nuff said let's go 

Megan Briggs is one of the three reasons why I keep pushing the release date for Deja Vu sooner before moving it back again and the other two reasons are located right down there- she, Adam, and Evan are in kind of a 'love triangle' deal throughout the book, but hey, there's none of that arrow shit with two guys fighting over a girl. It's a triangle. They're ALL super into each other (though getting any of them to admit it is another matter altogether). They're the heart, mind, and soul of the Alpha team, their interactions are some of my favorite parts of the book, and I've been obsessing over them for a good six months straight. 

This is also the most extra way to write the "alpha" symbol imaginable but if I could use one word to describe Team Alpha it would be "extra" so it fits them well.

Megan's not quite looking herself in the above- I went a bit more realistic than usual and then kind of regretted it. I'm having a hard time giving my human characters a distinct 'look'- you know, where it snaps into place upon seeing them that "OH YEAH THAT'S THEM" type of thing. It's hard to explain and sounds deceptively easy. It's definitely easier to do with some characters than others (cough cough Orca and Rena, almost no one else). 

wow i wonder if anyone wants to see more evan

while I do think that his hair is 

1) impossible barring the use of several gallons of hair gel (evan's a little too lazy for that)

and 

2) too close to west's style

i really like this picture, actually.

I want to ramble about Evan but a lot of his character arc is super spoilery. It's taking all my willpower not to spoil this book since I think it has some of the BEST plot twists and turns I've ever written, at least on par with the Dreamland ones (and anyone who's read those knows that the end of book twists for my NaNoWriMo Dreamland projects are BRUTAL), and I want to make sure they're a surprise o3o

I actually revised this shot of Adam like eight times- I have a sketch paper where the background is dotted with half-finished Adam headshots. I finally got the 'YA protagonist' look I was going for, where he's the more collected and cool side where his brother is the soulful but naive mess. 

unfortunately he also looks super punchable. I guarantee there are at least a few scenes in Deja Vu where you will want to punch Adam Rosenbloom but not as many as the scenes where you will want to hug Adam Rosenbloom. Maybe both. Like a friendly, well-meaning sock to the face, followed by falling to your knees and hugging him before he can get up. You do you.

Messing with color/fur/a Bronze. I honestly haven't drawn much Bronze I actually LIKE since I did that reference for the whole team back in September. I've drawn plenty of Bronze, though. Mediocre Bronze. Brass.

That's not how metals work but I'm tired so bear with me here. 

One of the hardest parts of drawing Bronze is that I know what's supposed to be exaggerated and what goes where (long snout, long eyes, shoulder floof, long claws... he's a long, sleek, edge machine) but sometimes it looks off and I have to keep adjusting it forever and aaaaagh it angers me so much. Same with Gale, I have a page in my sketchbook with six Gales back to back and they all look different and I want to F L I P something.

I was also rereading one of my favorite Nuzlockes recently (YTWC's, inspired by another one of my favorite nuzlockes, the Landwalker Yellow... if I ever get around to making that full random book, the first thing I do will be to make a list of all my favorite indie games and Nuzlockes, because those are the two things I'm into that I've obsessively compiled over the years).

shit i get so off track in my parentheses what even is this

anyways the main character also picks Cyndaquil as their starter and I love their simplistic Typhlosion design (BAZOOKA MY BOI) but after looking at more Typhlosions from Nuzlockes I was like "??? where are the claws??? and the muzzles are so short???" and then I looked up "Typhlosion" and realized I just fucked that up when I started drawing Bronze as a Typhlosion and now he has those bigass claws that Typhlosions don't even have. Why am I like this.

Half of my style with Pokemon up until this year was just "I didn't look at a reference and made several unnecessary extrapolations as a result".  Now they're purposeful extrapolations because I did look at a reference... character development in action, in real life, my friends

bonus reginae. spoiler for broken souls: reginae is really salty about bronze but also really scared of him 

i mean that should be obvious to anyone who's read this far someone please help REGINAE, MY LARGE AND FRAGILE SON, who has no clue who he's dealing with

also yes this is like his permanent expression. if using "pools" to describe one's eyes wasn't such a cliche i'd use it for his eyes all the time because he has big, watery eyes and he's always staaaaring at ashley like a large, docile dog

i can never do a doodle dump without dreamland but let's be honest here i just wanted rena mcfucking swift to say "hoes"