The Side Character Got Promoted To The Villainness!

A/N

Hello. 

If you made it this far, first and foremost, I wanna thank you for reading this story. 

If you skipped the summary, I will repeat what I wrote there. Basically I am obsessed with the whole 'reincarnated-as-the-villainess' plot and I really wanted to create my own story. Coincidentally, I know a few or two things about drawing a comic so all I needed was to come up with a decent story.

I understand I am clearly not the best with descriptive writing. If you have noticed, I have kept my writing very minimalistic. This is because this story serves as a storyboard for me. It finalizes my ideas and it will make panelling the story a whole lot easier. 

I am quite happy with how the story is progressing right now. The strings I laid out in the beginning are nicely knotted. That being said, I still welcome critiques to improve the story since I am still drafting the comic itself. 

In this part, I would like to share some old sketches and design of the characters and talk about bits of the old story (So this part might be quite long). Most of them might not make it to the final outcome, but they're not far from the final.

-MC (Astria)-

At first, Astria was not a reincarnated character. She was born originally in the world and was kept as a slave. This is why she shows a lack of extreme expression. She wasn't even suppose to smile in her original design because she supposedly didn't know how to. I had thought of ways to cover up that but then I decided to change it because I like to draw smiles ＼(￣▽￣)／.

Astria was supposed to be a very quiet girl. I designed her to have this very reserved look with white dress as a default. Despite that, I made her a very active character that pushed the plot forward but quickly ran out of ideas because she's very obedient. Jun, on the other hand, is more expressive and relatable, but is very passive. I thought she had a perfectly just reason to remain passive because she's trying to avoid her death flag and wants to live a peaceful and normal life just like a 'side character' as she described herself.

-Duke-

When I designed the duke, The first thing I wanted was a young, handsome guy. It took a few tries to get the right look because the ones I kept drawing were either he looked too young or too angry (I'm not good at drawing guys hurhur｡ì _ í｡).

In the original story, the duke was supposed to be running away from enemies. And as he hurt and fell unconcious, he was picked up by Astria and she used her magic to heal her. I thought it was illogical that a duke would be running around wounded without a guard and went missing for so long and no search for him. It became harder for me to write how Astria makes an impression on him as it seems too tryhard. I eventually scratched the idea and went for a more subdue fashion. Jun now has a modern outlook on things and a common sense, which would be interesting to see in an otome game world.

-Side characters-

Phew, Elliot's design was by far the most out-of-comfort-zone for me. Drawing guys is already a hard challenge and now, I need to draw a buff male character. Needless to say, I studied the crap out of muscles. Elliot is also one of the few darker skin toned characters in the story. I'm still not quite sure if I should continue with blonde or black hair for him though so please leave some comments!

Alfred was also a hard character to design because he's an older character. The hard part was getting the wrinkles right but still maintaining a handsome look. I originally wanted to give him sleek hair being combed back but it makes him look too stern.

Both of them don't appear in the story until Astria returns to the residency with the duke. Elliot was not so hostile during their meeting. In fact, he was careful with Astria as he had never handled a child. Alfred, on the other hand, stayed quite similar in the original, just that he is more professional in this and less stern.

Since the setting was in a church orphanage, I had to study more about uniform and the environment. There are many children around but I decided to focus on two, Corwin and Blanche. I had fun designing them especially Corwin since he has this gap moe. He doesn't quite know how to express his feelings easily and he has a sharp gaze which make him look unapproachable. In the previous version of the story, Corwin was suppose to be the kid that hated Astria and with reason.

Blanche was fairly easy to design. She's a sweet, pure child with less to worry about. I gave her fluffy and messy hair to show her innocence and  not care about any worries. Blanche originally has not much effect on the story, but I decided to use her instead because she seem to have more potential than just a sweet, innocent child.

-Conclusion-

This concludes this a/n. I'm glad I decided to write this as it is one of the few things that I enjoy and it brings me joy. I hope to quickly finish the draft and publish the first chapter on any comic sites. (I plan to post on Webtoon first, but if there's any platform you would like to see I'll get them on there too!)

By the way, do you prefer if I put sketches of characters on the chapter they are mentioned or compile all the newly added characters in one a/n like this? Please leave a comment!

Thanks again for reading and supporting!