Hotwire Insolve BTS: Bulletproof Drive pages 6-9 (Patreon)

Ah, pages 6-9 (nice), we get a lot in these pages—mostly about CyMods and cars! Let's get to it!

link to final spread

we get introduced to our cyber surgeon character and his assistant. the assistant is actually an assistant to both the surgeon AND the mechanic. they help out with the surgery, but are more of a computer expert, which is applicable to both fields in various ways. also they are a thruple, but the surgeon and mechanic get on each others' nerves a lot. the two of them are inspired partly by Newt and Hermann in Pacific Rim, if i'm being honest haha.

i've shared our surgeon publicly before, though i think only cropped pictures on instagram. he's the full sketch page for him (and a bit of the assistant).

he's very no-nonsense and seemingly very knowledgeable, but has trouble finding words sometimes and very particular about his working environment...which is a big problem when your operating room is right next to a chop shop.

we get a look at a detached B-Type CyMod arm in these concepts. Kyrie and Juno have A-Type CyMods. I wanna make a deeper post about CyMods, but the short version is A-Type looks and moves more like a natural body part, B-Type has a more robotic look to it. functionally identical, but the B-Type is much cheaper.

Speaking of, we see under the skin of Kyrie's A-Type CyMod in these pages. Here's an old, old drawing in a random file on my ipad.

I simplified this A LOT cuz i'm not drawing ALL of THAT over and over. The rest of the body under the skin that you see on Kyrie I just made it up as i was drawing the cover haha. The little dots next to the seams on the skin release the skin for access to the underlying cybernetics. there are standard seams most people have, but there are variations depending on the hardware installed.

two last things for this spread here. just some alternate drawings for the last two panels on page 6:

and here's the page without the characters. honestly just showing this off cuz the armatures above the operating chair i drew the once and just copy/pasted/traced it for every other instance you see it hahaha.

OK, onto the next two. We join Juno and the mechanic showcasing some cars.

link to final spread

Juno is enamored by this car on the floor (i'd go into more detail on the Lodestar Jaunt, but I wanna do a separate post for it). the mechanic tries to distract her with others cars emerging from this mechanical car storage wall thing that i made up.

speaking of making things up, in the final comic, the mechanic claims he has trouble selling the car in SC cuz it doesn't have cyber integrated driving assistance so he's gonna break it down for parts. car guys on instagram REALLY responded to these pages (this spread is the top-performing post for the mini!), mostly they liked it. a few folks called my bullshit on that parts detail tho. just taking a moment to defend myself: i'm not really a car guy, i'm making shit up, it's FINE. the mechanic says it's more worth it, it's more worth it. or maybe he's relying on juno's (my) lack of knowledge?? only time will tell.

the cars on the other page are the Exometa Superego and the MANTO F.E. 4. the Superego we've seen before, I actually just traced an old drawing for it. that wasn't planned, but the angle was similar enough—work smarter not harder, ya know? it's the same model that a character from another story I have in mind uses: Blake. Blake we've seen before, both on my socials and lil bit in "The Good Stuff" for those who subscribe 🙂. The MANTO I just winged it when i got to drawing the backgrounds, haha.

Here's the company logos for these two:

uhhhhhh, that's it! Til next time!