FANTASY PROJECT FRIDAY: Design notes from "UNIDENTIFIED FANTASY OFFERING" (UFO) and a belated Xmas card illo!

So! 

Behold, a new-ish feature, Fantasy Project Friday, in which I'll post material from one of the four(!) different potential fantasy-genre comics I'm mulling over at present. Lordy loo!

This time around, feast your eyes on a bunch of my scribbled design notes from the oldest of the four properties, a writing-only project that would be my take on the "fantasy RPG action-comedy" sub-genre that was all the rage 5-8 years ago. I'll keep the project's arguably revealing title under wraps for the time being, but will label it as Unidentified Fantasy Offering (or "UFO") for the next few posts. 

Anyhoo, for quite a few months now, I've been corresponding with an excellent artist re: UFO, who has produced well over 30 pages of sweet-looking character designs so far; what I'm showing you today are my hastily scrawled visual and text notes responding to his designs, which I'll likely show you down the road.

Unidentified Fantasy Offering features a sprawling and colorful cast of wildly overpowered fantasy characters, some of them undead; this is not to be confused with the just-debuted anime Ishura, which also features a sprawling and colorful cast of wildly overpowered fantasy characters, some of them undead. For the record, the two projects use very different narratives (as far as I can tell), but the superficial similarity of the casts is a tad aggravating.

Anyhoo, one concept that recently occurred to me was that these high-level characters can project auras of pure terror to overwhelm mere mortals when necessary, akin to the concept of "crushing spiritual pressure" often mentioned in magic-oriented action manga:

(By the way, these are the plucky and direly outgunned good guys of the story.)

Anyhoo, on to some earlier notes on a few more characters:

And a feline Master Thief character:

...whose design might need to be tweaked to get her away from Izutsumi from the  great manga (and now anime) Delicious in Dungeon, an alarmingly similar-looking character I had quite forgotten about when I drew the above sketch set. Ehh, maybe we can give her long black hair instead?

On to another magic-user:

...with some hard-to-read notes, thanks to my odd inability to letter adequately when using the ol' Wacom Cintiq. 

Finally, some notes on how to potentially "creepy up" an otherwise fetching and "more hawt than threatening" Elven Ranger character:

Anyhoo, that's all from Unidentified Fantasy Offering for now, folks. You'll see more from UFO within the next month or two, as I'm about to start laying out the story's first chapter. Yay?

Finally, I'll close out this new fantasy-oriented feature with a belated Xmas card customized for my nephew-in-law, who's one of the PCs in my on-again, mostly off-again D&D campaign:

...and the illo I drew inside the card:

...featuring one of the players' adventuring parties running from a monstrous version of the "Chrismoose."

BTW, said characters appeared in earlier Xmas cards previously posted here:

and this one:

...and this Xmas gift illo:

...though I still haven't drawn my brother-in-law's Dragonborn Monk character from that party, alas.

Anyhoo, hope you like this kinda-new feature, which is where I'll probably be posting most fantasy-based content going forward. So, from here on out, Fridays will be for either Fantasy or Failure, or quite possibly both at the same time!

NEXT TIME ON THIS HERE PATREON: Ehh, not sure, TBH; in fact, I might have to immediately break with the format I just established to show some updates from The Chaste and the Chained for a Distressed Damsels $5-tier post next week! Also imminent will be an Exclusive Monthly Bonus Post for the Biggest Spenders, along with a new art-request master post for the $20 tier now that I've finished off the last of the suggestions from 2023. Yay?