Differences between Claire, Random and Ruth (W.I.P. + Analysis) (Patreon)

It's time to talk about my drawing style and the differences between the characters I draw the most.
First, let me introduce you Claire Beta 2, my idealized female self-insert O.C. If you're asking about what a self-insertion is, look at this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-insertion
I created Claire Beta 2 in 1994. 1994 was the best year of my life. I was a child, there were great series and movies on TV and everything was pretty much easier and cheaper than right now. So, with a lot of free time, I took a pencil and I copied my own face. Thus, she is the second oldest original character of me. 
How did I create her? 
First, I thought about myself as female. That was easy. I took the facial traits of my face, the dark color of my skin and I drew my hair much longer than it was then. But that wasn't enough. I wasn't satisfied with the results. It's not as if I were born knowing how to draw, and all what I could draw at age 3 were wide and rough lines, flat and square figures, and front views and side views of faces, cars, devices and houses. 
I didin't know how to draw properly, and, given the fact the word "anime" was unknown in my banana republic, I had no way to even explain something as simple as "I want to draw anime. Is there someone out there that can teach me to do so?", so I just improvised. 

The very first anime series I knew was Mazinger Z. The character on this picture is Jun Hono from Great Mazinger (the continuation of Mazinger Z). The design of Claire is mostly based on her, in the same way my drawing style is based on the one from this series. xD
But, surely, you're asking about other drawings of Claire that I have made. The answer is simple: I mixed other characters' features. In this way:

I took the cap from Genzo Wakabayashi (Benji Price or Thomas Price), from Captain Tsubasa (1983 version). xD

I took the braid and the cute sexiness from female Ranma, from Ranma ½ (1989). xD 

 I took the clothes of Kitana from Mortal Kombat 2 (1993). xD

And, finally, I based the design of the armor on the ones that appear on Dragon Ball Z. xD
Alas, as time went forward, I was never satisfied with the results. The only thing that I was able to do in order to learn how to draw was copying screenshots from the video tapes (Betamax, by the way) in which I (or one of my uncles) had recorded some fragments of episodes of Mazinger Z and Saint Seiya (I got most of episodes thanks to my uncle) over and over, until, finally, getting something similar to an anime face. Copying was the easiest part. I learned how to trace drawings by myself. Hard was the part of drawing from scratch, by heart, any character:

Notice the evolution of my drawing style...

This piece of crap comes from 2001. :(

This one comes from early 2007, I think... I can't imagine how people used to buy me drawings that looked like this. :(

I drew ths in early 2011. xD

I'm not sure about whether if I drew this in late 2011 or in early 2012. xD

I made this one in 2012. xD

The best that I could do in 2013. A bad year. :(

The most beloved piece on Pixiv, from 2014. xD

I drew this one in 2015. xD

I re-made it in 2018... on the same sheet of paper! :D

This one is from the year 2019, some days before getting a Patreon's profile. xD

I re-made the 2001 drawing in the last days of 2019... Have the raw, unedited version and notice all the techiical errors. xD

And, finally, this doodle that I started in the very last days of 2020 and I finished in the very early days of 2021. xD

