#franollie

[abacistat]

can we get kon & krypto doodles 🤲

you can absolutely get kon and krypto doodles!!! i love them so so so much my sillies. the superdogs plural if u will.

[lemonlimestar]

i absolutely adore your designs! id love to hear about your process for making characters who look similar in canon have unique and identifiable features!!

tysm :,) i’ve always been really into character design so it’s fun to translate that into characters i love.

as for making similar looking characters look different i drew up a little lineup.

this is gonna be a long one sjhdjsjs

cassie, steph, and mia are all beloved white, blonde, *skinny, teenage girls with roughly the same appearance so i decided to focus in on them.

(*they’re usually portrayed as being muscular/fit but nowhere near in same fashion as their male counterparts)

i wish there was a fancier way to put it, but honestly i just play around with shape language until i get a design i like. i try to lean into motifs/commonalities. (ex: the robins have larger noses to be sort of bird-like, cissie has a heart face to tie into the connection between archery & cupid, the house of el s-curl, cassie’s pigtails are shaped like stars) overall, doing lineups like these are really helpful when trying to make characters look different because it shows you a side-by-side of all the similarities & differences in how i draw the characters.

especially when they interact a lot (ex: wally & roy, kon & tim, cissie & greta) i don’t want them looking like siblings or to repeat the same features between characters who already look similar. unless i’m playing into that (dick & donna <3)

when changing race or body types, i try to factor in the actual character & their backstory. i tend to draw cassie stockier because of her more brawler-like fighting style + her being one of shorter yj kids. but also, i made greta chubby both because i thought it worked well with her shape language and i simply wanted to. the world is my oyster.

as for race, i’m a lot more careful about thinking about how being non-white would affect a character. i have to know a decent amount about a character before hitting them with The Self-Indulgence Beam. making a character black, brown, or asian shouldn’t be slapped on like a sticker without any care put into it. i feel like it’s a well-known point, but it’s worth mentioning especially because i’m black & i make so many characters non-white when i draw them.

back to canon portrayals, they’re some unique features given to them (ex: steph’s freckles aren’t always drawn but they do get featured a few times) so i try to make things like that a permanent physical feature. the curls were simply inspired by some other stephs i’ve seen :) i typically hc that she straightens & crimps them when she’s a teenager but i drew her with them for this example. i got very self-indulgent with my steph design because she’s my girl, but i also tried to keep in mind how she complements the people she interacts with the most (cass, tim, babs).

although i’ve enjoyed what i’ve read with her, i know the least about mia. so, i just gave her features i’d like to see more on teenage characters like acne. i pulled from some panels for the shape of her nose and adjusted the shade of her hair about a million times. i debated on giving her piercings, but ended up going against it because she doesn’t have invulnerability nor a full face mask & she doesn’t have piercings in any of the panels i saw of her.

although i’m not the hugest fan of the reveal of cassie secretly being a demigod rather than just having been given her powers, her being not entirely human gives me a little bit more leeway with her design in my head. hence the stark blonde in her lashes being inspired by fantasy design i enjoy.

one more thing i almost forgot was scars. obviously heroes with no powers would have more visible scars. just with the bats: they all have body scarring but i draw cass with more facial scars because of her history + she’s herself so she wouldn’t bother covering them v.s. tim, who doesn’t have visible facial scars bc he’s Very Particular about appearances, but he has a crooked nose.

scars can be fun to play with as far as trying to remember what happens to certain characters that would leave them scarred (cissie’s scar where the arrow went through her, any scars kon got from literally dying, wally’s or barry’s scarring from their “accidents”) they’re an interesting trait to add & reflects the whole vigilantism thing.

okay i think that’s all the thoughts i have. ik this got kinda rambley but i hope it was helpful 😭

here are some closeups, as a treat <3

[stephexmachina]

🌻

hi fran!!!!! i saw your post about making stephcass supporter badges & that is SUCH a fun idea omg that would be so cute in your art style...... it's such a shame that the sistergate thing would make Zero sense to anyone else 💔

also, i hope you don't mind that i was struck by a lightning bolt of inspiration!! it's admittedly less of an edit & more of a coping mechanism 😔

[mamawasatesttube]

honestly im so impressed with how much of a magnet your posts are for stupid people. it feels like every other day you make a post like “comics are really cool and i wish people in the fandom actually read them because they’re fun to talk about” and then 20 people will flock to that post talking about how “comics suck actually and i’ve never read one but im doing just fine in the fandom” explicitly proving your point

SJLDKFJDLS yeah it's really something to behold!!! honestly at this point every time i get a burst of new followers im just like okay hold on i have to make a post about how i don't care for that whole "reading comics is bad" thing just preemptively so people are aware that thats what im about. and then it casts a spell of "summon illiterate moron to my notes". every time!!!

[swipeoncomicpolls]

cissie king-jones

🫡 is this photo okay?

[mysteriousbeetle]

🌻

hi fran!

these are two bracelets i made:

they are kandi cuffs. i think kandi originates from and is popular within the rave community. the one on the left is one that i made inspired by the huntress (helena b). and the one on the right is one that's inspired by batgirl (cass). the batgirl one is a rotator cuff so the part around the middle can rotate and i don't remember what the other one is called. but they are fun to make and it's fun to think of the colors to use to represent characters. and for the batgirl one if you look you can see i used some bat beads for it which i thought were cute.

[cloudeling]

talia in b6

this is my first time drawing her properly actually !!

outfit meme

[havendance]

20 & 25 for helena!!

20. Which other character is the ideal best friend for this character, the amount of screentime they share doesn’t matter?

Answered here!

25. What was your first impression of this character? How about now?

First impressions: I thought she was cool 💜 Both pre-getting into DC and encountering her as the Bat in one volume of No Man's Land I read (though I had no idea who she was) and in Detective Comics 652/653 when I encountered her for the first time for real.

Now: I still think she's cool but also there's her fear and her rage and the way that she struggles and fails... It's all so important to me.