Designing Fran's Mom
Added 2024-01-05 17:42:45 +0000 UTCFor the recent subscriber exclusive "Mandarins" comic I had to design Fran's Mom. I'd been putting off designing Fran's parents because for the longest time I'd been considering having her adopted by tigers, but I wasn't quite sure about it. In the end I went the same way as I did at the start; cats are more interesting to draw than tigers! So with a cat in mind, I started experimenting!
I designed the 2 versions of Fran's Mom side by side; 80's and present day.
80's Mom is the same kind of age as present day Fran, so I kept them looking similar and lent into the 80s vibe. Present day Mom needed to look like the same person, just a bit older. I brought in Joel's Dad and Fran so I could check her size next to them. Her present day fashion was inspired by my real mum, I love how she dresses with big stylish cardigans!
My Mum has dark brown hair and we had a chocolate brown Burmese cat growing up, so it made sense to me that Fran's Mom would be chocolate brown with yellow eyes. When I colored her this way though, it just didn't look like they were related. I decided to change direction and attempt to explain a bit more where Vincent's colors came from. Flame point coloring looked really pretty and enhanced the colorful 80's look. For present day, I desaturated the colors and drooped the hair a bit to show her age -or maybe she just had it colored and permed back in the day? :)
