Welcome to Cha-Chas! (12) (Patreon)
Content
12/12
At Cha-Chas, every guest is treated to a warm voluptuous welcome.
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Alright, rambling time below.
Like I said at the onset, I had a lot of fun working on this series, and from what I’ve read in the comments, it seems you did as well.
I had several ideas on how to approach this. I went back and forth about having an explicit cause for the transformation; ideas included her getting hypnotized by a new-employee orientation video, or hormone-laced food & beer. Ultimately though, I went with the decision to leave details such as causes or timelines purposefully vague and ambiguous, which can open up the door for everyone to imagine their own interpretations for what’s happening (I really enjoyed reading some of your theories in the comments). The fact that her transformation never gets explicitly addressed but happens while she otherwise conducts her business was an interesting way to approach it as well – kind of like watching someone physically adapting to the environment.
I also debated how to visually portray the sequence. At first, I was going to format it with just Trisha with abstract shapes as a background similar to “College Corruption” or “Selling Out”. Then I decided instead to create full scenes for each page like I did for “Reversible”, which opened Pandora’s box for creating a ton more work for myself.
First, I acquired and customized a restaurant set for the scenes, and then fill it with supporting characters and extras. “Reversible” was a series that involved a few characters and a dozen different environments, and “Welcome to Cha-Chas” was the exact opposite. For each page I had to re-skin and morph all the diners (the ones Trisha interacts with AND the ones in the background). Then I ended up creating a full supporting cast of waitresses that pop up throughout the series. When I got to this final page and I realized how big Trisha transformed from the first page, I realized I needed to give each of the other girls custom morphs of their own to match her. So even though they spend most of the time in the background, the other waitresses are all transforming at pace alongside Trisha the whole time. I even named each girl if for no other reason than it helped me keep track of them in the project menus while working. For those interested; from left to right it's Lexi, Sasha, Trisha, Haley, and Kiki.
One thing I did know I wanted to do regardless of which suggestion won the original poll was to have a redhead. Don’t ask why – it’s been a while and I just had the urge to create a red-haired bimbo. Something I realized after the fact and developed by accident is that I made a freckled ginger named “Patty” as the lead character, so she definitely has some Irish in her.
There were a couple ways I thought about concluding the series. One as discussed a bit in the comments was to bring it full circle and have Trisha being the mentor for another new hire. What made decide against doing that was the feeling of an endless loop and creating an expectation to see the newest girl transform as well. I already essentially created five bimbo waitresses, I felt that was enough. Also, I wanted an ending that focused more on closing Trisha’s arc than introducing another new character. This ending better solidifies Trisha absorbing into the Cha-Chas! Family and becoming one of the girls. It also codifies the series title in a nice way.
If it were to happen, having Trisha mentoring a new hire will probably work better as a bonus or epilogue page, like a post-credits stinger that happens after the primary story has wrapped up. We’ll see, I won’t rule it out.