This weekend as I was drawing my strips for the week, I realized how much I enjoy drawing Nektara now. I find that funny considering that a few months ago, I was thinking I would need to redesign her. In fact, my original plans for the trip to the Crimson Coast included Nektara deciding she wanted to change up her look.
Nektara is the only character I designed with hair and that made drawing her head more complicated than the other characters. Since I started sketching the comics first and then ink over the sketches, she’s a lot easier to draw. With the mash-ups, I’ve also played with giving the other girls some hairstyles. In fact, in the Firefly mash-ups that are coming up soon, all the girls have hairdos.
Since she’s a bear, Nektara has a thicker body than the other girls. I gave her the wide flaring collar to hide the junction between her head and body because without it she looked like she had no neck.
I’ve mentioned before that I created Nektara for a friend of mine. I’ve patterned some of her interests, namely her love of books and music, after my friend. I gave her a flute as a visual clue as to those interests. Problem being that I kept forgetting to draw the flute in her paw. It was really important that the flute be there because I was going to have Todrick reference it later in a storyline, so I would always have to go back and draw the flute in. Since that particular storyline I’ve decided that her flute exists in malletspace and she can pull it out as needed. Malletspace is a term I picked up somewhere to reference how anime characters are able to pull huge mallets out of thin air to clobber their rivals with. Really, it’s just a cover-up for my forgetfulness.
Nektara is the straight fur to the wackiness that goes on around her. Her job is to keep Todrick grounded. It seemed to me though that I was giving her all the sarcastic lines. I didn’t like that because I don’t want the character I created for a friend to be the mean character. I’m trying to spread the sarcasm around now.
A major development is coming up for Nektara in the Funnies in October. I just wrote it over the weekend and I’m looking forward to drawing it in the coming weeks. She’s also going to be the narrator for the thing I’ve got planned to start in September…that’s coming up soon. I’ve got to get back to drawing that in the near future.