☆ The Subduction Zone ☆

"Hey River why are Takeshi, Tsugumi, and Youharu all weirdly proportioned?"

Good question! The biggest development over the course of this piece was actually the size of the canvas I draw on. I tend to draw fairly small when left to my own devices. IIRC the canvases for Takeshi and Tsugumi are both 1500px tall, and the canvas used for the lineup is 2636px tall. Which is quite a difference! Youharu's canvas was 2000px tall, and then when I drew Hokuto I made extra certain to draw him the same height as Sara, so I used Victor's drawing of her to base that off of.

(The second biggest development is that I changed my lineart brush to be more similar to his. It isn't exactly the same, because we use different programs and all, but I actually really like this brush, and have used it for pieces outside of this project, like this one from February.)

The first design we finished was Sora's! Victor and I had pretty different initial concepts to base our works on -- I based my first concept from depictions of the Japanese goddess Amaterasu (to contrast with Sora canonically wearing a form of qipao which is a Chinese dress, because the rest of the cast is more Western), whereas he did his based on angels. We ended up combining our ideas a bit for the final design. I still find the patterns on her dress quite difficult to draw LOL

The next one we finished was Coco. Victor came up with a pretty solid head concept with the third eye tiara, but he had trouble putting it all together. I took inspiration from old medieval princess depictions, and Little Red Riding Hood (specifically Into the Woods lol). That last one turned out to be just the trick for him to finalize, playing around with colors a bit before the final design was made. The bells in my original concept were meant to be a Never7 reference, as well as a reference to the bells Coco wears on her original outfit, which might also be a Never7 reference?

Tsugumi was mostly my work, and she was complicated af, in no small part due to having three designs (though with just minor alterations). The "basket mask" is inspired by medieval beekeepers, which ended up being an interesting enough idea that Al adopted it into the story with further symbolism! The hamster mask was probably the most difficult part. Originally I based it on Japanese theater masks, but as the concept evolved we ended up with it as a skull. That one took some references to draw. And I have a gazillion screenshots in my folder of just playing with the design of the mask and the color scheme before settling on what we have now. Victor's original concept isn't shown here, but is pretty similar, though more based on the Masked Woman from AINI.

Next up is Takeshi, who was pretty simple. We just kinda mashed up Victor's initial concept with mine and that fusion was the final design. He didn't fight me.

Sara was probably the character who went through the most drastic shift over the course of designing. Our goal was to balance wizard/ninja aesthetics, which...is easier said than done! I put her just full out in a karate gi at first, whereas Victor went for a big robe. The thing I'm proudest of is the research I did for her weapon, which is a wizard staff-ified tomoegata. Originally Hokuto and her were both meant to have keepsakes from Takeshi and Tsugumi, but that got cut over time :( I imagine Sara's just wearing the pendant under her clothes. There's an easter egg hidden in her clothes, btw -- Victor's idea, not mine, but I think it's funny.

Youharu was primarily me capturing the spirit of the Giant Witch Hat. She looks kinda like she went through a big shift, but that's because she flipped color schemes LOL both of us went for pink at first, but we ended up making Youharu blue and Youaki pink. Originally in my head she was carrying around a large grimoire that she'd pass to You'aki', but that didn't make the final cut.

Speaking of Youaki...we had trouble settling on something that seemed fighter-ish. Our first attempts were more informal. I joked that mine looked like a poet, or maybe just like, someone that you could bump into on the street today. But we worked it out, eventually! My idea for something passed between them is a ring, which is why I've colored them differently -- one of her rings is You'haru's, the other is her own. Both are enchanted, and act as her weapons.

Hokuto we fought a little over, mostly about sleeves vs the bandages. What helped the final design was a little push of inspiration via Moichiro Sanada (from Kumitantei). I am personally not a fan but I know like four people that playtested it and ended up being Discord friends with the director somehow, so I ended up seeing enough about it to get the gears turning. Something Al wanted specifically was the face scar, and we discussed placement for a bit, ending up with the eyebrow as the final thought.

Kaburaki was finalized pretty much at the last minute. The top half is Victor's idea, I improvised the bottom half for this post. Basically the idea we had in mind for him is that he started off dressed relatively plainly, but picked up equipment in the dungeon at the behest of the other party members.

The last design is...well, to avoid spoiling the fic, is "Kuranari Takeshi". The fun breakthrough I had with the color scheme was making him essentially "inverse Takeshi". We ended up making the color palette of Theseus since they were a little too saturated, but I'm still happy about my stroke of genius :) One of the things I wanted to avoid when I was making the original concepts for my version, is that since this guy is not Ryogo (which you may have noticed) I wanted to make him different from Takeshi and Ryogo's imitation of Takeshi from canon. Hence the longer hair.

I also designed a LeMU themed coat of arms??? This is the design on Kaburaki and "Takeshi"'s shield.

Victor's also working on some minor tweaks to these designs, so if you're interested, be sure to follow him on Bluesky! It was once again really awesome to work with him, I felt pushed as an artist by this project. I think he has plans to make a thread similar to this post. I don't know if it'll be as long, this post is like 1000 words -- and there's quite a bit of concepts that I left out, too, like all the different times I went back to my physical sketchbook to draw things (which you see with "Takeshi", a bit), or the attempts Al and I did on the logo seen in the cover image. A lot of work went into this -- it truly is a labor of love, especially in a fandom this small, so thank you to Al for sparking this idea, Victor for helping me to bring it to life, and everyone who cheered for us in our team channel. I couldn't have done it without you.