Softies Lineup, circa 2011 (Patreon)

Something that's been keeping me busy lately is updating my visual development portfolio, so now seems as good a time as ever to show this, uh, frankly painful fossil This is the earliest lineup I'm aware of for Softies, and, there's a lot here.

First up is the first human character I had designed, her name was Kathy because I sure am creative. She had these freckles and buck teeth and big wild hair and dark clothes? There was a lot happening at once. Years later when I sorta started over from scratch, I decided to narrow the focus to just the wild hair, and I went with short hair this time so that it didn't swallow up her arms or face.

Then there's this lizard character, the proto-Arizona. I called him Pudding, but I was never 100% happy with that name, nor was I ever 100% happy with the design. I always wanted more of a lizard look and less of like, a skinny dragon man with a belt. Frankly, the biggest thing holding me back from drawing what I envisioned back then was the limited range of body types I was comfortable drawing. Arizona clicked for me, design-wise, when I realized that I could draw him fat.

Euclid is always the most recognizable in old stuff but idk why he's bipedal here? I guess he was bipedal for a while.

The next two characters are more obscure. Back when Softies was a vague concept rather than a story I was actively writing, I struggled to envision what the supporting cast would be. By way of worldbuilding, most characters who emerged were world leaders, which is what these two are. 

Trouty Fishlips still canonically exists (he's namedropped in the comic so I have to live with him being canon now). Back then I envisioned him as a business tycoon with no moral scruples who had essentially bought out his planet.

Tex Avian was little more than his name. He's definitely a visual ancestor to Thestrich O'heron though, so, there's that!