Meg would rather die than wear that!

Meg’s new clothing designs.

The full breakdown of every design choice, the butterfly motifs, the hiragana on the back of the jacket, the combat boots, the old mock-ups from over the years, and the story of exactly how creepy artists get when they find what they're looking for, is up on Patreon in the Adventurer's Guild. I’ve also posted the full timelapse there. I’m not sure I’ll ever share it elsewhere, so check it out!

I forgot I'd even done this redesign! Found it in my folders like a present I didn't know I'd left for myself, and it made me want to drop everything and go work on Between the Lines immediately. You're going to be seeing a lot more of Meg very soon.

I’ve been putting Meg's design on hold for years. Literally years! Originally she had this Alice in Wonderland maid aesthetic that I thought was cute when I was watching a lot of slice of life anime, but every time I designed another character for Between the Lines and came back to Meg, she looked completely out of place. The outfit just had nothing to do with who she actually is.

Meg runs Chroma, a coffee and tea house in Cloverwich, and she's smart, sarcastic, and a bit egotistical. A girl like her simply doesn’t dress like Alice in Wonderland. I did mock-up after mock-up over the years and none of them worked.

Then I went to my favorite izakaya in Jacksonville and saw someone wearing an outfit that stopped me cold. Heavy black jean jacket with a custom Demon Slayer paint job on the back. Combat boots worn to absolute perfection. And my brain just went: that’s Meg’s outfit! I’ve finally seen her out in the wild!

To get the design right, I had to do some things I'm not proud of. Araki wrote Rohan Kishibe correctly is all I'll say about that.

The original designs. I think she’d rather die than wear this.