Post your concept art, early character designs, early story ideas. Really get into the nitty-gritty of what your story is about and why it is in its current form. (You can link your story afterward)

Heidifisk 2024-09-12 05:58:27 UTC #1

Just feel like instead of the usual post your story link, this might get people to really see stuff they like and have a more natural interaction.

I'll start.

Evening Star: Connecting Strings is actually just an adaptation of a single route from a visual novel me and another friend was planning. Another route featuring and different female lead was actually already written and released on amazon. And it felt like a good idea to release another route in a different format not to confuse readers.

(It's also why the story has a subtitle)

All the female leads in the novel are actually 30+ Even if the male main character is in his early twenties. This was partly just because of preference, that and you rarely see female characters that age in somewhat action focused roles.

Alma's route was picked for the VN since it fit the best as a webcomic, with the other female characters routes being a bit too novel like to really fit in a comic format.

Alma herself was designed to be Hispanic. Again no real reason for the choice, just to have more varied designs with the love interests.

She went through a ton of different character design changes throughout the creation processes.
My biggest regret is that I didn't make her horns sharper for the final design.

The town of Hadwe was also based on my home city, which is why it's a beach city. We even took picture of land marks ect.

There is a lot more, like Donner's design being based on a really early draft.

The main inspiration was Tsukihime. Though it was being written before the tsukihime remake came out, so it more leans into the original jank 1999 tsukihime energy.

Though I do wonder since Tsukihime got a remake my story became somewhat redundant.

Eclair herself was originally supposed to come off as a bit harsher, but the artist took the script a bit differently compared to original visual novel artist.

Leyelle 2024-09-12 13:39:08 UTC #2

These are the oldest and newest pics of my female lead. Let me explain.

This character's name is Mora Glas. She's a fifteen-year-old phant, specifically a mermaid.

Phants are a divergent branch of humans, scientifically called Homo Phantasma, that throughout history have been tokened "fairies, mermaids, dragons" and other kinds of monsters. For this reason, they have to disguise their identities and avoid being known as phants to the general public, because people will kidnap them for freakshows, attack them out of malice, or taxidermy them for special collections.

Mora has a harder time than most keeping her identity a secret, because her looks are uncommon even for a human, while most phants appear like "normal" people with the exception of a few traits like wings or horns.

Mora has a combination of skin irregularities that actually don't relate to her being a phant at all, including melanism and vitiligo, that lead her to have purple markings on her face and hair, and these have made her the particular target of a man referred to by the government as The Actaeon. He wants her for his freak show since she would be the 'freakiest' or 'oddest' looking mermaid out there, and thus gain the most attention from curious visitors. Most mermaids look like ordinary people unless they are submerged in water, at which point their skin cracks forming blue channels, and their bioluminescence kicks in, but that's not as outlandish or interesting in his opinion.

The first attempt at drawing Mora's vitiligo was honestly terrifying, but it's been redesigned now and the pattern now looks like this.

However, the most recent picture of her is how she usually looks, because she covers her markings with makeup and dyes her hair black.

kyupol 2024-09-12 19:12:59 UTC #3

Early char design of Akala, my vilainess in AngHell Dela Blackpill. Her weapon was originally supposed to be attached to her hand.

But later on, I decided on a big sword instead just looks cooler that way in my opinion

vapidink 2024-09-12 22:51:30 UTC #4

My newest story is Antemortem, which is an action/adventure BL and the initial concept was a dark fantasy with necromancy as a focus as far as the magic shown in the story goes. And it's pretty much not changed from that, lol. Because it's a contest entry and was developed on the fly, the initial concept is pretty much what I'm working with right now.

The character designs are also pretty much the same. Here's the two leads, Cassian; a necromancer who's half-dead (literally, half his life was stolen so he's just dying slowly). He's a bit of a nihilist, so he's pessimistic and sort of doesn't really like people. As far as visuals go, he's meant to look like he's half-dead, lol. Cassian has had a drastic change in appearance from what he looked like before the start of the story, which will be revealed later, so for now yeah, think half-dead hermit who's incredibly jaded and pretty depressed. He did end up with a little snarkier attitude than what I'd planned, but just a bit.

Then there's the other lead, Elias! He's a thief, so his clothes are a bit more practical, but simple and there's a couple details with "sentimental value" from his past mixed in. (cough scarf and dagger cough) Again, there's really no changes to his appearance or his attitude, tbh. He's a bit wild, a bit rough around the edges, but still ultimately good.

