Poppy

Poppy's original name was Avery. As all of her sketches are on my old laptop - this is the best image I got. The comic was this silly little sketch thing I was doing in my spare time (meaning I got 10 pages in before I wandered off and never returned) PLUS it had no cohesive plot - or really any plot to speak of. It was essentially "Pretty in Pink" if the main character was a little bit heavier and snarkier and totally winds up with the weirdo friend because the rich guy was a jerk. Anyway... Its no longer quite that! YAY!

The only major difference between Avery and Poppy is their hairstyles. I tend to shy away from short haired characters (and recently, red-heads) because I have short red hair (that I dye red because its a really fun color), and I dont want to be accused of self-insertion. (This is also why I try to avoid drawing stick thin characters (though, from time to time I do draw them, such as my avatar - Helena).) I was recently accused of drawing no characters with short hair, and then doing blondes (which is funny because I write less blondes than I do any other hair color)... which is why I'm kinda rambling about it now.

The problem I've been recently having is I've been drawing my characters TOO TALL. Like, it drives me crazy how tall I've been making them. (The images above aren't because after scanning them in I went in, lassoed the bodies and shrank them to the right size). Though I feel too tall might be an exaggeration; I'm trying to draw more petite characters and they keep coming out looking like total BOSSES. Like I dare you to make a comment about "healthy weight" kinda characters. Which Poppy and Avery never were.

Anyway, I realized that the comic/ book's title "A PoppySeed Affair" sounds like I'm euphemistically talking about opium. ... Which I swear I'm not. It's actually one of my favorite favorite "how to slay a vampire" lores. (Essentially, as this tale goes: you use a bag full of poppy seeds on the believed vampire's grave, so that when he rises at night to prey on the living, he doesn't get very far. Apparently Vampires are obsessive-compulsive, because they will not be able to leave until they've counted every single seed - and if you used a full bag, the sun will rise before the vampire is done and HE'LL BURST INTO FLAME!!! MWAHAMWAHAHA!!!) (I swear I'm not making this up. I couldn't if I tried. Even if it sounds like The Count from Sesame Street).

In fact, I chose Poppy as the MC name long after the book title. ... But I dont think I'm changing the title. Yet.