(scraps folder)

Something I do from time to time is to eyeball my stable of characters and speculate on minor tweaks in their design, to improve their visual appeal within the confines of my drawing and coloring skill.

The most recent efforts have resulted in minor changes to the design of one of the seldom-seen male characters, Todd, who appears in the pic above. Some watchers may know him as Tina's BF, a position he's held since long before FA existed. Someone in her extra-special graces you might expect to have participated in her "activities", and I agree. However something didn't quite feel right about placing them in playful situations, something I noticed when I attempted to make a headshot of him for my convention business cards, which contain a growing assortment of character portraits. You might've seen them if you met me at a con in it's Artist Alley.

Eventually I narrowed it down to some design aspects that didn't quite look right in anything beyond beyond simply posing them together (which would eventually be inconvenient, since this couple is canonically sexually active). After some changes, he's still recognizable as the same character, but with minor alterations in the shape of his eyes and hairdo, and a minor alteration of his body proportions. I haven't made a full-body drawing of him this way yet, just a couple of headshot pencil sketches, one of them excerpted here as the lower of two headshots, the other in the next submission, since it is a little naughty, but necessary to make sure the two of them look completely "right" together.