[concept] Shampoo Gijinka design notes

first of all thank you kindly for all the support i've received thus far; it means the world to me that people not only enjoy my art, but want to support me to make more of it.

please enjoy these sketches!! this is exclusive supporter-only content yayyyy :D you can see in the 2nd sketch (3rd image) i was going to have the eye gijinkas in pain (shampoo in eye hurty) as a part of the request, but in the end i just focused on the shampoo + hair element. maybe we'll see them again later!!

now i'll sit up ...

This is a post about how I designed Shampoo-chan and Hair-chan for Liobi's Ko-Fi request for a tsundere shampoo gijinka:

Hair-chan's design came first and the idea was simple: a gijinka that emphasises and centres hair. The nudity is partially fanservice, but it also allows her hair to be the focal point whereas an outfit (even a simple one like casualwear or underwear) would "say" something about the character that isn't necessary for what her design is meant to achieve.

Hair-chan has no eyes in her end design. If her hair was parted, the upper half of her face would be covered in some way. The lower half of her face is shown to allow for some facial expression. Anime-inspired gjinka tend to be less monstrous/unusual, and not covering her face up fully allows her to keep a "human waifu" look.

Shampoo-chan took more thought. The idea of her being made of shampoo (and thus having a cute slime girl appearance!) came easily, but there are so many types of shampoo out there... In the end, I went with a blue-green + white colour scheme to evoke water, cleanliness, and nature (many beauty products nowadays want to be natural/organic vs artificial).

As noted above, Shampoo-chan is see-through whereas a Conditioner-chan design would be opaque. I've used see-through and opaque shampoo before, but I feel like every conditioner I see is opaque. This allows it to have a creamy/lotion-y/moisturiser-y feel.

I often just intuit my designs so waffling around with Shampoo-chan's outfit is a bit unusual for me. I wanted to work in different themes, but in the end, I settled on a rather disparate outfit that... looks cute, even if it's not cohesive. It is tied together by a water theme, so it hopefully doesn't feel too chaotic.

Thanks for reading! I hope this was interesting.