Blogs fresh from the oven

It's worth noting that a lot of the interactions they have in these doodles are not necessarily part of the short film, they're more for me to get a feel for the characters' personalities and designs.

Story context:

"The Butterfly Soldier" was originally a placeholder but it'll most likely stick as the title (it gets to the point)

It is set in a world where other woodland winged insects with similar predators are banded together under the Queen Bee’s rule for protection, in exchange for serving her hive.

Most notably are the historically beloved "butterfly soldiers". Taking caterpillars from their host plant and training them to be fiercely loyal soldiers was their way of saving them from being bottom of the food chain, while also preserving their beauty. It’s tradition that at least one butterfly is a high rank officer.

Most I’ll say is that Thistle and Brambelle have grown apart due to a lot of factors, particularly their differing loyalties towards the hive they were raised in. Most notably, Thistle has done unsavory things to secure his position as a lieutenant.

They didn’t expect Brambelle to be a nocturnal moth so that’s why she ended up with a different job more suited for her.

Media that would match the tone of their universe: Watership Down, Ringing Bell, Warrior Cats, The Last Unicorn

I reviewed just about every animated bug property that exists and the closest to match their tone would be Antz. (Also wow there’s a lot less mainstream bug character media out there than I thought)

Minor update: "General Thistle" is now called "Lieutenant Thistle" since he is relatively young. plus he thinks it sounds cooler anyways. i asked him

More practical info:

The moth and butterfly story are conceptualized as an animated short film. Not sure if it’ll come into fruition since I’m not particularly experienced with this sort of thing (gotta start small). If I had to guess it would probably span about half an hour.

The short is mostly from Thistle's perspective (he’s the butterfly soldier 🤯, no way) but if the story were to continue, it would have more of Brambelle’s perspective.

All the main story beats, particularly the beginning and ending, have been figured out since last April and I'm mostly coming up with stuff that happens in the middle. I'd say I'm about over halfway there.

I’ve told exactly 6 friends the full beginning to end of this story and they’ve all had a similar reaction.

So... I think that’s a good sign.

I'm planning to draw these guys more so people can get to know them; there's handful of cool characters I haven't shown yet.

I'm also hoping to make references for them at some point (especially for ArtFight). There hasn't been much polished art from me because I've been mostly trying to figure out character designs as well as the script. I've accumulated at least 8 pages of me just tryna figure out Thistle's knight armor oh my god. (He still keeps his other outfits but the armor will be his main look) (him having extra arms is NOT HELPING!!!)