Sketchbook Oct20-Jun21 + Commentary (Patreon)

Hey guys! I'm making this post right at the beginning of the month to say that I think it's going to be quite light on posts for me in November. My actual job has kept me busy and after finishing RM ch8 I've cooled down on drawing for a bit and have been doing some coding lessons and learning Unity to eventually make my own little game projects.

I do still have a few things I could try to post this month, and my most recently completed sketchbook is one of them! 

For new patrons, I post my sketchbooks on here with some highlighted pages that I want to talk about for one reason or another. If you haven't seen any of my older ones, browse through the sketchbook tag underneath this post to look through all my past sketchbooks that I've uploaded. With that said, let's start looking through some pages.

This first batch is all about Anjo, my space fruit collector with robot prosthetic arms. There are a few drawings of her right at the end of the last sketchbook but this is where she made the transition from the one-off design to what she is today. I did a write-up about her design and the inspirations for it in the past. Not entirely related to this sketchbook, but Mariel and I have been spending a lot of time writing and brainstorming ideas for Anjo and her fun universe of planets with strange and goofy creatures. Mariel is the one responsible for the final push towards Anjo's current design with the simplified hair and she draws her in a fun cartoony way that hopefully she will share in the future. One of these pages has some studies of trucks and space ships and was the beginning of my ongoing struggle to create a ship for Anjo to pilot/live in. It's supposed to function as a ship, a house, and a food truck all at the same time and trying to meet those requirements as well as have a good aesthetic to go with Anjo's style has been really tough. Mariel and I have been trying all sorts of things and nothing has stuck yet.

I've been thinking about a small comic to introduce Anjo to everyone and I'd like that to be my next NEW project but i'm still working on WWY and some Bumpers short comics at the same time. I want Anjo's story to be both a comic and eventually a 3D platformer similar to Mario Odyssey or something, with some fun twists and turns in gameplay mechanics to do weird random challenges to keep it fresh. I was messing with Blender again recently too and modeled an Anjo that you may have seen on my twitter.

I'm particularly attached to Anjo at the moment but there's too many parts of her story that haven't been finalized so I can't say much about it yet. I just hope that when I get to make the comic, everyone else will love Anjo as much as I do.

Next, we start to get into the development for Red Muscle ch8. This page here was when I was starting to think about what the purpose of this chapter was; I wanted to show both Scarlet's job for Edgar and how the two met, as well as trying to flesh out why Scarlet and Edgar like each other in the first place. I've been trying to focus more on Edgar and what he gets out of his relationship with Scarlet and hopefully really sell what they provide for each other that makes them a good pair. There's not a whole lot going on specifically on this page, but it's just a start for where I hope to take their relationship long term in the comic.

There's a lot going on in this collection of pages, but this was when I started work on the actual pages themselves for ch8. The first page has some attempts at Edgar's street cleaning drone that he mentioned all the way back in chapter 2. I thought it would be fun to have a throwback to the tossed off joke at the beginning of the chapter and bring it to life a bit and put it in the scene for a quick shot. It's a bit weird to design something that's meant to just be a joke! You never know how serious you should take the mechanics and logical design for something like that, but I think I ended up with something that looks interesting at least.

The next page was when I wanted to flesh out Lovely Baby as a concept more, since I knew I wanted Scarlet and Edgar to talk about specifics of the show in some way for their flashback. I was designing another magical character to work alongside Lovely Baby and started with a Cupid idea that I wrote about here, but in the final version I changed her from Cupid to Artemis. The next page was just some practice with the outfits for the flashback as well as trying to update the way I draw Edgar's hair to work better with how Scarlet's hair shapes have changed and gotten more detailed over time. I was also practicing my Scarlet big thighs/butt proportions, it really is quite hard to draw the shapes consistently in multiple poses!

The page after was finishing the flashback and planning out the silly battle dance that Scarlet and Edgar were reenacting together. I'm not sure if I sell the idea that well in the final comic pages but I think you can still tell what they're doing so I'm not upset about it. The next pages after that are bringing Ricki back into the story and trying to design her and Edgar for the other flashback. I had an even shorter hair Ricki design as an option but once I drew the Debbie Harry hair on her I knew I wanted that look for young Ricki. Also there was some pan dulce practice because you have to do some direct ref studies for stuff even if you think you know how to draw it, lol.

I also have a big collection of Yolli doodles too. Yolli is in such a weird spot for me right now! I have a basic design I'm quite happy with but I've been stuck on both picking a clothing aesthetic for her and creating a coherent story for her to be a part of. The first 3 pages were before I was happy with her hair in her design, I felt like her weird curl on her bangs was too cartoony and I wanted something with a better shape. the second page in this batch has some faces I was studying because I was trying to design a few of the side characters that I have tentatively written, but I'm not glued to any of my ideas. Even the love interest for Yolli has been in a design gridlock. I keep drawing him hoping that I'll tap into some shapes that I think speak to me for what I want but he just keeps looking the same in every drawing. I have a vague sense of what I want but I don't have access to good refs to match the vibe in my head and I've just been stuck for a while. I've been thinking about restructuring the whole story and doing something much shorter with a bigger focus on Yolli and the ways she can use her powers. Anjo and her world have been taking up most of my creative energy lately so it's just a vague idea on the back burner for now. The last page here was me trying to design moves for Yolli for when I get to make my own smash game, lol! It will happen one day and I need to be ready.

These last pages here have a good amount of the project I've been focused on recently; bringing all my Bumpers ladies together into one cohesive world and have them interact and do fun stuff. I've started executing the idea with my summer picture (that I WILL finish) and I had a collection of other illustration ideas too, but the biggest component to the world will be joke comics! This last page here is everyone except Ami in silly costumes for a really involved bit about everyone coming in and ruining Ami's stream. This particular joke might end up being 8-12 pages or something but I also have a huge document of joke ideas that I want to start working through and hopefully make a Bumpers, CA zine that I can sell at conventions when I can get back to tabling at events. It's been incredibly fun to give purpose to Ami and Frankie with these comics even if there's no particular narrative, they're just my funny characters and I think Yuka and Ren fit right in. Hopefully this collection of comics and WWY will both enrich each other and get people excited about what I've been doing.

That's about it for highlights! You can go through the full sketchbook with the attached PDF below, I hope you get some enjoyment out of these messy pen doodles. I have so many story ideas and concepts that I just don't have developed enough to go into detail about and it drives me crazy to only get to show my basic "character standing" scribbles without much context. I'll see you guys in a bit, hopefully with some finished Zelda pics or some of my other WIPs done. Thanks for reading!