Sketchbook July2018 - July 2019 with commentary (Patreon)

We've caught up to my most recently scanned sketchbook! I have one more that I completed in October 2020 that I'm going to scan soon but this is the last one that I've had online on my gumroad page currently. This sketchbook has comics work from Red Muscle chapter 6, Exposure, and even the earliest ideas for Weekend With Yuka! It kind of makes me sad when i think about having started work on that almost 2 full years ago but it will get completed eventually. As per usual, I'll talk about any of the pages i have stuff to say about that aren't just my usual scarlet drawings or anatomy studies.

A little out of order, but there are some pages in here with early ideas for prints I wanted to do since I think I knew that I was going to be selling at ALA the next year. The metal slug print was scrapped because it looked really flat and thought I could do a better version of it later, but I'll show you the idea I had. The Ursula with Akko heads floating around turned into the draw of Akko/Diana following Ursula through the halls, so I'll include that too for comparison. Also, this second page had some doodles of Kahlia, an abandoned OC for a story idea that was going to be my first graphic novel but it was above my skill level so I fizzled out on it.

scattered on these 3 pages are the first drawings of Yuka and Ren! The Yuka topless in the fur coat was actually just a drawing inspired by a picture I saw somewhere and I ended up really liking how she looked so I just repurposed her for the story. I had been fishing around for Ren's look for a bit with no real direction until I drew her big leafy hair on this last page and was really into how graphic and stylized it was, contrasting with Yuka's bun well. She ended up with that same henley tunic type shirt in her final design so I didn't do much clothing exploration after that.

I made an effort to design Yuka's actual apartment layout and create a legitimate space for the story to take place in since I felt my BGs were particularly lacking when I would critique my red muscle chapters before this. I've since drawn a digital sketch of her apartment for WWY that's a tiny bit different from the first version, but really just in the rooms we didn't get to see. I think I got rid of her washroom because I'm assuming that there's a communal washing machine for the apartments? I'm not sure why it's not there anymore but oh well.

I eventually started thinking about the next RM chapter and I had my first attempt at drawing scarlet with actual normal, round hair haha. I wasn't completely ready to change her hair yet so it would take a bit for it to become a more natural shape like how it is lately. I also knew for a while that I wanted a chapter where Edgar had an ex girlfriend and here's where Ricki's design was getting solidified. I honestly didn't expect to do much with her initially but just like Camille, I ended up really loving her inclusion and what she does for Scarlet. The story has been shaped differently so I can have fun moments with the 3 of them together when I can get around to introducing Camille and Ricki to each other. That's where we get the idea for this bathhouse image of them 3 that I drew around then too.

A lot of my stories end up being about 2 characters and not much of the outside world around them but I am very happy that RM has expanded into something bigger with more characters that can do things and exist outside of Scarlet and Edgar and their relationship (which was the whole focus from the beginning).

I was also still exploring world ideas for my ninja girl (still nameless!) at the time and her look was always going all over the place. I created the taller woman to be a pub owner and fun NPC to talk to frequently and she was later repurposed to be her sister in the current iteration.

I'm sure these designs will go through some more changes when I figure out what the world aesthetics will be, but story-wise they are sisters that were separated during childhood as one left home to study the sword and magic to protect their island and the other stayed home to keep their family's business afloat.

I started RM ch6 after I finished exposure, and working on multiple comics is why this sketchbook took me so long to fill up, same with the one after and my current one I'm still drawing in. The first scarlet on the medicine ball inspired the final panel that ended up in the first page of ch6, I just loved how she looked all rolled over the ball like that! This chapter was a big focus on character acting and expressions, which I think I've learned is what I want to have as the defining characteristic of my art in general. I have a long way to go before people are impressed by the range of character acting that I draw so this will be something I actively try to study every time I do a new comic. There were some fun expressions and compositions in ch6 though, like the scarlet floating in the void because she is emotionally compromised, haha.

These pages were when I was writing another romance story before I jumped back into Yuka and Ren's world. The concept was a love between someone with magical charm, being a witch that's studying something akin to molecular gastronomy at a magic college, falling in love with a cashier at her local grocery store that she'd see every day, who has her own bewitching charm just by being beautiful and charismatic. They'd both be charmed by each other over time and fall in love! I didn't like the ending I wrote because it was suuuuper corny but i'd like to come back to this idea and spice it up a bit when I feel like the time is right. I had also drawn a digital sketch of them too before I eventually put their story on hold. The designs will probably be tweaked again but I remember my inspirations for the magic girl were to have her look more stylized than the grocery lady, being really into Birdy the Mighty's 80s ova design and a little bit of adult Nia from gurren lagann (don't ask me abt GL though i don't think it holds up at all).

At the very end, I think I had already written a decent chunk of WWY since I was already sketching the idea of Yuka being naked outdoors for a photoshoot which later turned into the shibari scene that you can see in one of my preview posts (for $5 patrons!). As I was drawing them again I felt that their designs needed to be improved and I was making them both look a little less graphical in style. Ren's ponytail got a little less wild and Yuka would have a more natural hairstyle that wouldn't get fully figured out until the next sketchbook.

And that's it! Thanks for going through this journey with me, there were a lot of things I've wanted to make that just haven't come out yet that I never really talked about before! I hope to get around to them some day soon, and let me know if there's anything here that you'd like to see me explore more first before the others! Right now I have the ninja girl story, the grocery story, Yolli's story, my tomb raider inspired story, and Anjo's story (which is what I've been focusing on lately). Maybe I will more to say about some of these other ones in  the next sketchbook update, but for now you can look through the rest of this sketchbook in the pdf attached to this post.

See you next post, most likely a WWY update!