Short: Carina and the Goon

 

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Finally diving into One Piece characters. And I'm starting with one of the best girls from one of the best movies: Carina from Film Gold. She's kind of like a purple-haired Nami but a bit more fun and mischievous. Also an infinitely better cat burglar, let's be honest.

This whole comic was a rollercoaster of a process in terms of overall 'feelings'. It was just going from 'this looks really good' to 'ehh, I dunno' to 'this looks really good' to 'oof, that... doesn't'. But in the end I'm happy with how it turned out. I always like when my comics have distinct color palettes and I think this one definitely does, with the purple-orange-green. 

Pretty happy with how Carina turned out. This is probably my favorite pic of her, since she's just OOZING smugness and I think it's cute. I was worried at times that she looked like too much of a generic anime girl, but I think it's alright. Her hair was an interesting matter. I honestly feel like it just looks cuter up, so after she lets it down in the comic I think it's just... less good looking. It doesn't help that the model is extremely rigid, which meant I had to minimize head movements. Annoying. I really am not a fan of working with long hair. It's either too rigid and looks unnatural or too free-flowing and it clips through everything.

So the elephant in the room is that there's obviously some more serious ahegao stuff. Heart eyes and more defined blush, to be specific. I've wanted to experiment with this for a while but was waiting on the right comic for it. I figured if I was going to be getting into One Piece (one of my favorite series) now would be a good time to start. I like how it looks, but it's certainly more work. Still, I'll probably do it for... most of my works. 

I like to try and keep a certain amount of realism in my comics, so I can't say I'll do it with ALL of them, but probably all the One Piece ones. Probably. I think it ended up looking good, but I also don't want to overdo it. That being said, there are plenty of different ways to do ahegao. Not just heart eyes.

Tonight's goon is Smokey Cho, one of Tesoro's elite security officers. He's in charge of keeping an eye on the hotel Carina's living at, and takes his job pretty darn seriously. He was trained to be a Cipher Pol agent, but didn't make the cut so he started working as hired muscle. His specialty was Shave, though he could also do Paper Art and Iron Body fairly well. He wasn't very good at Tempest Kick or Moonwalk. If you look at his legs they're super skinny and weak compared to the rest of him, which is probably why he couldn't do those techniques very well. 

One Piece dudes tend to have really short/skinny legs compared to their bodies, so yeah. I went with it and gave him chicken legs. I like his design overall, it's like one part Pitbull, one part Agent 47. He looks both sleazy and professional at the same time.

Anyway.

I also tried some new stuff with text to make it a little more flowing. I think I like how it looks, so I'll probably stick with it in the future and refine it more. I'm happy with how comics have been turning out recently, though there's always room to improve, of course.

Man.

So much porn to make, so little time...