I just spent about one or two hours on a proper spread sheet for information. This was highly needed as all the information for characters is just scattered in non-written forms, and it needed to be placed somewhere. My OCD kind of kicked in when it came to color coding.

/Riley

Fixed up some URLs that might have been on the wrong character, and updated the hyperlinks with Grace and Tyler's bookmarks. There is also now a count on the bottom of the character list showing how many are hyperlinked versus how many are listed. Currently it's 37/65!

/Riley

I finished Grace's bookmark, so it should be hyperlinked the next time I update. I wanted to upload Grace and Tyler's bookmarks together, since they're kind of a duo.

Now to work on Tyler's.

/Riley

I finished Yi and Future's bookmarks, so now they're hyperlinked on the side. Now to move onto other characters I can do myself - some I made myself and others I just know the proper color pallet. There aren't many of these kinds of characters...

/Riley

And sure, why not make more characters? The plot and the story are so fucking huge it's ridiculous, so additional characters are really no big deal...

/Riley

Fun fact: Normally thee are only two sketch layers - basic anatomy of the character's body, and then a sketch of some minor details [face, clothes, the folds of it]. In this case for Future's bookmark. Six.

/Riley

Fun fact: Finishing a bookmark from scratch takes between 45-90 minutes. If it's sketched prior, then it takes about 30 minutes.

/Riley

Mostly plan on working on bookmarks today. We have around five or so saved that we haven't touched in weeks and it's tickling my OCD. So I'm gonna work on them today. Here's one, though we don't know his name yet.

/Riley

Last character concept for today [I think]. This guy was the big one that we were focused on for a while. His name is Irony. This came upon after a conversation in Barnes and Nobles, going on a different idea and I said, "Sounds ironic... That sounds like a cool name. Irony." From there, we decided we'd make the personification. 

The Russian on his scarf [that always covers his mouth] says "EMPTY." However, Irony is a male, and the word EMPTY is written in the female form. 

Did we mention he wears chainmail.

Did we mention fire.

Did we mention his third eye.

I thought, hey, since his main power is being able to absorb fire and shoot it back out from a small tube from his metallic gloves with pierced holes, why not make his hair, when pushed up, look like flames? I mean it's already red with yellow tips. The design basically asks for it.

And now, as character approval goes, we tossed him a bunch of comics, but this one is my overall favorite.

/Riley

A lot of these journals lately have been new characters. We've been on a role of inspiration lately. Whether it be something one of us says that sparks something, or, in this case, music! The gas mask idea for a character was in mind for a while, but we didn't really know how to incorporate it into a character without it being odd. So why not make them a serial killer [yeah, it's totally logical, I know]. And on top of that, let's give all the serial killers weird names. If you remember Bagman a few posts back, his name has been decided - It's Yolk. Like the part of an egg. This new killer here is named Turkey. We're in process of making a third serial killer, though I don't think we'll be naming him after food as well. 

/Riley

These are some concepts. The first picture is two designs for two of the angels, Michael and Lucifer. The clashing and opposite brothers of the pack [I think there's nine angels listed on the side?]. The second is due to a discussion about character's powers. We were on subject of witches and realized we hadn't given Ieva any sort of specific power. So we resulted to bombs and missiles, because why not? But, to make it interesting, let's just... shoot them out of portals/worm holes. It always works in the fictional world!

/Riley

Sometimes random doodles I do strike ideas. After drawing Chloe, the most random idea was tossed out, and it ended up working. Let's make Chloe an archer. Give her a suit of sorts appropriate for it. Why not Riley too? 

And so that happened. Which led to...

And thus made this picture happen [and it's still one of my favorites]:

That adds on a few more chapters to when we start this comic [in later years - there's so many ideas and plot points we need to cover it's going to take forever].

/Riley

The hardest thing, when it comes to creating characters, is the communication between Dylan and I. Normally we'll design in person, or I'll broadcast/stream my screen so it's easier for him to see and for me to edit it if need be. However we didn't do that with Skylar. We created the idea and designed her over the phone. At 3AM one day. I didn't have any light source asides my TV flashing a few times. 

It was a bad idea, okay.

But, after streaming, we came up with a better design. And she's also a bird. So yeah, there's that.

/Riley

We really wanted to test out where this Bagman dude will fit into the comic. He still doesn't have a name. That'll be fixed soon [I hope]. In this, Chloe meets Doug, her future co-worker/band mate. Bagman dude takes pills and does certain drugs that make him homicidal. If he starts feeling like he can't kill someone, he'll pop a bottle, basically. And he has some form of OCD when it comes to his "paper bag mask." If touched, he shall make that person regret their decision. 

/Riley

It's clear that the only couple that is in MTM so far, asides from Dmitri and Aoura [though it's not as obvious] is Riley and Chloe. I branched off this and came up with a great idea we now have agreed on.

Riley has an elder brother named Doug, and if you've seen his bookmark, he wears a sweatshirt with a fancy rat on it and in lettering THE LAB under it. Now what is that? It's his band. And we already had Chloe play piano, so why not dress her to fit as if she was a singer as well. She's really pretty and all, she could fit that "female lead singer in a rock band" kind of thing.

So we did it. Chloe is the lead singer of THE LAB. The cool twist is though that

Doug goes by Doug Louis in public, not Doug Stein. So no one actually knows he's related to Riley. He's also changed his appearance since he abandoned home, so not even Riley can recognize him first glance. So, secretly, Chloe is working with her boyfriend's brother. 

Riley doesn't know Chloe is working with Doug.

Doug doesn't know Chloe is dating Riley.

Chloe doesn't know Riley and Doug are related.

Everyone is clueless. And that is what I was aiming for.

/Riley

This is Chazz.

Actually this is Chazz. 

And this is Chazz picking a fight with Riley. Don't know who thought that was a wise idea [that goes towards both characters].

And Chazz VS Bruce. Really. No one understands he's kind of a rough opponent...

Sorry some of the text isn't readable because I didn't have a different color pen or a sharpie on me at the time to make it more visible.

/Riley

And then there's Enoch. Still working out some things with him, since he's tied with one of the angels and I think he's also connected to Chazz.

/Riley

I think this the first time I'm showing the actual evolution of a character. This particular character still does not have a name, however, for now we shall refer to him as Bagman.

Sketch sheets. We did not think a basketball jersey would be good enough for this guy.

So we made something like this. But it still does not suit him properly. So instead of finishing his design, we decided let's just throw him into a concept comic.

Did we mention he is a mass murder serial killer? I don't think we did.

Anyhow, after we finally get the design down, we tend to do a mini comic of sorts where the character will fit in properly with the plot and deem them usable. Sometimes we will run the design down by a third party [someone who also is involved in art, like Jae or Dylan's brother]. Then we may edit it a bit, but eventually we end up with a finalized bookmark. [Bookmarks are hyper linked on the side with character's names. I made sure it was organized.]

After that comes the story building - since we have a place for them in the plot then, we might built a little bit on them or a lot, depending how minor or major they are. Like with Future and Pandora, there's a lot of story built on them. Others, like Jack O'Lantern, who isn't that big a character, doesn't have much story on him, since he may only be a few chapters. 

And that is the evolution of us making characters. Other people do it differently. But this works well for us.

/Riley

We did some more work on Jack O'Lantern. His lantern weapon was kind of lame. So we gave him bombs.

/Riley