Introducing my new OC - Emmett! 🌊☀️🐟
This past week I've been working on a new project - a food review blog on substack. My goal is to create portfolio pieces while putting myself out there in an interesting and useful way. My personal projects may be precious to me, but they're completely useless to anyone else.
From my research, marketing is about showing your potential value to other people. Nobody is going to pay attention to me unless I give them some kind of value first. I also need an easily marketable niche, a clear box that can be described in less than 10 word.
Making something purely for an audience is really demotivating for me, it usually results in work I never want to see again.
So, I have to make something that has value, a clear niche and a healthy amount of self-indulgence.
Thus, "Emmett's Illustrated Auckland Eats ➪" was born!
The concept is a food review blog run by an alien named Emmett, who's based in Auckland. The 'useful' and 'niche' part is in the food review. It runs you through the buying process, eating experience, how filling it is, and waste disposal (if applicable). These are all the things I want to know when looking up reviews for food, but I don't really find them. So I guess it's also a little self-indulgent.
Emmett themself is super fun to design. Here are some of my inspirations!
From the top left clockwise:
Saint Young Men (Otherworldly beings being fascinated by mundane things)
Mola Mola/Ocean Sunfish (main design inspiration)
FRUiTS Magazine (fashion inspiration, I always feel comforted by the non-conventional outfits featured, gives me courage to be myself)
Cinni's Dream Home Website (super cute website, nostalgic pixels. Just the cozy feeling of browsing through a personal website that's been lovingly coded)
Pikmin (I want to capture the comfy vibe of the game. Also, the idea of archiving mundane things as if they were treasures)
BIBBIDIBA by Hoshimachi Suisei (I like how animated illustrations are superimposed on real life footage. I guess Emmett is kind of like a Vtuber model for me. A fictional exterior with a genuine and sincere voice. Also this song is so good i can't stop listening to it help)
Juno Birch (an alien who's dressed in human clothes and doesn't even bother to hide their "alien-ness".)
Harmony from Splatoon (the eye lashes and how her hair is like tentacles)
^This is the design sketch for their first outfit.
For the blurry vhs vibe of the illustrations, I used this auto action by GlaireDaggers. I use Clip Studio Paint btw.
I plan for Emmett to have different clothes and hair for each post. Their design is quite femme at the moment, but they're gonna be switching it up in the future. I don't want Emmett to identify as any particular gender - they're an alien from Neptune! Plus, it's more fun for me to draw.
Thanks for reading this far! Even if this newsletter doesn't result in getting any illustration work, I got a new OC out of it!