CheshireCatNY
2nd Level Orange Feather
- Joined
- Sep 27, 2002
- Messages
- 2,353
- Points
- 36
Since I didn’t come up with an Anniversary toon this year, I decided to make this little presentation instead, showing the gradual evolution of my characters up to the most recent versions and going into their initial character creation process….(images below) You can view the new designs by themselves in the Cali and Friends Bio’s thread….
In the beginning, when I was still going under the name “Doctor Insaniac”, my original idea for a series was called “Tiki Toa Tau” about a coed frat house on a college campus with very unique residents living there including a dominatrix and her slave, a mature hippy spiritualist and a male exotic dancer. The central duo was a pair of brothers who would inevitably evolve into Cheshire Cat and the villainous Doctor Insaniac for the Cali and Friends series.
After my hiatus and screen name change, I got to work on my “first draft” of the Cali and Friends series called “Cheshire Manor” in which Cheshire Cat lived in this big mansion and a group of females “won” the opportunity to live there free of charge in exchange for dealing with his particular form of “leisure activities.” Basically it was like a cross between the Heffner Mansion and a Reality TV Show with tickling as an overall theme. Characters like Cali, Isa and Miko were always present, but Mab and Petra inevitably evolved from previously undeveloped characters and a number of others ended up tucked away in a sketchbook never to return. In time I decided I’d rather not have my online persona become the focal point of the series and the whole concept in general was a bit too self indulgent on my part….LOL. I always found it ironic that Cali ended up as my main character when she was initially meant to be a side character intended for comic relief, like a “Jay and Silent Bob” type effect….
Now the rundown:
For all the girls I finally got the ears looking right. I lowered them on the heads a bit to try and sink up better with where their ears would be if they were human.
Caledonia “Cali” Gustafson: I’ve been drawing characters similar to Cali for years, always being attracted to the short haired punk/skater type girls in middle and high school. Cali herself was an amalgam of a few key factors; “Tank Girl”, the character from the British Comic of the same name by artist Jamie Hewlett of “Gorillaz” fame, “Haruhana Haruko” from the anime “FLCL”, a real life female friend I knew named Tori and a number of other random character influences. My initial idea was to have my main character be the furthest thing from the “beautiful damsel in distress” seen so many times before in the tickling art world. Rather than being an unwilling “victim” of the tickling community, she would be a part of it, loving tickling and being tickled to its full wondrous beauty. VERSION 2.0: Even though she’s my main character, she had the least changes of the group. I just cleaned up hear hair a bit so it looked more….”realistic” (hopefully now people will stop calling it a mullet!) and altered the cut of her shirt. Over the years her tattoos and piercings have also gradually diminished, oftentimes accidentally simply because I’d forget to draw them. In her current state she has two visible piercings and the one tattoo on her left shoulder and I will only say I will try to keep it consistent, LOL. They’re just a pain to re-draw over and over when I’m trying to focus on other more important areas.
Isabella “Isa” Torres: Cali’s best friend Isa just seemed to flow naturally when I was thinking of character “archetypes” to fill in my cast of Cheshire Manor. To offset Cali’s more aggressive and lustful views of sexuality and physical love, I need a more seductive, gentle and alluring of a character. I guess the whole “latin lover” concept hit me and Isa was born. I won’t deny an ex-girlfriend was another inspiration for her, at least with the pigtails. VERSION 2.0: Isa came full circle it seems, her hair was the only real feature that kept fluctuating going from pigtails to straight to pigtails again (due to popular demand), but I nixed the center part with the skin showing…..always thought it looked kind of weird, like she had thinning hair or something….LOL I also simplified her shirt as well and you can't see it here but she has a butterfly on the front of it.
Miko Fujisawa: Miko was one of the earliest ideas I had for the Cheshire Manor project for a simple reason; in any anime based series you need the cute little Japanese girl in the sailor suit. She was always kind of 2-dimensional and I hope to develop her more in the story. VERSION 2.0: Miko had the most drastic change in the group. She remained relatively unchanged in the past few years so I felt something different was needed. I always thought she looked way to much like a kid so while still the shortest of the 5, I made her a little taller and gave her a new outfit and hairstyle to accentuate her age a bit more. I also gave her a new base color as well to go with her eye color. Although in this image she has bare legs, her outfit also includes long striped socks (up to her thighs) and 70’s style platform shoes.
