Con sketches of variant "hot pants" Dirty Pair, from the early 2000s! (Patreon)

Wellp, on my recent poll querying you fine folks about what you'd like to see more of on this here Patreon, "older con sketches" and "Dirty Pair material" scored strongly, so I'm combining 'em for this post. (Feel free to weigh in on the poll, which I'll be checking back in on from time to time.)

Through the 90s and into the early 2000s, I was doing so many con sketches of Kei and Yuri during the summers that I grew bored with the default character and costume designs, and started messing around with variations aplenty to keep myself interested. One of the more "out-there" con-sketch iterations was the design I dubbed "hot pants 'n' garter belts," for obvious reasons. This wasn't a take I would've used in an actual, published Dirty Pair comic, but the variant look did keep me reasonably entertained whilst cranking out sketches. 

Note that the sketch of "kung fu fighting" (technically, wing chun's "sticky hands" tactic) above wound up colored for a bonus feature in the Dirty Pair: Sim Hell Remastered reissue, but I don't possess a digital file for that sucker.

The sketch of Kei above looks photoreferenced to me; why, it's a 2002-era example of life drawing (sorta)! For the record, I do still kinda like Kei's ponytail from this variation.

Earlier iterations of the ever-changing outfit featured a jacket, too:

To put it mildly, I was drawing some very different physiques and facial designs on my characters back then. (Those ultra-stylized, almost "pointy" facial outlines on the girls are certainly an, ahem, bold choice.)

The hot pants, opera gloves, garters & stockings would never appear in a "real" Dirty Pair story, but they did eventually inspire the costume that Sistah Spooky would wear in Empowered.

Anyhoo, happy 4th of July for my American Patrons, and hope you enjoyed this holiday trip down memory lane!