Jade Gillott

ARAR - Chiyoko Hibiki - Character ref sheet

Added 2023-12-10 17:30:01 +0000 UTC

I've had the idea for Ryoga reuniting with his mom planned for this comic since, like, 2017. So it's very satisfying to finally be able to share her with y'all.

Her design has gotten a couple of revisions while I waited (im)patiently for her to appear. She originally had glasses, but I decided I didn't feel like drawing them (lol) plus she has a really nice eye colour and I didn't want glasses to block their view. Her overall "look" has stayed pretty consistent overall, though. I basically just removed her glasses and gave her some choppy bangs. And a cute button nose.

I liked the colour of her glasses frames, though, so that wound up being the colour of her speech bubbles! She still needs glasses, but started wearing contacts in her late twenties or so.

Her hair colour is naturally the same shade as Ryoga's, as you can see from her outgrown roots. She bleaches it chapatsu style, which is something young women in Japan were doing around the early to mid 1990s. Chiyoko likes staying on top of the trends, and I wanted her hairstyle to reflect her "rebellious" nature. She had a shotgun wedding at 20 years old during the 1980s, so you can imagine she caused her parents a bit of grief back in the day.

You can tell how long she's been away from home by how grown-out her roots are. It's rare to see her with freshly-bleached roots--there's almost always a few inches of growth, at least.