Mabel “Mab” Malvanado: Mab evolved from another character planned for the Cheshire Manor project that was much more “dramatically” dark and gothic. I toned the idea down a lot crossed it with the dominatrix concept. I had a lot of goth girls in my high school, a few of which were good friends of mine so this was an obvious concept. I didn’t want her however to be comically dark and mopey looking so I decided to make her a more subtle darkness, like the type of gothic people who still regularly function in normal areas of society. (no offense to you guys I swear! LOL) VERSION 2.0: For some reason her hair always pissed me off. It always looked too wild and unkempt for her personality. So the biggest change was cleaning her hair up a bit. And I decided this time to have her in her casual clothes for her main pic. This particular design was my favorite of all the new versions I did. I think its also cool because in this image it looks like an animatic, her going from on her knees, to sitting to laying back....
Petra Galifanakis: Petra evolved from a very different character than she is now. I knew I needed a long haired blond when I was planning the Cheshire Manor story so I created the standard bitchy spoiled type blond for an instigator named “Gwennyth”. Once I decided to do Cali and Friends instead, she kind of ended up tucked away somewhere. Later I was trying to think of friends for Cali and started to think of a surfer/metalhead girl. Long blond hair seemed to be a standard image with both so the drawing came back out of hiding as a reference for Petra. I knew I also wanted a tall girl with bigger feet than Cali so that got thrown into the mix too. The whole sleepy/dazed visage happened quite accidentally. I was drawing her and just happen to draw her eyes looking like that. I liked it so much I based her personality around it. VERSION 2.0: The idea for Petra’s new look came at the last second in a sudden flash. I inverted the colors so now she has blue jeans and a grayish black shirt and added the jean vest to add to the metal head image. Her hair also went through a little work (like it has in every version) and finally got something I like. In this image you cant see it but her bandana goes under her hair in the front, but over the hair in the back. The pieces of bandana sticking out of her hair just didn’t look right. The hair color was also changed slightly so it wasnt so vivid and...well....flourescent...LOL (this is also the first character design I drew her without the cigarette)
In the beginning, when I was still going under the name “Doctor Insaniac”, my original idea for a series was called “Tiki Toa Tau” about a coed frat house on a college campus with very unique residents living there including a dominatrix and her slave, a mature hippy spiritualist and a male exotic dancer. The central duo was a pair of brothers who would inevitably evolve into Cheshire Cat and the villainous Doctor Insaniac for the Cali and Friends series.
After my hiatus and screen name change, I got to work on my “first draft” of the Cali and Friends series called “Cheshire Manor” in which Cheshire Cat lived in this big mansion and a group of females “won” the opportunity to live there free of charge in exchange for dealing with his particular form of “leisure activities.” Basically it was like a cross between the Heffner Mansion and a Reality TV Show with tickling as an overall theme. Characters like Cali, Isa and Miko were always present, but Mab and Petra inevitably evolved from previously undeveloped characters and a number of others ended up tucked away in a sketchbook never to return. In time I decided I’d rather not have my online persona become the focal point of the series and the whole concept in general was a bit too self indulgent on my part….LOL. I always found it ironic that Cali ended up as my main character when she was initially meant to be a side character intended for comic relief, like a “Jay and Silent Bob” type effect….
Now the rundown:
For all the girls I finally got the ears looking right. I lowered them on the heads a bit to try and sink up better with where their ears would be if they were human.
Caledonia “Cali” Gustafson: I’ve been drawing characters similar to Cali for years, always being attracted to the short haired punk/skater type girls in middle and high school. Cali herself was an amalgam of a few key factors; “Tank Girl”, the character from the British Comic of the same name by artist Jamie Hewlett of “Gorillaz” fame, “Haruhana Haruko” from the anime “FLCL”, a real life female friend I knew named Tori and a number of other random character influences. My initial idea was to have my main character be the furthest thing from the “beautiful damsel in distress” seen so many times before in the tickling art world. Rather than being an unwilling “victim” of the tickling community, she would be a part of it, loving tickling and being tickled to its full wondrous beauty. VERSION 2.0: Even though she’s my main character, she had the least changes of the group. I just cleaned up hear hair a bit so it looked more….”realistic” (hopefully now people will stop calling it a mullet!) and altered the cut of her shirt. Over the years her tattoos and piercings have also gradually diminished, oftentimes accidentally simply because I’d forget to draw them. In her current state she has two visible piercings and the one tattoo on her left shoulder and I will only say I will try to keep it consistent, LOL. They’re just a pain to re-draw over and over when I’m trying to focus on other more important areas.
