One of the last pages I finished for the book was the short scene [Snake Tongue], in which local monsterfucker Lex flirts with half-monster half-water-elemental Siyang, as Lex's boyfriend Silas watches, lol. Polyamory is basically the default state of the characters' relationships in the Men Plus Monsters comics world, it's all good.

Throughout the campaign I'll be showing some cool behind-the-scenes pictures and commentary of the creation of the pages and characters in the book - here's one of them!

First, here's the initial sketch stage. I only have one layer for it, and I just keep refining until it looks good. I used to ink over the line art, as one can see in the free PDF that comes with all physical pledge tiers, but I realized the art lost something in translation there, so I started putting skill points into pure refinement in the sketch stage. 

This is where the character designs also need to be as on-model as possible because mistakes here will be hard to correct after they're colored in!

I was unsure how Lex should look on the second-to-last panel, but I ended up figuring it out at the background coloring stage. I didn't want Lex to repeat his expression on panel 4 or 5, so I turned him to the side, lol.

Since it's a comedic scene without a necessary location for story purposes, I decided to put them somewhere of my choosing for what I felt like painting - I placed them next to the lush greenery of Sarcius, the town where they live, because I like painting trees! Green complements Lex's fiery palette and Siyang's muted purple palette, so I added plenty of it here and there.

I've been thinking a lot about the overall look of the canvas and letting go of the idea of always needing "perfect" backgrounds, ever since I've been looking at real life paintings. If something works in spite of my preconceived notions, why not leave it alone and enjoy how it turned out? It's difficult to not want to fuss over imperfections.

I know the background from the last 2 page previews here looks very much like "the rest of the owl" meme, but that's because I basically paint it all on one or 2 layers, directly over the green from the previous version.

If you haven't pledged already, now is a great time to do so :) We're halfway to funding its printing, and since it's already done, I'll be sending it out as soon as possible!

Thank you so much to everyone who is supporting the book so far! Hope you're excited to see more from the world of Men Plus Monsters~
- Aero