CYOA sketches/process stuff

Happy Friday, friends!💛 Time to share some WIP stuff.

I had some stupid idea that I would be showing my "bias" toward certain CYOA options if I offered my thought process about this project or spoil stuff, but that's...stupid. Since the last poll lead us in the direction of needing to invent a tentacle monter, I thought I'd share some design sketches thoughts about the process as well as the roughs for the next update!

ART TALK

I really admire the way you can feel the improvisational nature of serialized stories and I'm trying to learn how to do that better. Ever since re-reading Dragonball I just felt this strong connection to Toriyama, like I could feel like when he changed things in the story just because he was bored, or wanted to draw more vehicles lol. I love the sense that he didn't know what was gonna happen next anymore than anyone else reading.

I'm trying to approach the Orc and the Tower in the same way. It started as a naive attempt to make a small project that would scratch my itch to draw Conan the Barbarian fanart, but now that I've sat with it a while it feels like an opportunity to put a different twist on the themes of pulp writers of the 20th century like R.E. Howard, Lovecraft, etc.

I like having the voting options as vague clues like "hey patrons, do you think it's time for some tentacle stuff? Ring the bell." because I can kind of plant the seeds of an option but still have an opportunity to subvert expectations. They also let you all essentially provide the consent that the characters are giving, which I like, because there's enough noncon/dubcon dungeon crawling stories out there I think.

For this update I was thinking Eldritch tentacle monster would be too obvious or direct and I don't really know enough about DnD to know what the true tropes of the genre are as far as tentacle monsters, anyways. Plus, I like drawing pleasure, and tentacle being without a face can't show they're having a good time :)

I'm wanted something a lil on the monstrous side, but still humanoid and expressive so I'm going after a kind of skinny emo nautilus merman flavor. Big tentacles for locomotion and some emo tentacle hair for, other things that you need those for. 😏And he's gonna be a little bit on the giant side because playing with size difference is one of the big benefits of the fantasy genre :D Stay tuned for some slippery stuff.

Thanks for reading! And thanks for your feed

💙Winton