Introducing the New Friends-- Character Design History (Patreon)

Hey hey!

Softies #9 is coming up, and as I've maybe hinted at on here before, in this kinda milestone end-of-Book-1 Episode, we will be heading to Arizona's home planet and visiting his family! Specifically, his two older sisters, SKUTE and ARECIBO! I like them and wanna talk about designing them.

 The challenge I've been anticipating for a long time is that, eventually, I would need to design more individuals of Arizona's species. This is tricky because Arizona was essentially designed in a vacuum, as himself. The question becomes how do I design additional characters that look like they belong to the same species, but don't look like clones of him?

(Drawing from Fall 2015)

I think I've posted this drawing before, but it's relevant! This was me trying to reverse-engineer what a "generic", more naturalistic version of Arizona would look like, scrubbed of cartoon flourishes. The idea is that with a picture like this in my mind, I can use that as the origin point from which other character designs are derived.

(Drawing from Summer or Fall 2015)

This is one of my sketchbook pages exploring what another, not-Arizona character of his species would look like. It mostly involved a lot of wild lumpy head shapes.

(Drawing from September 2015)

So now we're moving into designing these two characters specifically! I eventually came to the idea that the first other characters of the species who we would meet would be Arizona's sisters. 

Skute (or Scute, originally) just kind of appeared on the page for me, weirdly. I had a vivid image of Arizona having an oldest sister who was outspoken and energetic in direct contrast to him, and a very sharp and compact design just sprang out of that naturally. The name was also surprisingly easy-- a scute is a type of hard scale on the back of a reptile, so as soon as I learned that word it was locked in my mind.

(Drawing from January 2016)

The middle sister took a bit more concerted effort, just to even figure out who I wanted her to be. I'm pretty sure I threw her name down on scribbles as "Rose", "Jade", "Chamelia", and probably some other things before I felt cozy with the name "Arecibo". Arecibo's name follows the pattern of Arizona's-- Arecibo is a city in Puerto Rico which is most famous for housing the second-largest radio telescope in the world, which is a wonderful space-y connection.

Her design and character were similarly loose. Eventually I settled on the idea that Skute was Arizona's opposite by being loud and energetic, and Arecibo could be Arizona's opposite by being sensitive and empathetic. In my doodles that would tend to be expressed by round and droopy shapes.

(Drawing from January 2016?)

Here you can see these two designs solidifying, and  I was happy enough with them to scan and color them to place beside an old drawing of Arizona (below).

From this point on, the designs were relatively locked in and just subject to natural evolution and minor tweaks, until 2019 when I finally actually drew them in a comic!

(Drawings from... 2017??? idk somewhere around then)

(Drawing from Spring 2019)

Oh, and of course one final piece of their design-- their eye colors -- never got locked down, so those were improvised by my friend GJ, who created the flats for Episode 9!

Ok, that's it I think! Hope you're getting ready to meet these two coming up! :D