Isabella “Isa” Torres: Cali’s best friend Isa just seemed to flow naturally when I was thinking of character “archetypes” to fill in my cast of Cheshire Manor. To offset Cali’s more aggressive and lustful views of sexuality and physical love, I need a more seductive, gentle and alluring of a character. I guess the whole “latin lover” concept hit me and Isa was born. I won’t deny an ex-girlfriend was another inspiration for her, at least with the pigtails. VERSION 2.0: Isa came full circle it seems, her hair was the only real feature that kept fluctuating going from pigtails to straight to pigtails again (due to popular demand), but I nixed the center part with the skin showing…..always thought it looked kind of weird, like she had thinning hair or something….LOL I also simplified her shirt as well and you can't see it here but she has a butterfly on the front of it.
Miko Fujisawa: Miko was one of the earliest ideas I had for the Cheshire Manor project for a simple reason; in any anime based series you need the cute little Japanese girl in the sailor suit. She was always kind of 2-dimensional and I hope to develop her more in the story. VERSION 2.0: Miko had the most drastic change in the group. She remained relatively unchanged in the past few years so I felt something different was needed. I always thought she looked way to much like a kid so while still the shortest of the 5, I made her a little taller and gave her a new outfit and hairstyle to accentuate her age a bit more. I also gave her a new base color as well to go with her eye color. Although in this image she has bare legs, her outfit also includes long striped socks (up to her thighs) and 70’s style platform shoes.
Mabel “Mab” Malvanado: Mab evolved from another character planned for the Cheshire Manor project that was much more “dramatically” dark and gothic. I toned the idea down a lot crossed it with the dominatrix concept. I had a lot of goth girls in my high school, a few of which were good friends of mine so this was an obvious concept. I didn’t want her however to be comically dark and mopey looking so I decided to make her a more subtle darkness, like the type of gothic people who still regularly function in normal areas of society. (no offense to you guys I swear! LOL) VERSION 2.0: For some reason her hair always pissed me off. It always looked too wild and unkempt for her personality. So the biggest change was cleaning her hair up a bit. And I decided this time to have her in her casual clothes for her main pic. This particular design was my favorite of all the new versions I did. I think its also cool because in this image it looks like an animatic, her going from on her knees, to sitting to laying back....
Petra Galifanakis: Petra evolved from a very different character than she is now. I knew I needed a long haired blond when I was planning the Cheshire Manor story so I created the standard bitchy spoiled type blond for an instigator named “Gwennyth”. Once I decided to do Cali and Friends instead, she kind of ended up tucked away somewhere. Later I was trying to think of friends for Cali and started to think of a surfer/metalhead girl. Long blond hair seemed to be a standard image with both so the drawing came back out of hiding as a reference for Petra. I knew I also wanted a tall girl with bigger feet than Cali so that got thrown into the mix too. The whole sleepy/dazed visage happened quite accidentally. I was drawing her and just happen to draw her eyes looking like that. I liked it so much I based her personality around it. VERSION 2.0: The idea for Petra’s new look came at the last second in a sudden flash. I inverted the colors so now she has blue jeans and a grayish black shirt and added the jean vest to add to the metal head image. Her hair also went through a little work (like it has in every version) and finally got something I like. In this image you cant see it but her bandana goes under her hair in the front, but over the hair in the back. The pieces of bandana sticking out of her hair just didn’t look right. The hair color was also changed slightly so it wasnt so vivid and...well....flourescent...LOL (this is also the first character design I drew her without the cigarette)
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I'm loving the new looks for everybody - especially Miko and Mab. Good to see you drawing again ^_^
