3770: Looking Good, Feeling Gorgeous

[jen_aside]

I will, in fact, have a St. Valentine's Day strip. It will not, in fact, be about St. Valentine's Day [or love in general] beyond a certain appearance, which itself is vaguely ironic--and even then only if you know the character 9_9 That there's an update at all on V-Day is mostly coincidence of when I decided to start drawing.

Anyway, saying as much because I started as a stubborn sort of "Let me finish something already" nudge and now I actually want to keep it going. Funny what finding a pre-made comic updating engine can do, however rough. It'd be nice if I had more ideas than I currently have, but I don't see how I would finish the projects I really want finished if I did the comic more often than weekly. At least weekly means I can get a good buffer going, besides keeping a groove up for other projects.

The current project [which I haven't decided whether to "finish"] is perhaps the most disturbing thing I've ever [publicly] drawn:



The backstory is I, um, was shown an episode of RuPaul's Drag Race [something I may have mentioned], and I ended up learning some things:

1. The point of being a drag queen is the exhibitionism, even as far as choosing a name goes. Quote: "We are DRAG QUEENS. If you want to see a real girl, go to the mall."
2. The best place is the Uncanny Valley, where the illusion rides that fine line between perfectly convincing and unbelievable. Too far in either direction is transsexuality [so I've had argued--maybe it's just a specific ideal].
3. Unlike the band, this is totally something they would have done in-character =/ [the drag king thing, too, yes]

The problems inherent in this getting the perfect balance--do they look like the proper [incorrect] sexes? I'm not really sure, with the way I draw animal people 9_9 It's almost that he would deliberately look like a guy trying to look like a girl, too, just for the shock value... and ladies' room access.

Eh, it's an experiment. As the thing goes in real life, too.

I haven't quite decided on his drag queen name yet, because I can't decide what of the not-yet-used* names is the most flagrantly offensive XD At the moment I'm down to either Ivana Massi Vvagina or [Ivana] Rei Puuin Dias.** Her drag king name is Mandy Skies [which is at least allowed to be convincingly normal].

*This is fairly important to his personality, to be the first and not a copycat [plagiarist yes, copycat no]. Not easy when countless ACTUAL drag queens before have plumbed the depths of depraved punnery worlds over already.
**ray pyoo-in dee-ass

So.................yeah. That's what I get for getting ideas =| also, for drawing laced-up ANYTHING >_< I did notice that confining myself to a single image is [not surprisingly] more limiting, since I can only feature a single idea of many possibilities. It's why I so often have trouble composing an image, when I think with such animation. Would be nice if that meant I was better at animating, but... :/