BB Vol. 3 Design Previews - Married Couples

Hello again! This is a progress report featuring the early design sketches for the married couples of Pelican Town (not including Pierre and Caroline, who were already featured)!

So I had wanted to get through all of the remaining townspeople before another progress update, but upon actually counting the remaining NPCs I realized there are actually a LOT of characters left who have pretty minor roles in the game but would need their own portraits... Besides the three child characters, the most important ones left are Krobus, Dwarf, Sandy, and Morris, the first of which has the roommate content, and the latter three have some pretty substantial expansion mods to accommodate. But then there's Grandpa, Gil, Gunther, the Governor, Mr. Qi, the Casino Bouncer, the goblin Henchman, the island hermit Birdie, Professor Snail, the Perfection salesman Fizz... characters who mostly only show up for a quest or two, some highly specific purpose, and have only a few lines in the whole game.

Would it be best to make sure even these super-minor characters are finished and included in the mod so the entire thing feels complete, or would it be better to finish the main cast and then add in the side characters later as an update? I'm not really sure which way I'm leaning just yet... but maybe I'll just start doing the in-game portraits after the next batch and then see how I feel about the leftovers once I'm closer to being done.

Anyway, the characters!

The main thing I wanted to do with Robin was provide some cohesion between her and my design for Maru, who took on some gyaru design elements in order to give her a more energetic look. I figure it should make total sense if she picked up her fashion habits from her mom, so she's going to take on a few gyaru elements too! Might try adding some more accessories and such to her on the actual portraits, because... I'm not really sure what defines a gyaru! Can anything be gyaru as long as she looks fashionable? Hmm...

Demetrius' hairstyle pretty much can't be transformed into a more feminine form so a fellow Stardew fan suggested making female Demetrius look like the original alpha version of Maru from the earliest previews of the game! So this is how I'd draw her if she had made it into the game, I guess, except she's wearing this jumpsuit because I know I'm gonna need to draw one for Demetrius' unique Green Rain portrait.

I initially tried to give Jodi a more sensual ballgown kind of dress but it just didn't feel right for her when her entire character is just being a housewife. I may try to adapt that outfit for Sandy later, but I decided to settle on just having Jodi run around in a negligee like fellow housewife Caroline.

As users of Bountiful Beauties Volume 2 would know, I took significant liberties with female Sam, including giving her catgirl motifs. Kendra isn't going to have quite as blatant cat imagery, but I figured she should at least have some suspiciously cat-shaped hair spikes to connect her to Samantha's appearance.

Apart from that, I gave her a butt-focused pose and started her off with a leotard that covered more of her body to resemble Cammy from Street Fighter... but I just couldn't result exposing more skin in the end, hehe...

Evelyn's entire characterization is the stereotypical sweet granny, right down to baking sweet treats for everybody, so all I could really do is imagine what she might have looked like when she was younger...

I thought I'd make her the kind of calm character who always has their eyes closed, only to open them very slightly when something finally gets them angry... but it turns out Evelyn doesn't actually have an anger portrait or any lines where she gets angry in the whole game! Getting angry isn't good for your blood pressure, I guess...

And lastly we have George, who's a pretty straightforward character: he's old, he's grouchy, and he's in a wheelchair. What's more to say? Obviously I'm ditching the "old" part, but I guess I ditched her pants while I was at it...

That's all for now, but I have some ideas for the remaining characters' designs that I'm really itching to get started on! See you all next time!