2018 Jesse Reference

Here’s an old reference sheet I didn’t finish, from back in 2018. There were 4 others of these that were colored, but I couldn’t take good pictures of them as I used watercolor to paint them and it warped the paper terribly.
In a previous upload I mentioned that I would eventually explain why Jesse is so short in these old drawings, and now is as good a time as ever I suppose. Way back in 2016 when I started posting my drawings online, I was exclusively a twitter artist, and if you don’t know how twitter artists are, it’s like having a brand. It’s all about advertising yourself like a product to get impressions and immediate reactions. Because of that, a lot of people have a character representative of themselves to communicate directly with the audience. Naturally, I did the same, and made an incredibly unoriginal design for a cat character who I didn’t even bother giving a unique name. Fast forward to 2017, and my interest in running with that crowd had quickly waned. I had accumulated a small cast of characters at that point, and in an effort to rebrand myself I adopted a new art style, redesigned the characters, and created a loose setting and plot to tie them closer together. The cat stand-in who I originally created became Jesse, a totally different character. The short height of his at that time was the last vestige of that old character design, which I eventually came to my senses and changed. And that is the over-complicated explanation behind this one dumb detail. Aside from that he’s honestly the character I’ve probably changed the least over the years.