Some Cute Chick Named Nidorina
I like drawing females, and I'm also non-partial to species. Humans, animals, shoot I'll draw a set of toasters with faces. If it's cute, I don't care what the subject is. It occurred to me one day when I was working on my sketches outside of Aqua Bunny that I don't have a lot of male characters, or sketches of generic guys for that matter.
One reason being that a lot of art blogs that I view now and then tend to be by women illustrators, and make up a high percentage of my inspiration. There's just something about the way they color and draw, like I swear it's something women have that men don't, and it's always visually appealing. Life studies, pin-ups, unicorn doodles, whatever, it all just works. It speaks to my tastes of careful coloring and a cute appeal (even if they don't want to admit it). And it goes without saying that these girls are typically drawing girls themselves. But to be fair, there's a plethora of great male artists, specifically those who can create similar works.
View post for development art!
While working on this piece, I really liked the way the work looked at different stages, so I saved them and put it together here so you can have a look too. True story: While the concept of this picture was in my head all week, I finally thumbnailed it out it on my DS while waiting to get a haircut. You can't tell me portable gaming devices don't have a use. The construction version adds the tail and spikes (among other details). Doing so required me to close off the pant crease, so her butt looks big in the rough draft (not that it isn't otherwise). I will admit I was going for tight-waisted jeans to fit around her hips, as shown in the DS concept.
It's interesting to me that I continue to develop any character I draw, original or fan based, both actively and passively. And by passive, I mean the changes can be indirect, such as within sketches, doodle skits, or some other kind of one-off outside of the series proper. It's like they grow as I do, only the foundation ever stays consistant. I may've said this already, but Nidorina today is a lot different than she was back when Aqua Bunny started in 2006. Today, she's what I would refer to as a "cute girl", which if I had to choose a favorite character archetype, this would be it. By cute I don't mean adorable-cute or attractive-cute, I mean the silly, fun, and a bit unusual ("quirky", but I tire of that term). The kind who's feminine but not overly girly-girl, and probably has an equal amount of male and female friends. These are traits of Nidorina from the get go anyway, but I'm starting to make it more believable in comparison to young women in real life, and less generic cartoon protagonist. I no longer care about the ACTION!Girl side of Nidorina, but it's an important part of her character history, so I'm not out and out retconning it. I capture Nidorina as a "cute girl" here with her bright eyes and sincere big smile, but I don't make her so adorable-cute that she starts to appear prepubescent. Her body language counters by saying "yes, I am a young adult". Other changes to Nidorina of note include me not drawing the Pink Bow item nearly as much, and "Nido-san" dying out as a nickname. But you'll know it's her due to her default hairstyle, her unique ears, and her spot pattern when you can see it.
It's Cute Chick, one of my favorite works, but done completely with typed characters. The original is huge, and I had to scale it down for the purposes of upload requirements. It makes it that much harder to tell that it's made from text, but take my word for it. I guess you could say that words were used to define exactly what a cute chick is, besides being a term that's not entirely PC.