After a solid month of crap work hours and zero drawing, I needed fairly simple art to warm myself back up again. So, I picked up on something my fiance Dev and I had discussed a couple weeks back: Jake and his brothers.
Thus, this was an exercise is trying to make six distinct characters who still had to look related. I tried to tweak everything from their builds to their facial markings to their cheekruffs, although they all have the same ears, tails, and sock/mitten markings. Half of them are slightly darker in coloration. Since Jake looks a lot like his uncle in the comic, I wager he more resembles his father, while his mother's side of the family provides the stockier, darker genes to some brothers.

Then I just tossed in some fun sketches for the heck of it. I didn't do as much pre-drawing as I have been lately, I preferred keeping things loose.

The rest may be tl;dr, so I wager some of you may just wanna stop here.

As for everyone else, I had originally filled out Jake's family somewhat further in i.s.o., though I never got around to officially showing anything. Jake is the youngest of six rowdy brothers, which I thought adequately explained his attention-whore personality. I don't actually HAVE any brothers, but I imagine it's a lot of competition...I think the family dinner scene exemplifies what it was like growing up for him. And while he's now (arguably) the cutest and most cut, he's one of the smallest, and still the youngest, so he's pretty much constantly been the bottom of the pecking order. Though I wager he gets more than his bros, so who's to say they're not jealous.

At any rate, Dev and I then built up the dynamic and backstory even more, and it all sort of fell into place. Jake's parents are actually ultra-religious and proper, which ultimately made them end up with six rebellious sons. Zeke, the eldest, ended up helping raise his bros, and as a result he's more of a parent figure than their father is (in a classic joke, whenever the parents give the boys the "who raised and loved you?" crap, they all point to Zeke).
All of them got the heck out of there as soon as they could, but Jake, being the baby of the family, is still not free yet; naturally he jumped at the chance to attend school abroad for a semester.

So in reverse age order...

--Jake, the little slutbag we know and love.
--Luke, Jake's fraternal twin (though he never lets Jake forget he came out first), the tough, roughhousing sort. His relationship to his twin is shown pretty well in the sketches.
--Rock, the gentle giant, and the closest this family comes to being quiet.
--Ike, the bookworm (SOMEONE in the family had to have brains) although an accomplished runner.
--Mack, the health nut.
--Zeke, the artsy type, although I'd like to think he's fairly formidable-looking too.

I did try to parse out the builds and personalities relative to the ages; ie, Ike is the thinnest, but he's not the youngest, so he was never on the short end of the stick the way Jake was. I didn't want the biggest guys to have the advantage of size AND age. Jake's twin is shorter, but considerably bulkier. Obviously some archetypes are ganked from previous similar characters, but I don't think anyone's too blatantly familiar.
Oh, and I had originally thought it would be funny to give them all "-k" type names. It was only later that Dev pointed out most of them were Biblically-based. So, I ran with it. It suits the parents, anyway. I couldn't come up with a good "o" name other than Rock, but I theorized his parents probably like Normal Rockwell

I wager they all share Jake's pleasant personality and, um, libido, although they clearly don't have his fashion sense (such as it is). I imagine they all have some openness to teh hawt mans to some degree. And yes, I would so like to sic them on Cody--Dev and I theorized they were rather eager to get away from the family holiday, so perhaps they all tried to fly out to spend Christmas with Jake and his uncle (who is clearly more relaxed than his brother). Hee hee.

So, yeah. I'm just playing around, but this was a nice mental break after the past month. Now maybe I can start getting back to some REAL art...

I usually put this type of art in scraps, but considering how much work went into it, I think I'm entitled