As I sluggishly finish up Softies 2-1, I’m trying to transition as quickly as possible into drawing Softies 2-2, which means design, which means FINALLY unearthing some of my oldest concept art- for FISHY
I’ve had a fish species in mind from the start, and I’m finally letting myself go for it. At top, you can see two fish characters, whose designs are old enough that they definitely have roots in a high school sketchbook somewhere — I’ll have to dig those up at some point.
One of the biggest design headaches that has made me procrastinate fish is that all my lead characters are land-dwellers, so like, I would have to figure out the mechanics of how they would ever interact with fish. In the 2015 drawing you see the fish in an orb, as a concept for how it could move about on land. I don’t think I was ever super happy with this concept, beyond the possibility of making a joke out of how inconvenient it would be for the user.
in 2018 you see the solution that I intend to use, which is a sort of robotic astronaut suit which turns the fish into a quadriped. (In the 2021 drawings you can see me trying a six-legged insectoid design, which I might or might not go with?) I’m a big fan of the “CRAB Suit” solution for a couple reasons–
A. it allows for more character acting than the glass ball would
B. as a human, I have a character design bias towards bipedal characters, and the CRAB suit has a very different and distinct form factor, which is something I do indeed want in a series about aliens.
There’s more design work for 2-2 coming your way as we move towards that story, so, hopefully ya like fish 🐟