And here they are on the cover, along with the Big Bad. They're pretty much the same.

ArtGremlin 2024-09-12 23:00:09 UTC #5

HELP THE LORE FOR HOW I GOT TO MY CURRENT CHARACTERS IS CRAZY- But, I think “Recollections of the Prince” has the least crazy lore behind how I got to the current story. I’ve talked about August before, and I’m not currently making my other stories, so I’ll go with RotP.

It was probably two years ago when I drew the first character. This character is literally only in ONE scene in the entire comic, and near the end too. I was using a random adjective generator to design characters. I think one of the adjectives was “crazy” but that’s all I remember.

The next character was Deavon, the MC’s brother and king of the island. I think he was designed around the same time as the crazy guy. He was supposed to be an antagonist to the crazy guy in the og story. I think he had a little bit of a temper back then, but now he’s the chilliest guy ever.

Then there’s the MC, Xivian (Xivion back then) he was supposed to be the “real” antagonist for the og story back when crazy guy was MC, like jk the king isn’t evil, THIS GUY IS!!

Now how did the story turn from that, to what it is now? Mev.
I was sitting in my Algebra 2 class and decided that I needed to design Xivian’s girlfriend. He was always supposed to have one. They were “partners in crime” but I never really designed her. She was supposed to be this lady with scales on her limbs (based off a lego character that my sister made) but I was like- let’s take that scales thing and apply it to her hair. So I decided she was a Gorgon and came up with a design pretty quickly. (Originally she was just going to be “Medusa” but clearly that didn’t stick.)

After I designed her I started thinking, “why is Xivian evil? How did he meet Mev?” Then I decided that he used to be a sad, pathetic, emo guy before he met her, but then she “helped” him to become the confident, sassy, evil guy he is later.

Over time the story became more focused on Xivian and Mev’s relationship and how they got to know each other, so I was like- “okay looks like this is a romance now. Xivian, you’re the MC.” (Technically the main genre is Drama… maybe I should change that. I may just be holding on to past conceptions of what my story was supposed to be.)

Now the story is an exploration of Xivian’s life, the good and the bad, instead of knock off Miraculous Ladybug. (Don’t ask- but yeah that was pretty much the plot of the first concept. Except no magic jewelry, just a rock.)

talking about this stuff is like my favorite thing if you can’t tell.

Heidifisk 2024-09-13 01:07:34 UTC #6

Oh that cover is really nice! The two leads compliment each other well color and design wise.

Heidifisk 2024-09-13 01:10:20 UTC #7

Honestly, stories evolving like that is always really interesting!

I tend to write out most of my story before giving it to my artist to draw (Often when I don't things get a bit... messy) but that has a knock on effect of being very flexible if the story is suited for a comic format.

From the sounds of it, you leaned more into an idea that worked better for your story/plot! And also what you liked to draw!

theyrebothakilogram 2024-09-13 14:56:59 UTC #8

I won't lie, I started my story in a rush the only thing I drew specifically for my comic was this, because it had existed in my head for many years, but I was really bad at writing things down/drawing them

I try to think back to why I started my comic, but I can't for the life of me remember. I do know that I started it when I was supposed to be studying for finals but that's about it. But back when the story was still just in my head I did have a few different ideas that eventually got scrapped. Originally Steel's friends weren't going to be physical people, they were going to be more like apparitions that followed him around and gave him bad advice, but I scrapped that so they could play a bigger part in the story. I've also tweaked feather's personality a lot so that she's more of a cohesive character instead of a plot emulator. The big story beat's are still pretty much the same (I've only really got to one of them so far ) but character backstories and such have changed slightly along the way

Rowan_Lane 2024-09-13 17:02:57 UTC #9

I have some messy character art I did before they became solidified in my mind.

Leyelle 2024-10-03 16:33:55 UTC #10

This is a character design sheet I made for Alicia Palmero. She's the female lead of my novel "Damsel in the Red Dress."

Damsel in the Red Dress is about a Mexican and Navajo artist who is trying to figure out how to move forward in life after the car accident that paralyzed her best friend. The original version of the story was supposed to be about her search to find beautiful things to send her friend while he was in the hospital, but it has since diverged a whole lot into the process of mental health recovery, and the two becoming a couple as they work through their pasts and relational trauma.