i am at a total loss at what to name them, but my self insert (& selfship) for GOAT (2026) !! they're a brown hyena that helps Jett see the joys in life after the events of the movie (vague to spoil as litle as possible!! you should really watch this film!!!)
Drawn Sept 18 - 23 2025 (second image is below since I wanted to seperate context)
This all was from a bigger sketchpage of drawing old ocs. These two have a very complicated history in their many drafts: they've been very different characters as well as coming from originally one character & I'm gonna talk about them all too.
The first iteration was "Austin", he was a side character and temporary antagonist. He stole some necklace that gave the main character of that draft, Penelope/Vanessa*, her superpowers. I don't remember what the powers were or why he did it but he eventually became friends with them
*one of these names might've actually went to a different character from some other story. Around this time, I had a bunch of highschoolers-with-superpowers/magic stories... Andelina and Kian and some others are from another different one (Kass here originally was from that one too but they aren't anymore). you could tell roughly what demographic I was- Actually, you still can.
The (I think) next iteration had him as a serial killer? I think he was named "Reece" at this point and looked pretty different. and there might've been another villainous role as well here but I remember these the least
Anyway the last version of "Reece" I had before picking this up again (and what I used for inspiration here) is the one with the orange sweater, and he'd become the main character. Reece is a young trans(?) boy who was born and spent his early childhood in Australia, moved to the UK probably around when his younger sister was born, and now is in Canada with his extended family. He's got some ability that let him do illusions or affect people's perceptions or something, I don't remember the specifics. He's also an artist, he had at least one OC, some girl with pink hair.
I don't know what the ghost-cat was about but it was in a drawing and I decided to keep it here. I think it was just a creation of his though.
At some point I wanted to bring back some things from those old drafts, so the other guy is named Austin, now a separate guy (and my pfp!). There were many versions of this character afterwards as well but in his last version, he was Reece's slightly older, Canadian cousin and also the big villain that Reece has to defeat. I don't know if it was a point of dramatic irony or something that the audience discovered alongside Reece (I also don't know which bit of info you knew first. When I was working on this I thought it was that you just knew they were cousins first, but I think it might've been the other way round).
He had the ability to control ink, and different colours had different effects when he used them. idk what they were (except one but that definitely has to be changed)
Austin was never properly drawn back then (because I didn't know how to) but I did remember he had dark curly hair, rolled up sleeves, and tattoos. Probably was also an artist? I wanted him to look similar to Reece here, so he'd feel like he could be Reece's cool older brother. The closeness makes the reveal hurt more :3
I wanted to do a height comparison on the left but I. drew their fuckin heights wrong.
So. Technically Reece is correct albeit I didn't take into account that Reece's shoes added some height. He was 5'/152cm, idk how much the shoes added, probably an inch.
Austin however was definitely taller. I remembered he was tall… but I forgot he used to be my tallest. He wasn't 7'/213cm or over for sure but he miiight've been close. I dunno. I can at least say he was taller than some others I had around the same time. There's another character I think might've been 6'5/196cm or so, so there's some estimate.
He's now 6'10"/208cm though
Also proportions are probably off yada yada I've already redone it and other things about them anyway, you've seen a little with Austin, his face proportions are different and he's got a scar on his forehead.
Reece now has treacher-collins syndrome.
I don't do dialogue too often in drawings and it's because I always immediately get super self-conscious about it, but like I want to get better….
Part of it is probably because I don't script it in advance, I'll have an idea but when I'm writing I won't remember it 100% or not know how to put my thoughts together. disjointed thoughts work a lot better in your head than on paper…..
I don't know if you can tell, but I struggle with writing and communication a lot. part of the reason I like art: I don't gotta fuckin describe things!!! until I try to write alt text for my art augh augh augh augh (I only have them here on tumblr and there's a lot without ids, guess why? Well, it's also the wrist issues, but y'know.)
ANYWAY I was not fully sure Austin's personality/anything else in this story really
I kept going back & forth on a lot of little things that it's just…. all of it adds up y'know?
Some of the other characters from recent stuff I haven't talked about much also have had this problem- (some others used to, and I haven't had the chance to talk about them since as well)
Also I didn't know the story that well either
The dialogue is sometime right after Austin is revealed to be secretly evil & we don't know what all his powers are yet
One thing I've heard so much about is "colour meanings", yellow- typically is supposed to be like, joy or whatever
But the yellow-ish colour palette I used was more to invoke a lesser talked about association- it's like, sickly
I think this is ooc now, I don't think he'd ever be so mean to Reece. That and he speaks French now.
Okay- he is bilingual and may sometimes switch to english with his cousin while he's learning… but he does mostly speak French since he is Québécois (From Saint-Jérôme specifically, it's northwest of Montréal.)
If I did do a comic, I would base the speech bubbles on each languages quotation marks ("" vs «») so you could tell which they're speaking at any given time.
