VINTAGE CON SKETCHES: Mo' early 2000s DP costume variations!

Got no dang time to write a lengthy post this morning, so here are a bunch of 2000-era con sketches of Dirty Pair's Kei and Yuri. (And, oops, the weird Patreon dialog box noting "Patreon doesn't allow the featuring of seemingly underage characters in the context of adult content" just popped up at the bottom of my screen as I write this. What is your deal, Patreon?)

As I've mentioned before, I would become bored very quickly with just drawing yet another Dirty Pair commission, so I often generated random costume variations for the Angels to keep myself interested as an artist. (In fact, the "dandelion hair Kei" hairstyle and costume that saw print in the Start the Violence one-shot and Run from the Future miniseries were spawned from exactly such experimentation.) Can't claim that any of these variants were ever likely to be used for a "real" DP story, but they did at least serve to hold my attention while I was sketching 'em. 

The first two photocopies were just scanned this AM, so I'm fairly certain they're new-to-y'all. (Just kidding; I'm a native New Englander, and we say "you guys," not "y'all.") Entirely possible that I posted the "Big Pouty Lips" Kei & Yuri earlier, though; my insincere apologies, if so. (Hey, you try posting something every g-d weekday for over a year without accidentally repeating yourself!)

The last piece is a bit more recent than the rest, sketched back in 2002 (and might have already been posted as well):

...and depicts the Angels on the cometary habitat that Yuri hails (er, hailed) from, according to the final scene in my 1995 miniseries Dirty Pair: Fatal But Not Serious. (Note the Tapeboy drone lurking behind Kei's thigh, familiar to Patrons of the $5 tier from Distressed Damsels Wednesday.) 

An interesting detail you might note is that after 2000, I had to completely scrap the way I drew female character's noses, as the technique I was using (as seen in the first four sketches) had spiraled outta control and grown annoyingly, well, "wonky" to my critical eye.  About midway through my run on writing and occasionally drawing Wildstorm's Gen13 in 2001 I abruptly switched over to what I've later dubbed "minimal nasal indication," which left off the old style's curving line indicating the nasal bridge in favor of just two lines for the nostrils. (Note that some mangaka go much further with "MNI" and just draw two dots for the female nose, which is a tad too minimalistic for my tastes.)

Anyhoo, compare and contrast the first four sketches' "line-based noses" with the 2002 commission's Minimal Nasal Indication approach, won't you? (Or not.) You might also note that the entirely unintentional "Mysteriously Intermittent Post-Millennial Torso Glitch" had begun to creep in to my work as of the 2002 piece, as seen with Kei & Yuri's rather serpentine "wasp waists." Style creep ahoy, folks!

UPDATE: Oops, turned out I did end up writing a lengthy Patreon post after all! Oh,well.

NEXT WEEK ON THIS HERE PATREON: The usual double dose of life drawings, as you would expect by now.