A New Yoli (Patreon)

Hey everyone! I just wanted to make this separate post to talk about a character of mine that's been on the back burner for a bit, Yoli! I was previously calling her Yolli with two Ls but I'm making the change now for clarity. Yoli has been around for a few years now and I've logged her inception when she was just a visual idea, and her tweaks when I had formed a story idea. I seemed to have skipped over the inception of her design right before this one, so I'll say I wanted to give her a more mature and hispanic looking face with some really wild Patti Smith hair. Here's some pics of her design at the time:

Very recently I've been spending a lot of time writing and went back into my rough draft for what Yoli would be a part of to check if I could make some sense of the loose pieces I had. The idea was born out of really enjoying Ah My Goddess and that's why I designed her, as she was supposed to be this deity or spirit of some kind that would fit the role of magical girlfriend.

At some point over time, I was hunting for some narrative through line that would connect her aesthetics to a story and I was starting to lean more and more into my Mexican roots and felt like Yoli would be a part of an ancient religion of a lost culture that had its own temples from centuries ago. The idea evolved enough that the basic idea is this:

Yoli is the last of her kind, demihumans with powers to represent their connection or affinity to different aspects of life. For Yoli's case, she has control over the concept of creativity and things that can fall under that umbrella. The actual main character of the story is a young man who lives in a Mexican neighborhood (I will sub Mexico with my own made up culture but that's what it represents) that has slowly been taken over by white people and the biggest factor is a lifestyle company that has crept in over the years and whitewashed and gentrified the area.

The main character (still not named or designed, lol) works at this company and wants to make designer clothes but inspiration has been at an all time low. His brain is clouded by thoughts of being othered by his white coworkers, yet also detached and ignorant of any long time cultural traditions of his people. He ends up awakening Yoli and she's a complete fish out of water, not understanding how much the world has changed and how others will view her. Eventually, the main character will reach out to the few coworkers of the same ethnicity that work with him as a means to help Yoli out and we can see how each of them has their own understanding and mindset about their mother culture in a world that's been putting them as secondary.

The basic idea is if you lost most of your culture, what happens to you when you get the chance to look at it personified straight in the face and learn from it? All of that is of course still mixed with some romantic moments and sexy stuff, but I'm really trying to push myself to write something interesting that feels like only I could make (which i guess the sexy anime aesthetic is a part of that recipe). There's a little more to it than that but I'm still planning out the details and I need to finish designing the cast. The main cast would be Yoli, the main guy, another guy who looks very hispanic but is really whitewashed, and a pale girl who is deeply in love with her culture and is studying up on her history while also being deep into counter culture (in this case, counter to white americans). I was attempting to design the girl the other day and I will not be using this first design, but this might give you an idea of where I'm starting from:

I love the swimsuit draw I did but I think I want some different features for this character, so UNRELATEDLY I changed the colors and cleaned it up to have nice art that I made into a sticker just for me:

To get back to Yoli at the top, I wanted to lean into Yoli's pronghorn aspect a bit more, so while keeping the Patti Smith hair texture, I changed her face to be cuter and have giant doe eyes. I think Yoli would appear in the world in her traditional look, covered in body paint and wearing a loincloth and a draping garment over her chest a bit as a fashion piece. I might still tweak this part, since I'm just going off of what I had designed before. It felt like a cool touch if Yoli can continue wearing it when she tries to fit in and interact with modern society, but it can become a slit leg skirt and she can borrow a black top from the punk girl that I was mentioning above.

I also keep drawing her munching on chocolate which is such a minor thing, but it's just to show that Yolli has an affinity for foods that are made with ingredients that are native to their land, so she loves popcorn, chocolate bars, guacamole, etc.

I still need to figure out what the purpose of the powers are and how they'll be important to the narrative, but I figured it would be nice to share this info now to log how my idea has evolved and see what people are feeling about it. I would normally make a character design post on here public for anyone to read, but I think I'll save that for later when I have more of the characters designed and can talk about them more specifically. If this story idea sounds interesting to you, let me know! It's still in the early stages but I think its the most unique thing I've written. It may end up messy but I think I'm pulling from somewhere personal and I'm hoping it connects with more readers than my previous works have.

That's all for Yoli, I've got some other small doodles to share soon! See you next post!