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Like Hiura, Jayd was a character I had developed a lot as far as background and story goes, but I didn’t have any preconceived ideas about her appearance, which made her design a bit of a struggle early on.

There was one body sketch I had done for Hiura that I ended up really liking but not using for that character. With a few tweaks, I used it instead for Jayd, but I still had no idea what her head would be, so my first sketch pass was just a comp of different head sketches paired with that one body to see what might work.

After settling on a head and body pairing, I started on the color tests. With the name “Jayd,” I really felt compelled to go with a greenish color, and I also didn’t have green represented in any major characters yet, so that color became my primary focus, although I did try a couple other colors like purple and black. I also played with different marking patterns, and while I like the mottled pattern on some of them, ultimately I decided the wide stripes would be much easier to do repeatedly. In the final design, I simplified it even more by decreasing the number of stripes.

For a more thorough breakdown, including more color tests and costume color variations, please check out my Patreon. This post will be public, so anyone can view it without being a backer. If you’d like to back the series on Patreon for more bonus content like this one, support is always very much appreciated!