Now, it's my turn to talk about Random, my female Persona or female mascot. Resuming, unlike Claire, Random is my "female me". She is me. I am her. Simple. xD
I created Random (rather, I converted myself in a female character) in 1996. A Nice & Neat year too. And, since I had created Claire already, half of the work was done. However, I needed to make differences between Claire and Random first. And this is where the magic of character designing starts: 
Claire is a fancy and well-mannered woman, an educated woman of culture. She is aware of her sexiness, and she doesn't fear showing it off... According to the moment, place and time (and yet every piece of clothes she wears looks sexy on her). Random, on the contrary, is always provocative, always horny and wears revealing clothes all the time. Why? Claire is a genie that was born as human, whereas Random is an imp with harpy features and succubus powers. They have different natures and behaviors. Therefore, Claire's attire and hairstyle say "I'm fancy and mature", whereas Random's attire and hairstyle say "I want everybody to know I'm horny". Claire is able to make a tuxedo of a bunny suit. Random makes a bunny suit of a tuxedo (literally). xD
Both Claire and Random are badass women with ice in their veins. However, Random's behavior is... well... Random. Random is like mixing Bill Cypher from Gravity Falls with Harley Quinn from Batman's comics. She's mischievous, naughty, wicked and acts randomly. She is a mess. So, her fluffy and messy hair helps to explain this; the mask adds mystery. On the other hand, although Claire's hairstyle is also fluffy and layered, it's not messy. Claire is a tomboy woman: Manly and distant attitude,  a straightforward, laconic, blunt, bleak, gloomy and brutally honest speech, without being rude (remember her manners), and a serious face with a sexy and yet intimidating glare, without being angry nor pissed. The manly sidebangs and her rough facial traits help to explain this. The best part of her is that she doesn't even have to wear a mask to say "I'm a mystery", although she loves to wear it. <3 
Claire is a giantess, by the way. She is seven feet tall. And given the fact she is tomboyish, her body is much more muscular than Random's body, her breasts and buttocks are bigger and her voice is deep and hoarse. The power of her sexiness and her raw power attract the both sexes. If she played the "femme fatale" role of Random, probably you'd get freaked out and scared (unless it be your thing). She is aware of this, so she is rather a gentle and kind dominatrix when playing and mating with her couple or anybody else (remember: she is a mighty genie and can grant wishes even to herself), unless facing antagonists. The way she gets mad at someone is something nobody wants to know. On the other hand, Random is just 5 feet and 7 inches tall. She is not so muscular (she is prepared to be sexy) and, definitely, she is not tomboyish. The power of her sexiness can attract the both sexes, but given the fact she is just an imp with harpy features and succubus powers, her powers have a limit and a lot of soft spots. Claire and Random share the fact that they use libido as source of powers, but, since Random is more like a succubus, libido is her main source of power, so she needs to be sexy and provocative all the time in order to satisfy her daily requeriments of stamina. xD
How did I create Random?
After Mazinger Z and other more anime series, I knew one called Saint Seiya. So I based Random's design on this:

They are Marin, Shaina and June from Saint Seiya. xD
To design Random, I took Shaina's hairstyle and body, Marin's clothes and Jun's whip. I just added the dark skin and then I modified the design and the facial traits of the mask in order to make it to look more similar with my face. 
I designed Random thinking about the idea of "a male that is able to become a female every time he wears a mask", mixed up with the idea of "a magical creature living in a mask that breaks free and express itself via the mask wearer every time the wearer wears the mask". It got mixed with the idea of an Amazon warrior first, then a "magical girl" and a dominatrix at the end. There are a lot of years between every stage of Random's development, and I can say the idea "grew up with me", according to how I discovered the fetish world and its delights, unlike Claire's character development, which is as it is since 2007 and had no modifications since then. <3
Alas, the very first drawings of Random got lost forever...

This one is from the year 2016. xD

This one was finished during the last days of the year 2017 and posted in the very learly days of the year 2018. xD

I drew this in 2018. xD



And these three drawings were made by myself in 2019. xD

Finally, let's talk about Ruth Beta 11, my gynoid O.C. If you don't know what a gynoid is, read this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gynoid 

Ruth is based on Claire. She's a smaller, cuter, cheerful and "juvenile" version of Claire, but with a remarkable difference: Claire was born as human (biological creature) and became a genie (magical creature), whereas Ruth was a creation of Claire, a feminine-shaped (gynomorphic) human-like (humanoid) robot built by herself in order to incarnate a soul that needed to come to our real world (I wish I could tell you more about the book I wrote), mixing magic and technology. So, in that sense, Ruth is Claire's daughter. Simple. xD

Ruth was the result of an indirect creation in the year 1998. I had a dream in which she appeared, being a cute cinammon roll and doing funny things. I just brought the dream to the real world... in a figurative sense as I drew her. But, as I grew up, I needed to set up the differences between Claire and Ruth:

Claire has a bleak, gloomy and edgy and yet a badass personality. She is cold-hearted, calculating, fancy but straightforward and tomboyish, and, in spite of those traits, she has intense, motherly and passionate feelings inside. On the other hand, Ruth is a joyful, romantical, innocent and feminine cutie. That doesn't mean she is hot-tempered (she's not), weak (of course, not!!) or gullible (she used to be that way in the beginning...). Simply, I mean that Ruth's feelings are pretty way more visible and evident, and as intense and passionate as Claire's feelings. You can notice this just watching the straight but more "ordered" and complex hairstyle of Ruth, compared with the manly, fluffy, simpler and slovenly hairstyle of Claire.

