Shiina Redesign

A female who's more bad-ass than the male lead?! Well, I never!

After messing with different hair styles for Shiina in my last post, I wanted to flesh her out a bit more, both to try one of said new hair styles and to giver her a look that differentiates her from the other female lead, Samantha. Other than the hair, I've made her a bit taller and gave her boy uniform pants with the legs rolled up instead of a skirt (I figure it'd be funny if she were very intimidating to the school officials, so they'd let her wear whatever the hell she wants).

And now for a flashback. When I first got the idea of these characters (I think it was in my later years in high school), I originally made Shiina an African American. I eventually decided that she would be the most action prone character, being very capable of most any physical task and knowing various martial arts if fighting were ever needed in this story. With that change, I figured a Japanese heritage would be more suited for her, but I was always a little bummed about losing a character of color. Than it hit me when making these drawings: "DUH! Just give her both heritages!" There's no rule saying she couldn't have both Japanese and African genes! I'm already starting to get excited about what her parents could be like, one being black and the other asian.

And now for something completely the same. I'm starting to get serious about making a comic out of these characters that have been floating in my head for forever. There's still tons of preparation involved, so there won't be any comic anytime soon. What will happen is that you'll see a lot more posts of sketches of these guys and other aspects of the story as I continue to flesh things out. But there also may be less work posted in general, as making an ongoing comic means I gotta spend time leaning how to write a decent story.

So on that note, if anybody knows of any books or websites that are good resources for fledgling writers, please tell me about them in the comments or Twitter.