Auxiliary Art Dump: reSWAN Adventures in Clothes and Cuddles, I guess
I did a lot of random shit with the reSWAN kids in the last few weeks while I was finishing the next installment of the damn thing (17! D: the published word count is more than the origina now! What was I THINKING), so I thought I'd put them up here since I always feel weird putting them on Tumblr.
First up though, some real art, because why not.
Here it is clipped to the necessary bits:
Proper image and a sketch dump under the cut!
My GOD, I loved doing this. I don't draw the whole group nearly as much as I should and I've been trying to rectify that. I wanted to do something with them that had weird rainbow rag fashion, the creepy bloody band makeup, everyone happy and interacting, and some fun lighting, so mission accomplished, I think. Next time, I want to experiment even more with their clothes.
Anyway, sketchy crap!
Edgar with different hair! Mostly, I was thinking of him actually changing it in what appears to be the ten year span of SWAN/ISH, but it sort of became them changing it for a show and him just rolling with it. He'd be the sweetest kid with a mohawk ever. This is sort of an idea that's boiling on the backburner, though, so we'll see if this materializes eventually!
Edgar baffled that Jimmy was sitting next to him singing a song about dying when, in the last 24 hours, they'd both learned the person they love had once murdered them. This is from reSWAN 17, and of course started another fucking wave of ISH 10 syndrome, in which Jimmy/Edgar starts looking intriguing. This happens anytime I let these two talk for too long together. Though this time through, I have ideas for addressing it in some way, so that's something to look forward (?) to maybe.
Just Johnny in some aggressive rainbow and some fun eyemakeup, because I really wanted to. He so often ends up in blue and black, I've been trying to introduce some other colors to him lately and I think this was the start of it. In 'real life', he should be more like 'rainbow and black' as his sort of baseline aesthetic, but in practice it really does skew more toward blue. He looks like he's about 12 in this picture, haha.
Johnny in a gender-fucking Team Rocket uniform. I had originally thought to just put him in the original female uniform, but that showed too much skin for him to be comfortable in, so then I started to modify it for him and it ended up as this ambiguous thing, which I think is rather perfect for him.
Variations on Nny and 'Asshole'. These are unrelated events. I liked the idea of Nny very comfortable calling other people an asshole but actually not being hypocritical about knowing he's one too, haha. He doesn't do a whole lot to change that, though, so it's probably still a little hypocritical. The bottom one is also him really not great with what all this relationship business entails. He's not the sappy romantic type like Edgar is, so even though he adores Edgar, he struggles with Edgar elaborating on his feelings.
Just a shot of Johnny I ended up really liking.
The crew all in front of a mirror in a restaurant bathroom from reSWAN 18. We're the mirror, in this case, so that's why you can't see the extra two of Edgar and Johnny. This is actually after the other three see how bad Edgar and Johnny's reflections got once they remembered the previous murder between them, and just before someone other than Johnny hears Egar's song.
Jimmy is wearing a jacket/hoodie thing that Tenna made for him, complete with a giant Spooky head on the one side. Edgar has the shirt Johnny made for him for his birthday. I didn't quite get the leaning right onthe part of Devi and Tenna, so they look a little shorter than they should be,and there are some scale issues here and there, but in general this is fun. I wrote most of this whole scene and then had to draw them, I just loved all of them together, even if poor Johnny is not doing superbly.
Obligatory scary shot of Johnny with void eyes.
Johnny tearing the key to Hell off of his neck in a bit of supernatural triumph that was not present in the original story. My recollection is that it fell off of him somewhat unceremoniously in the original, and I'm still waffling about it, but I think something like this image is more likely this time around.
Nny with a star drawn over his eye instead of on his cheek. That was literally the only reason I drew this.
Johnny wearing one of Devi's dresses, because. This actually began what was a whole week of Johnny wearing non-masculine coded things.
Case in point, this tinsel star tiara with glitter ribbons and a chiffon-y skirt over a pair of pants. He steals the crown from a department store children's section and just wears it because he thinks it's fun, but he showed up with the skirt. Of course it's all greys and blues again because Nny is a terminal case of bruise colors,but I tried to redeem him with lavender sleeves and red laces. Next time,Nny. Next time.
More of that same day/outfit, in which Johnny is transfixed by a wall of flatscreen tvs taller than he is.
LIke this. Which is maybe going to be a thing later, but this gives a rough idea of the ribbons hanging down from his head and the skirt from the back. As well as the size of these tvs, I guess.
Johnny destroys some kind of dress and wears it along with black and rest of the rainbow.
Tiara and skirt make their return with Johnny's first escalator.
And his first whole pineapple.
Johnny in his Homicides get up abruptly realizes this is not all fun and whimsical. The event this is meant to portray is actually relatively small, considering the other shit that goes down with these kids, but it's this small thing that finally causes Johnny to break under the strain of the trauma he's been experiencing.
This really delighted 'leap at you/arms around your neck' kind of hug made me really happy to draw, even though it's tiny. The idea I had in mind was some kind of 'YAY WE DID IT' thing. Maybe there was an article in a magazine claiming they were Satanic or something.
Johnny and Edgar in a blanket/pillow fort. Drawn quickly when I was sharing images with a friend and ended on a Johnny trauma image. She suggested these two needed snuggles and blanket forts, and this seemed reasonable to me, so here we are. Everytime I draw stuff like this, Edgar just looks delighted or besotted, there's just no other feeling he has about this kind of thing. The difference now compared to the original SWAN though is that you can see that Johnny really adores Edgar too, even if he has different boundaries about the whole thing. I used to be really worried about him expressing this fondness for Edgar when I wrote the first story, like it ruined his character somehow. But now I think that having this sort of thing with Johnny's boundaries intact is much nicer both for the character and the story as a whole. It's a stronger story when you can see that this isn't just Edgar infatuated but the two of them actually determined to keep at this despite how much stuff seems to want them not to.
What did I say about Edgar just looking super happy in everything like this? I was thinking about casual and comfortable sorts of shit, particularly with Johnny, who really doesn't get many opportunities for comfortable after a certain point. It's nice that he'd be safe or something. Like once Johnny's boundaries switch over and it's no longer "Don't touch me" but "Let me use you as furniture," then it's like this.
ALSO THE SHIRT IS PURPLE AND ORANGE. SUCCESS.