Feels like 2008…

I sat down to sketch the six main characters of Game Over and all I drew were their eyes.

Tristan, Mr. Adventure, Coco, Kyoko, Sage, and now Jamie, lined up in little rectangles with no hair, no outfits, no context. Just eyes. If you're not familiar with Game Over, it's my action-adventure parody manga series that's been in production for about fifteen years now, and these six are the core cast that carries the whole thing.

Drawing them like this took me straight back to Megacon 2008, when I was making character eye bookmarks on Bristol paper and selling them for a quarter at my artist alley table. I was listening to my オリジン playlist while I worked on these, the one I built to reconnect with the version of me who started drawing and creating art in the first place, and while it was doing exactly that, my hands went right to drawing eyes on rectangles like it was 2008 all over again.

What surprised me is how much of each character's personality comes through with nothing else on the page. Coco's eyes and Jamie's eyes are completely different shapes, completely different energy. You can feel the gap between where Game Over started and where it's going just by looking at them side by side.

I'll be sharing the final version and a deeper breakdown of the piece over on my Adventurer’s Guild Patreon first, so if you want the full story behind the art, that's where to find it.