chapters done so looking back on it can have a bigger impact. If you're interested in looking at the old comic though you should leave a comment about it and I might consider posting it sooner! Only if people really want to see it, it's quite embarrassing with how cheesy it is and how bad some of the dialogue and designs are.

Here's the page where Ula's first design came into form. She had big glassy eyes that I got from Miyata Kouji's Oh My Sweet Alien (which I'll always recommend!) and both new and old Zora designs. The bangs are still a cute look, but this is such a different Ula! I also never drew her with the trident beyond the original pilot but I still intended for her to have one probably several chapters in. I let go of the idea because she really wasn't a Sea Witch or Sea Queen like I planned and instead became just a business tycoon, so I couldn't find a reason for her to have a trident on hand and it got scrapped.

These are so interesting to look back on, my unreferenced art has very glaring anatomy mistakes and I've still never quite developed my narrative explorations enough when I sketch but I've been trying to get my current sketch pages to have a little more interest to them. As I get more recent into the sketchbooks I'll probably post them individually instead of doubled up like this, I just don't think these old ones have enough going on to post by themselves.

Anyways, see you next post! Don't forget that the full PDFs (each at about 120 pages) are attached below.