BUBBLEGUM CRISIS: GRAND MAL pitch sketches, pt. 2 (Patreon)

This month, my Patreon's informal "Design Tuesday" feature will be featuring my initial, circa-1992 sketches of the lead characters from the anime Bubblegum Crisis, drawn as part of my Studio Proteus pitch to write and draw an original, English-language BGC comic miniseries. (Non-SPOILER ALERT: The proposal was eventually successful, and in 1994 wound up producing the 4-part Dark Horse miniseries Bubblegum Crisis: Grand Mal, sadly long of print and never to be reprinted due to intractable licensing issues.)

A few words, as we continue with Sylia Stingray:

Not sure where the hell the "Celia" bit came from, TBH. My apologies, Sylia! 

UPDATE: In retrospect, I probably hadn't yet seen the subtitled AnimEigo editions of the BGC anime when I drew these pieces, and was just guessing at how to spell her name based off the phonetic katakana characters for it. 

As noted previously, I drew these initial takes on the Knight Sabers' hardsuits and character designs on my once-beloved linen-finish cardstock as a time-saving alternative to producing fully-inked illustrations, which would've taken too long while I was still in the midst of finishing off the artwork for the last few issues of Dirty Pair: Sim Hell. Not an ideal medium, TBH, but what the heck.

Behold, an early stab at protoreference, as that figure shot of Sylia (aka Celia, whoops) was almost certainly based off a Japanese fashion photo of some sort.

Interestingly enough, while BGC designer Kenichi Sonoda was one of my key artistic influences in my first decade of manga inspiration, I can't say that I'd specifically riffed off his character designs until Grand Mal. I'm happy to say that I got a lot better at emulating his approach during the actual miniseries.

Next Tuesday, another Knight Saber! But WHO...?

TOMORROW ON THIS HERE PATREON: The DISTRESSED DAMSELS weekly feature for the $5+ Patron tiers rolls on, but at present (as I schedule this post in advance on Nov. 3) I have no idea precisely what that content might be.