Hachimitsu Behind the scenes

Image 1:
A Work In Progress of one of the pages for the first fight scene. My sketches are mega loose and I often go over them with redraws to tighten things up 2 or 3 times not counting lineart. I finally figured out how to use the comic pages with the bleed lines and everything and it's way more nifty than I expected it to be. I'm afraid to admit it, because it might be obvious, but this is my first time putting together a full shonen-like fight scene since I was like 13. I was nervous, but once I got all the pages blocked out like you see above, I got excited. I wanted to start tightening up the sketches, but that was getting ahead of myself because I had to flesh out the design of the opponent....

Image 2:

I needed a beefy guy to be the first villain for Hachimitsu to fight, so I dug up an old Goat Ninja gal I designed a long time ago. the way I wrote the fight, he's gonna be tanky and feral. I adjusted his look accordingly and made him a dude, because it felt like I needed to contrast him against Hachi, and the original design is too similar to Hachi's build. I hope his scenes work out. I dont know what to name him yet. I'm leaning on Rai-something. I'm incredibly impatient with my art and it's forced me to learn how to work fast. It's a gift and a curse for various reasons, but I digress. I had to really force myself to pump the breaks on working on the fight scene just so I could make 100% sure I got his look down. I'm super glad I did. his drawn-in-5-seconds-face in the basic sketch looks super different and I like the direction of this one way better.

Image 3:

Second dude is the target for the kidnapping. Originally he was going to be a goose for reasons shown much later. the goose designs ended up looking too stereotypical and just reminded me of the dude from Kung Fu Panda. Someone suggested I make him a rooster and I went for that. It was hard to shake the "they're in japan" vibes and I really wanted to give him the topknot. I realized it was better to make him feel like he stood alone. He was always supposed to look like he's dumb, but the story demanded he also be a huge jackass and I feel like I succeeded in making him look punchable. I actually forgot if I named him. in the first few pages. OH. yeah he's "Lord Kintaro" which is a bit on the nose and I bet you can figure out what his deal is if you think about it.