Ruth is shorter: 6 ft tall. Also, Ruth is heavier: 480 lb (she is made out of thick metal, hard glass, hard plastic, wires...). And, despite her innocence and cuteness, Ruth is into B.D.S.M. like Claire and Random but, unlike them, she is submissive. The best part of Ruth is that she has a sensitive body, so she can feel the same kind of things that any human would. 

Unlike Claire and Random and their badass and mature attitude towards life, Ruth is rather childish. Imagine a girl in her teens that has fallen in love with someone for first time in her life. But that doesn't mean she's naive, reckless or immature. On the contrary, Ruth is supportive and pretty careful (she is a machine, after all). xD

How did I "create" her?

I knew anime series about "mechas", giant robots, when I was a child. They were amazing. The original idea of Ruth consisted of one of those "mechas", but human-sized, less bulky and more "human". Alas, my very first designs were awful:

Reconstruction of the original designs of my very first 12 O.C.'s

I drew this in 1999...

I drew this in the year 2000...

And this drawing comes from the year 2001...

In the year 2009, thanks to Internet, I had the chance to know anime series and movies that never arrived to my impoverished and underdeveloped country. So, after watching an anime movie, I fell in love with the design of this character:

This gynoid character from Black Magic M-66 (1986) looked so cute, charming and sexy that I had to take it as basis. And so I did. Alas, the first and the best drawings of Ruth I had ever made were stolen. Otherwise, I'd show you the rest of her body. :(

However, during all this period of over 25 years (almost 27, almost a whole life), I have repeated the same technical errors over and over again. Why? Ignorance, perhaps. Or maybe a vice. I have always been bad with adding depth to my drawings, so my brain has to struggle with converting 3D pictures to 2D interpretations. What is the result? I had never noticed that:
Eye corners are also affected by the point of view from which you're seeing them. They aren't flat and straight (despite stylization), but curved.
Considering this, I had always ommited drawing correctly the position of the nasal bone, the zygomatic bone, the glabella and the orbits, regarding the 3/4 view of the head, which always made me to draw "flat" eyes (I had to stare at pictures of skulls several nights in order to notice this). :(
Anime heads follow their own rules of proportion. That means the lower borders of the mandible have different angles and the top of the skull tends to be larger upwards, which make anime heads to look "wider", with "more hair" and cute. But, both in anime and realistic heads, the point in which the mandible gets united to the rest of the skull and the point in which ears and noses must be are the same. I had never noticed that the upper base of the ear must match the lowest part of the nasal bone, whereas its lower base must match the anterior nasal spine (the lower basis of the nose), so I was drawing noses bigger than they should be. :(

Anime hair is not a bunch of spikes randomly set up, but they aren't symmetrically set up either. Hair strands or "spikes" are uneven and yet follow a pattern of ripples that seem symmetrical (fractal-like), according to the way it's set up and depending on their "roots" come from (this is a secret of people whose job consists on cutting hair). Yes, hair is divided in "sections":



So, hair direction is set up according to the section which a hair strand comes from. Knowing this, either wavy and fluffy or flat and straight, hair strands go to the same directions, according to the hairstyles. If I had known this from the very beginning... The point is that now I now why the hair I used to draw looked unnatural, messy and weird. 

Fortunately, I corrected all of these already thanks to the special intervention of Turnip and Lunargue, my most loyal fan, patron and friend. Without their help, perhaps I had quitted drawing forever. I invite you to visit their websites:

https://www.deviantart.com/turnip007
https://www.pixiv.net/en/users/9988077 

http://www.deviantart.com/Lunargue
https://www.pixiv.net/en/users/14114331 

He contributed with the pictures with digital addenda on them. Again, I thank his participation with this post. <3 

As final comment, I'll add some pictures that work as complement for this little tutorial:

I thank the members of my Telegram's group for their contribution. If you're interested, you can join the group at:

http://t.me/JoshBeta1Randomness