#rin shastis

[nikibogwater]

Quick Rin sketch because my parents’ dog is STILL SCREAMING at the neighbors’ dogs and won’t stop long enough for me to get any substantial work done on the actual book. (I am this close to shipping that dog to a taxidermist I swear--)

[nikibogwater]

Finished my first batch of concept doodles for this spooky boi just in time for Halloween.

Now let’s see if a few hours of scribbling smashed through the terrible writer’s block I was having earlier...

[nikibogwater]

Couple of out-of-context concept doodles because it’s been a while since my last batch.

Also trying to find information on my own original characters is a nightmare because it’s spread out over 2 paragraphs in a Google Doc, various Tumblr posts, and sporadic, twenty-minute sketches like the above on random pages of my sketchbook.

Ah well. I’m sure that won’t come back to bite me later. :-)

[nikibogwater]

Ended up with another batch of concept doodles as I try to nail down Rin and Viri’s dynamic. I thought that would be the easiest part of this whole project. It is, in fact, not. :’) 

I’m having fun figuring it out though. 

[nikibogwater]

Here’s some more out-of-context concept doodles from the past week while I quietly have another mid-project crisis in the corner. Rin looks different every time I draw him. And poor Viri is still stuck in visual development hell.

His name wasn’t originally supposed to be Rin. It’s sort of an inside joke I had with myself that he looks like a cheap knock-off of Lin Casperan from my Casperan Family AU. My plan was to just use Rin as a placeholder name until I could come up with a better one. But then the name just....stuck, and now here we are.

[nikibogwater]

I am so freaking mad at myself. In my last batch of out-of-context concept doodles, I drew Rin reading a book without his reading glasses, which is canonically impossible for him and I couldn’t rest until I had rectified this horrible oversight, so here’s Rin with his glasses from a scene in chapter 1.

[nikibogwater]

another concept doodle/storyboard thingy to help me nail down their relationship. And also pretend like I totally don’t have writer’s block right now. :)

This one goes out to my friend who, when I showed her my first batch of concept doodles for Viri, asked me “Are those freckles or some kind of disease?” 

[nikibogwater]

Concept art is a very important factor in my creative process.

. . . Granted my definition of what constitutes as "concept art" is probably looser than most, but still. Very important.