Okay, I didn’t get to read everything because I need to catch the bus and holy damn that’s a big text. But that reminded me.. if it really has been a long time since 1-A… could we, like, get some drawings of the characters in your current style? Like, just doodles?
thanks anon!! sorry i do tend to get a lil carried away when people ask me ab my process for things LOL
i admit it's been far too long since i've had a chance to really sit down and work on the comic, and a lot of it really just stems from me being super busy :( i CAN say i've learned a ton in the time i've taken off from it though, so i'm excited to give it another go now that i've grown a lot more confident in my anatomy and whatnot.
my goal is to get the ball rolling again either next month or the month after, it depends on how much work/life obligations give me the grace to do it. here's a doodle that got wayyy away from me in the meantime :]
Love that there are two persona au's of wild kratts going around, i might actually reveal some parts of mine for the Twisted kratts, but lovely au, i will probably read up on it
oh god i havent used this blog in. Years. where did you people come from
Hey Skip? I was just wondering, and I hope this doesn't sound too ignorant, but what does it mean to have pronouns like she/they? Does it mean one should use them in equal amounts? Or is one preferred over the other?
totally fine anon!! it varies from person to person so i can only speak for myself on this, but i personally use she/they because using JUST she/her has never quite sat right with me. i'm okay with being referred to as she because that's what i believe defines me the most, but i'm also okay w being called they/them because i don't always feel Entirely like a girl.
i kinda went off on a tangent but tl;dr – people who use more than one variation of pronouns are entirely interchangeable, but the degree to which one is preferred over the other entirely depends on the person :]
Hope I'm not bothering in any way..just have two questions.. where's mocha?- and.. Are you going to post Overdrive on some webcomic app at some point?
you're not bothering at all!! it's always a treat to see an ask in my inbox :]
mocha's Technically my hfr sona, so when i made her she wasn't really attached to any bigger thing beyond "here's what my self insert would be up to during the events of the game" - i admit they've kinda been on my oc backburner for a while LOL
this Did inspire me to do a quick doodle of her to see what she'd look like in my current style tho. she's still around, just hibernating :p
as for overdrive - i've gotten this question a couple times in the past actually. it's certainly something i've been considering, i just haven't really had the time to sit down and look into what all goes into getting it uploaded onto a site like that ^^;
the general conclusion i've come to is i wanna get a bit more of the story posted before i move it over to a dedicated comic site (most likely comicfury), especially since i'm already uploading it here and to AO3. i'll probably look into it in earnest once track 1-b is done and posted, so the short answer is Likely In The Future :]
Goooodnight miss skip- just have a little question..about oc creation actually! Got any tips? Thought process??
ohhh this was a fun one to think on, i wanted to wait til i got home from DnD night to answer this one so sorry for the wait!!
quick disclaimer before i dive in, it's prob not necessary but i figure i'd say it anyway - i'm in no way a professional when it comes to this kind of thing ^^; i didn't go to art school nor do i have any kind of industry job, this is mostly just my own process based off what's worked for Me Personally in the past. bottom line is ALWAYS to have fun and do what you think is cool lmao
so my OC creation process kinda varies depending on What i'm going to be using the character for. for DnD characters i usually just kinda pick a character trope that i wanna do an interesting spin on and expand my ideas from there, while one-off OCs (typically p rare for me) are mostly just kinda born from vibes.
(i'll hide the rest under a read more since this got pretty lengthy oops)
BUT. if i'm working on a project that calls for the creation of an original character or cast of characters, there's usually a few questions i like to ask myself before i get into the specifics:
if this character is the protagonist, what kind of person does the narrative call for in order to bring out the strongest message/themes?
if this character is Not the protagonist, what relation, if any, do they have to them? how are they meant to help or hinder their journey? what relationship(s) do they have with the other characters in the cast?
what are the character's core motives? what's their general outlook on life/the world around them? or, if you wanna get real deep into it: what is the one thing that, no matter how stressful or life-changing the circumstances are, they will never, ever concede on?
