Concept Art - Shasta Nutsuto
The original self-insert Shasta was a girl who I created back in 2000, right when I started Jr. High school. She was originally named after a friend my sister had made when she was in school. I didn't play with gender-bending the character until I was a sophomore in high school and it fascinated me how different I perceived him. The original versions of Shasta had much shorter hair, but as time when on, I kept drawing it longer. Because of his generic appearance, it was too easy for him to share similar designs with other characters I invented over time, so I kept redesigning him to make him look more distinct from the others.
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During High school, a friend of mine loaned me the Japanese box set of the Shaman King anime, and I loved it. I wanted Shasta to bare a slight resemblance to Asakura Yoh, although just not as placid and serene.
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I had started the school story concept because I had one male OC and a bunch of female ones and I really wanted to try my own hand at running a harem series. In the end, I got tired of trying to make it work and moved on to the MMORPG concept.
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The above are some of the last drawings I did of him for the original school story concept. I'm not going to lie, I actually hated this last MMORPG version of him also, but it took a while for me to edit it to my liking. The final goal was to make Shasta resemble a racoon to match Simon's rabbit like appearance. I really hated the hat-hair dents in his bangs, but now I just use them as markers to decide where his hair starts and ends.
This reference sheet was drawn when I had first expected Shasta to join the household and work along with the other employees, but the story didn't unfold that way. I originally wanted him to conceal his hand injury under his gloves, but the story of his hand injury took an extremely different turn. He was actually supposed to die because of it, but that plot got scrapped to shorten the over all series. The severe curl in the back of Shasta's hair was inspired by Miruca Crotze from Atelier Shallie. I saw her with it and I thought it looked like a great idea for him.
Shasta's coat ensemble was inspired by the green coat, leather hat, and scarf I used to wear back in high school. I was always getting mistaken for a boy when I wore it. I still have the jacket, but the hat and scarf are presently missing. The original black scarf I wore was a knit scarf with a fringe edge, but it appears that Shasta's scarf is not the same material. The second version of Shasta's staff uniform was inspired by Raoul Pireit from Atelier Shallie. I loved how his scarves hung over his shoulders and gave him the appearance of having a long vest and thought that would be a great idea for Shasta.
Shasta's best lineart scenes from the official comic. I didn't pay extra special care to his visuals like I did Simon, mostly because I have theoretically been drawing him for years in comparison, and I had a lot of faith in myself.
I wanted him to have an ethereal presence, so his color scheme was loosely inspired by the Limited Edition Winter Moon Pocahontas doll I obtained during my doll collecting days.
To follow along with Shasta's marksman talents he will be wielding magical archery weaponry. |
I don't remember at what point in the storyline I wanted to make alternate costumes for the characters, but I found myself plotting out these Magic Item Transformations and working them into the plot.
When I first decided on Shasta's magic item, I wanted to approach the cultural source of his name. "Shasta" can be found in both Native American as well as Sanskrit languages, but I knew that diving into either cultures for a costume design was going to run the risk of offending people of that culture, hence why, the story states immediately that Shasta's magic item was banned by the Galleria for offensive content. In the end I decided that if I went towards a Native American theme, I could be a little more confident in my research. This is Ice Moon's Vengeance. It was inspired by the Native American Shastan creation story of the Old Mole. In order to regulate the world's temperature, Coyote first goes to the ten fiery, hot Sun brothers and kills nine of them, leaving one brother alive, however, when it gets too cold, he then goes to the ten icy, cold Moon brothers, kills nine of them and leaves one brother alive. Shasta's costume depicts the surviving moon brother. The injuries on his face and arm come from the battle against Coyote, which I imagined to be more violent then originally described. Although, I've grown rather bored with ice and snow themes for characters, it felt strangely fitting to give this magic item to Shasta. Naturally I wanted to draw Shasta's design directly from Native Shastan Tribal fashion, but the Shasta tribe is not a separate federally recognized tribe and photos of elaborate male Shastan garments are rare to come by. His outfit came out a mash of whatever I could find. Few of the pictures I collected featured modern Shastan men wearing Halo Warbonnets for city-wide celebratory events, but please, please understand that Warbonnets are not common to the Northern Californian Native cultural dress, but were adopted from the Great Plains tribes over time. Shastan men commonly war ceremonial flicker headdresses. I really, really hated to have to draw a Warbonnet instead of a flicker headdress, but the flicker feather designs are not popularly recognized by average audiences. Secondly, some flicker headdresses come with additional long ornamental feathers arranged around the head, and I couldn't find any references explaining if the many different arrangements were because of age, rank, or other tribal specifications. |
Waiika
Waiika was a character that I heavily debated even putting into the story. Her design was inspired by an old Fashion Fever Barbie doll that I bought when I first started fiercely doll collecting during my late teens. Her name comes from the name of mount Shasta in the Shastan language. It can also be spelled Wyeka. While I was redesigning her for the comic, I was inspired by how art Hidari drew Vocaloid IA in her promotional artwork.
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