Illustration: Chelsea & Dagger

Back at it again with the character design!

This guy actually started out as a joke between my group of friends at work because they were making fun of me when I was telling them about my ~ideal boyfriend~. It's well-known that my taste in people is "trash disaster" and this ideal imaginary boyfriend of mine would have long hair, tattoos, and be called "Dagger." So I drew him to get everyone to stop laughing at me (it didn't work). Pictured below for your viewing pleasure.

This guy was super fun to design because I wanted to make him look sort of ridiculous, but also like someone you maybe could see wandering around the weirder parts of New York or Los Angeles. Fashion is really important in defining this character — I've been doing fashion research for a writing project I've got going on, and between guilty-pleasure watching Project Runway (as I do) and @corinneiskorean getting me into RuPaul's Drag Race, outfit design has quickly become one of my favorite aspects of character design because someone's outfit can reveal so much about them (like ... what kind of a guy wears a cutoff crop-top and colorblocked drop-crotch joggers — this guy).

I also gave him a hellhound to keep things interesting, and also because I love weird dogs. My friend suggested I name the dog "Chelsea" as a reference to the Fratellis song, so there it is, Chelsea and Dagger. I've kind of gotten attached to these two and have a comic idea brewing for them — but that's going to have to wait until I finish the comic I'm currently working on (that's right! more on that in a separate post).

Dagger actually had two color schemes, but I decided he looked better with dark skin.

Here's the process gif. Y'all will almost definitely see more of these two, so stay tuned!