and a bonus question - are there any loose character concepts i've had lying around that could work for what i need here? (fun fact: C1-TRS was born from a scrapped dnd character LMAO)
and like, yeah this is straight out of Intro To Storytelling 101 but when you get down to it these (at least in my opinion) are the building blocks upon which all the cooler bells and whistles sit upon. and, of course, i always like to follow the writing advice of Nothing Is Sacred - if you ever feel like you need to go back and change anything about a character to make them fit into the bigger picture better, by all means!
anyway, now that the foundations part is out of the way, next i usually get into general personality traits and demeanor. i like to nail these Before i get into designing because i find that knowing what Kind of person the character is helps inform a lot of how they present themselves. i'll be using Rocoto as my example for this moving forward (i sadly can't elaborate on the first part with them for obvious spoiler reasons lol)
so for Rocoto, i knew from the beginning that their role in the story is to be Chai's foil/rival. the shadow to Chai's sonic (or, in the words of my friend Bea, the riku to his sora). similarly, a lot of their personality traits came forward pretty quickly - they're more serious and intimidating, with a no-nonsense attitude that often comes off as impatient to the unfamiliar eye. they let their actions do the talking far more than words, and their loyalty to the one(s) they work for is evident from the moment we're first introduced to them. but, of course, there's more to that tough exterior -- even if they're careful not to show it.
so, putting all these ideas together, the vision for this character already started to form - lots of dark colors and sharp edges, with an outfit that makes it clear they're meant to be the Mysterious Rival Character. and now we get to the fun part: Pinterest digging yayyyyy
i actually have pin boards for basically every character i've ever designed, but here's a glance at Rocoto's:
i knew i wanted their design to reflect that they've had a Lot more body modification than chai (the mechanical arm And leg was one of the first things i decided on, design wise), but also that i wanted their design to convey that whatever prosthetics they have is a lot Rougher around the edges than vandelay's signature clean, blocky shapes. i also knew that their leg was going to undergo a lot of stress from fast-paced movement, so i looked to real-life designs of prosthetic legs for athletes to base its design off of.
and then FINALLY, we can get into the actual designing part. this step requires a lot of iteration. like, a lot of it. to be honest, i didn't do it NEARLY enough for rocoto. taking the lessons i've learned up to now, i think i could've been a lot bolder with the silhouette differences i came up with.
but that's neither here nor there -- here's some sketches i did while i was figuring out their design :] (shoutout to my friends for putting up with the 8 million screenshots i sent to our wips channel, a lot of their feedback is what helped me get to the version we see now)
as you can see, color palette was...a bit of a challenge 😭 since Rocoto is meant to be Chai's foil, i decided early on that i wanted their palette to be an Inverse of Chai's, but lo and behold a palette comprised mostly of secondary colors is. not the easiest to work with </3 (BUT WE DID IT)
of course, i also needed to take the Context in which this character was going to appear in into account as well. i most likely would've left their final design as is if they were going to be a character i was only going to draw every once in a while, but they're supposed to be in a webcomic - which means i'd be drawing them A Metric Fuck Ton in A Lot Of Different Angles. much like animation, the best way to preserve your own sanity is to simplify designs you know you'll be drawing a lot as much as you are able. eventually i landed on their final version below (note the simplified design for their arm and their leg):
and...that's about everything i can think of- WAIT NO NAMES. I FORGOT NAMES
i'm gonna be completely honest dawg i don't have a method for names 😭 i DO recommend looking at census data for common names in different countries if you want to avoid the fucking babynames dot com hellscape but beyond that my approach really has no rhyme or reason.
Rocoto i suppose is a rare exception; Chai is a generally creamy/sweet flavor, while Rocoto is named after the Rocoto pepper, which is extremely spicy (shoutout to my friend Cherie for that idea btw, i probably wouldn't have thought to make their names opposites as well LOL)
quick bonus round before i end this off but another way i nail down a character's personality/story is through playlists :] i listen to music A Lot so being able to arrange the playlists i make in a way that helps me visualize that character's story does so much to feed into the ideas i have for them (music playlists is actually how i figure out almost All of my storytelling, but that's a ramble for another day). here's a glimpse at Rocoto's for funsies:
alright, NOW that's everything i've got on character creation. i have no idea if any of it was helpful but i hope it at least gave some insight on how i go about it!
bonus bonus doodle i did the other day as thanks for reading all the way to the end lmao
