#bugettes

Been working on some clothing and designing practice.

The reference I used to work off of as a body base.

Is it possible that this is an early Chloé concept art?

This girl's design kinda reminds me of this version of Chloé

To possibly work off the unused concept of Sparrow, tweaked to include some ladybug aesthetic to it.

And latest concept design for the ladybird sprite, Amy.

Sorry for the wait, wanted to get home before I answered. And to answer, it's going well!

I've taken the time to sit and ponder it, rolling it around and starting to actually shape it up into something to work with.

While designs and names do need to be finalized, I over all got my 3 starting Bugettes, doing the classic RYB trio before getting into the full rainbow.

And I got their set up personal growth arcs down.

And I got 3 types of villains for each one to work off personally, for as the starting leads, I feel they should get the big major plot priorities.

And while my art skills aren't where I would like them to be yet, they are getting there that I'm up to start drawing it out soon. I am hoping this year I can finally start Bugettes (with Animula I'm holding off as this should have the shorter story).

I will admit, there are some things I am still figuring out, so it won't be coming out super soon.

The designs I share here may not be the final designs of the Bugettes, I want to do more practice with outfits and try out some other ideas (I may see if I can get a hold of Zoe and see if she can help me there as she's better with fashion than I am, otherwise I'll be looking at her art and other redesigns for ideas and references). How they look I'm also still working on, as well as names (Blue Bugette doesn't even have a hero name yet).

The beginning I'm also still trying to figure out. I also don't have a timeline placed yet, nor do I have a supporting cast down yet (which some should be future Bugettes). And I got a handful of ideas for potential love interests

But there's only one pair I know I would aim to pair together, any others are kinda up in the air.

But it's starting to come together!

Something is taking shape here.

At most, it's inspired by, and works off the older concepts (at least the little we see of it), but yeah I decided it would be for the best to not be an ML project/au.

ML comes with a lot of headaches that I think would be in my best interest to only be inspired by it. To take the chance to build this thought from the ground up and let it be it's own thing, without it being weighed down by any of the negativity of the show.

I mean, so far, last I saw, the majority are in agreement for Butterfly!Juleka. Which I am the same, and I will say, of the classmates that would've potentially been elevated to a major leading role, Juleka is one of the few that stood out to me.

While she was dealing with low self-esteem and anxiety, you could see she wanted to let her voice out, and that there was a lot of bottled up anger that was quite explosive when let out (like wildly firing at other students instead of just Chloe).

So between her and Rose, she's the natural pick given she's got the foundation on how she can grow. Rose doesn't really have one. If she does win, I'd probably go a route of her stance on love and trust is challenged, that she's regarded as "weak" or "naive" and her thing should be to show that it actually takes true strength to keep the mindset of having faith, kindness, and compassion. Kinda like the sort of route they went with Green Lantern in DC Superhero Girls where she's against violence and has a lot of faith and optimism.

While that is something to work off of for Rose, I'd still Juleka between the two. I just see more going for her.

I will forewarn though, I don't know if I'm going to stick to the canon Couffaine set up as I don't like it.

Before we got the slapped on decision of Jagged being the Couffaine's dad (ad doing more rich daddy issues), I theorized that, if he was related to the Couffaines, that he was actually Anarka's younger brother. By appearances, Anarka looks older than Jagged. I thought Anarka was in her late 30s to early 40s while Jagged was in late 20s at the earliest to in his 30s.

The other factor is that I find Luka kinda throws off how Juleka is. Most likely, Luka constantly offers Juleka a lot of support and encouragement, and she also probably gets that from Rose as well, so why is Juleka so bottled up still? Is Anarka just actively but unintentionally tearing her down and undoing all that encouragement? We don't really have much on Juleka with her whole family so I can't say for sure (at least to my knowledge she seems to be shafted a lot in the Couffaine family focus).

Maybe through Roaar they're implying that Juleka just needed some tough love to really push her forward but idk. It just doesn't help that Juleka was really focused on, so what's thought she really needs is speculative.

I will say, if it was just Juleka and Anarka, to me, it would've explained a lot to how Juleka is. I can speak from experience having a parent who is bold, talkative, and has a big presence, it can shape you to be muffled and quiet and have a hard time getting words out, especially when said parent has a tendency to cut in and cut you off when you're trying to speak, and take over a conversation. If you never get a word in, it's hard to talk.

Even more so when you don't have anyone else paying attention and would draw the conversation back to you, asking what you wanted to say.

Which I would expect Luka to do so as he lives there and is on the boat so much. Not say Juleka would be talkative with him, but I'd expect she'd be in a better spot than where she is.

Additionally, given that Jagged is clearly more tied to Luka than to both of them, I wondered if it'd be better if they were just cousins (who were born on the same day, but have a two year age gap as I didn't care for them being made twins, I think same birthday is funnier). It would work off Juleka not having an active support at home, it would work off Luka coming in so late, and it would work off Jagged just straight up being more tied to Luka than to both of them. From what I've seen, Juleka really seems like an after thought in this revelation.