catharsis, page 11

okay, this week is still getting only one update - my hand still hurts so much that i can only draw for a few hours most days, and my sister's dog just had emergency surgery a few days ago... even though my mom is tasked with watching her for the most part, i have to go down there to feed her and make sure she's had her meds regularly, because i'm the only one who remembers, usually. i want to continue the slower update schedule until my hand feels normal again, though.

i'll ruin some of the magic and say you'll see the train go through a lot of different changes over the course of this scene, dependent on my own faulty memory, not wanting to look at the references over and over, and the pain level my hand was feeling on any given day.

this is charlotte (sorry, Huge Spoilers, i know), and she is the second most important character in catharsis after felix or any felix derivative. in the script, she was supposed to come off as relatively unfazed by felix's energy - an anxious person who comes off as cool and judgmental because she's too nervous to make significant contributions when socializing.
when i looked at the scene again, knowing i wanted to make this story more comedic, i could see the scene was very long for holding on the same kind of expression from charlotte, so her nervousness comes across more in the final product. she's still relatively calm throughout the whole scene, and much more Normal next to felix, but it was kind of disappointing to change my initial goal for her intro. i could tell it wouldn't land right if it had stayed that way, but without my hand in working order, i can't even really see HOW it would look by making drastic edits.
regardless, charlotte is designed as a longhair domestic cat, like felix, to better act as a foil - throughout the story, you'll see that they share the same anxiety about what others think of them, but they handle it very differently based on what they think is and isn't acceptable. making them the same species helps ease into the idea that they have common ground, fundamentally, even though they appear so different.
truth be told, i also just wanted to know that i could design a longhair cat that didn't immediately remind me of the warrior cats fandom (ironically, we've been listening to the audiobooks as i work on catharsis).

also, the thing charlotte's talking about with strangers i thought would be self-evident, but it was pretty much immediately misinterpreted, and i've come to realize that strangers don't walk up to everyone and just dump their life story onto you, usually. they do that for me, though.
a lot of these people are mentally ill, and probably not fully aware of how uncomfortable they're making the person they're talking to. some of them are totally aware, and actually use it as a test to see if you're someone who won't assert boundaries, too! it can be hard to tell the difference, and over the course of the story, you'll get to learn a little about charlotte's relationship with mental illness, as a concept, and how she reacts to it.
basically, on this particular page, she's just saying "sorry i thought you were one of those guys having a psychotic episode who talks to me on the bus and i don't know whether i'm supposed to play along or not but i did this time"

also, i wasn't sure how to make charlotte poof up, so i drew a quick sketch, and i still like it: