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All of Matt's comics and art are super fun - I've been on the edge of my seat as this story plays out! - EK

Been rolling out my latest short story over on Patreon--four pages already up! Come join to get early access plus an exclusive look at the process of each page.

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I've really been enjoying Inhibit! Two days left on this kickstarter - if you're here as a fan of sci fi webcomics, you'll want to check it out! - EK

⚡️ INHIBIT: BOOK TWO is LIVE on Kickstarter!

The second book in the award-shortlisted series about growing up, struggling to stay afloat, and setting things on fire with your mind.

Book Two features over 200 pages of full-colour comic, with bonus material at the back! These are CHUNKY books. Best of all, backers will be able to read the end of Book Two a whole nine months before online readers!

Alongside Book Two, you can pick up a brand new edition of Book One and some really great bonus rewards, including a printset with guest art from @sticksandsharks, @winonaparadise, @shazleen, @toadlett, @neonjawbone, and @jonasgoonface!

🔥 Preorder here

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I was handing out some Red Shift Blue Shift zines at Tucson Comic Con today - great to meet so many awesome artists of all kinds and new friends there. If you're here after getting a card and zine at the con - hello! Great to see you! -EK

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BUTCHES! IN! SPAAAAAAAACE!!!!! - EK

Hey! I'm really excited that there are two butch characters in Red Shift Blue Shift, what are their relationships to each other and to the larger lesbian communities around them? Also, are there any trans women or transfeminine nonbinary characters in the cast, or in your other projects? (I tried sending an ask to the comic blog, but I couldn't find the option.)

Hey! (Turns out we hadn't switched asks on for the comic blog, thanks for pointing that out, the option should be there now!)

Oh I'm so glad you're excited about there being multiple butch characters in RSBS, that was something that was really important to us to include when we were building our cast. I'm very fond of them both, they're a great time.

It's hard to say too much about their relationship to each other without getting into spoiler territory, but Kamari is something of a wildcard character. She's working for a cause of her own, something that's sometimes at cross-purposes to the main team, which Georgie is part of, so there's a bit of plot-relevant antagonism there, at least in a big picture sense. It takes a wee while before Kamari interacts directly with any of the main team, although she'll be hanging around the edges of their activities and playing a major role in the other main thread of the story. Georgie and Kamari will end up connected eventually, although how is spoilers, but I can say that they're one of the (many, many) pairs of narrative foils in the comic. The story is going to be split into two major threads, the blue thread following Dan and their team, and the red thread following our masked antagonist and their allies, and Georgie and Kamari are one pair of characters that in some ways mirror each other across that divide and end up having an impact on each other over time as the story unfolds.

Which kind of links in to the next part of your question - Kamari, at the point we find her in the story, is quite isolated from anything really in the way of broader community. She did have that, once, and she doesn't anymore, and the story there is a big part of her character, along with where she ends up going from there. Georgie, on the other hand, is probably the most social of the main team, barring maybe Max. When she's not out on missions, she's a regular in her local queer community, especially the lesbian bars, and she's got at least a few amicable exes in that community and amongst her law school cohort. She's a gregarious, friendly sort of person, and the sort that tends to adopt any young queer people in her vicinity, so aboard the team's ship she's definitely something of a Cool Queer Aunt.

Speaking of Max, I'm not sure transfem is the term ey'd personally use, but ey're definitely the cast member with the most fem elements to their particular flavour of nonbinary. Gender presentation is something fun to em, and ey're pulling from a bunch of different directions when it comes to eir personal style.

As for the rest of the cast, we're still building out from our main ten, but the intention is absolutely to include trans women and transfem folks, both human and robot. Now's probably the point to admit that our jokey working title for the comic is 'Butches In Space', because it is a bit of a self-indulgent exercise in including all the butch and transmasc and agender characters that we almost never get to see (and especially don't get to see interacting with each other). Ultimately you've got to do what appeals to you, personally, with a project, but that doesn't mean that we're not going to make sure that the rest of the world of RSBS is suitably full of all different kinds of folks. Obviously it's really important to include transfem folks in a story that's using a lot of transphobia metaphors, since they're unfortunately one of the groups that's targeted the most. There's a lot of significant secondary characters that we've still only got rough sketches of roles for, like assorted family members and other agents and various folks relevant to different cases, and I'm sure a bunch of them will and up being transfem once we get to know them better. We're planning on having a lot of fun with gender stuff amongst both the humans and the robots.

Also, one last fun note about Kamari and Georgie - there aren't going to be any active romance plots in the comic, it's going to be a very aro sort of story, but like I mentioned above re: Georgie's various exes that doesn't mean that the characters that aren't aro don't have relationships in their pasts. Without spoiling Kamari's deal, I will say that Pearl from SU was one of the characters that partly inspired her, so read into that what you will. And, in the course of the main story, Georgie and Kamari's dynamic when they do end up face to face might be the closest we get to writing flirting. We thought it would be fun to leave a little bit of room for shipping, if a hypothetical reader is that way inclined, even if the main story isn't going to feature any romance arcs and will be more focused on the platonic side of their dynamic. And it was something of a deliberate choice to have the only canon-compatible ship amongst the main cast be a lesbian one, since fandom is after all a bit notorious for ignoring them.

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Kamari design! Our fancy & mysterious butch android. 

Also! Some of her outfit options before the latest iteration. Some of those earlier bits of clothing will probably show up in her wardrobe later...

For more on Kamari’s design, inspiration, the iteration process - and to support Mairi’s work and the development of this comic in general - check out spacecapart on patreon! There will be a deep dive post about Kamari’s development upcoming and there’s already several Red Shift Blue Shift posts, as well as more on Mairi’s art!  

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Here’s some face design sketches for more of our cast from Mairi! 

Georgie (she/her) - The protagonist team’s boisterous bruiser and legal expert! She’s the resident gym butch and can lift up most of the members of the team (except for robot tank Bob :D )

Kamari (she/her) - In contrast to gym butch Georgie, android Kamari is more of a dapper butch - though she's not afraid to get her hands dirty, digging into the gears while she's engineering - or otherwise.

Hector (he/him) - A big brother to just about everyone. Sometimes feels like he’s the only one who gives a shit about rich, lustrous hair. XD For more on design development for Hector, check out spacecapart on patreon!

Close ups under the cut!

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Happy Pride! Hope everyone is finishing up an excellent pride month! Here’s our gang celebrating Pride 🌈 🏳️‍🌈 🏳️‍⚧️

Close ups under the cut!

Our protagonist gang - from left to right, Georgie (she/her), Max (ey/em), Dan (they/them), Peregrine (he/they), and Bob (he/him) and Cobi (they/them) in the back

Our mysterious Red Shadow! (they/them)

Kamari! (she/her)

Patch! (they/them)

And Hector! (he/him)

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Meet (well, sort of) our mysterious antagonist! The main team will end up referring to them as "our red shadow", and for now that's all the name you're going to get. What are they up to? Who are they? Well, that would be telling, but they seem to have a particular interest in the activities of Dan and their team, as well as an agenda of their own that they're willing to go to unpleasant ends to achieve... 

It's so fun to finally have a proper drawing of this particular character that I can share! As you might have guessed from the fact that their colour is red, they're just as important to the story of Red Shift Blue Shift as our protagonist, Dan (the blue side of things). I've got all sorts of fun ideas for comic covers featuring the two of them, and now that I've more or less finalised both their designs I'm a lot closer to getting to play around with some of those, which is very exciting. 

(Also, yes, we did go about three months there without posting anything new on this blog, but we're still here! Lots of behind the scenes development has been going on with the comic, we're really getting places, and after the new year when I'm a little less busy with work I'm hoping to get a bunch more character design art done. We're both so excited about this story, and it's so cool that you folks are interested enough in what we're up to to follow along!) 

- Mairi

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There he goes :D - EK

!! (I hope tumblr doesn't eat this ask)

It did not! In celebration, Anon, you're getting A Whole Bunch of OCs in the form of a shameless plug for the webcomic I'm developing with my friend @yourfriendlyneighborhoodenby!

We've got a whole blog for webcomic stuff over at @redshiftblueshiftcomic, and if my wrist behaves I'm planning on drawing a lot more stuff for over there over the next few months.

But, in-keeping with the spirit of the meme, here's an intro to just one of the characters from the gang:

You see that large fellow on the far left? That's Bob, and I'm still figuring out an official design for him but the basic vibe is 'if WALL-E was a tank the size of a small car'. Bob's very old, on the order of 300 years old, and he was built as a military bot back in the days when bots weren't yet considered sentient. (His name originated from his military unit calling him their 'Big Old Bot', but it's since become just his name.) His generation were among the first to be recognised as such, and he's been with the as-yet-unnamed organisation (set up to protect robots rights) that the main gang work for since it was founded.

These days, Bob is very much a pacifist, and he removed his in-built gun turrets a very long time ago. Most of his body is taken up by a reinforced bunker, and that function he was happy to keep because it lets him protect his friends and also act as a mobile holding cell for any troublesome folks the team encounter on the job. Bad and naughty criminals get put in the Bob bunker.

His personality is very much that of the grumpy old grunkle, that guy who says he's "too old for this shit" and grumbles about "kids these days" but is actually very fond of them and so proud of everything the subsequent generations of bots and humans have accomplished. He's spent a lot of time teaching in the organisation's training academy, and he actually taught his current team leader, Dan, back when they were just a newbie agent. We love Bob, there's something so fun about the team's obligatory grumpy senior agent being the size of a tank.

Fun fact: he doesn't bother with clothes, but he usually has a few fun fridge magnets stuck to his chest.

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Hello #AggressivelyArospectacular @aggressivelyarospec! Red Shift Blue Shift is a sci-fi webcomic in development from two aro creators Mairi @spacecapart and EK @yourfriendlyneighborhoodenby! 

Our main character Dan (they/them) is aro and others in the cast are also arospec! The story is set in the distant space future, and Dan works for an organisation that works to protect the rights of robots and AI now that they've been integrated into society as equals to humans, while slowly getting caught up in something much larger thanks to the machinations of a mysterious masked individual with a particular interest in Dan and their team... 

If you’re interested in the characters you see here and looking for stories with found families of aro & otherwise queer characters, and aro friendly stories that focus on platonic relationships (with no planned romance plotlines), we hope you’ll give us a follow for more character art and news on the development of the comic!  

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I may have gotten a bit slap happy with the picrew that's been going around on twitter for the more human-looking members of our cast (whose appearances aren’t spoilers, that is :D ) -- here's my best attempt at our Dan (they/them) - team leader - and Peregrine (he/they) - team paranoid android, Georgie (she/her) - team boisterous bruiser, allergic to sleeves - and Max (ey/em) - team newbie, always has a cool jacket, plus a quick try at Hector (he/him) - everyone's big brother - and Kamari (she/her) - all around mystery. Find the picrew here and have fun! - EK

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We've got business cards -- for both @SpaceCapArt and Red Shift Blue Shift! The art on the back is combining Mairi's art of Dan and the background from my take on their DTIYS! I was giving these out at my local con, so you might have seen one there this weekend! - EK 

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One of the things I've done for Dan, and plan on doing for all of the characters, is a page like this of doodles exploring some outfit ideas. Most of these doodles aren't necessarily canon, just throwing ideas at the wall to see what sticks, but they're a good baseline for me to work off of going forward. 

That sketch on the left was actually my very first outfit design sketch for Dan, back when they were just a vague concept mashing up a few characters that I like. The rest of the outfit doodles were running with the idea of a limited colour palette, which is one of the fun things about Dan - whether they're depicted in full colour or the greyscale-and-blue thing I'm going for with the actual comic, their clothes will look the same. Beyond that particular quirk, though, Dan is a relatively boring person when it comes to clothes, but we love them anyway. 

You might also notice, if you're paying attention, a detail that I don't think we're mentioned yet - Dan has prosthetic legs. The specific design of them is something I'm still developing, but that's been part of the character since I first came up with them. A pretty major incident in their backstory resulted in that particular development, and that's all I'm saying for now... - Mairi

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Here’s Mairi’s Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/spacecapart/posts

Are you interested in seeing more WIP shots like this one? I (Mairi) have a Patreon page under my usual art handle, spacecapart, and I’ve started using it to share progress shots of all sorts of things that I’ve been working on, including stuff for the comic! I put up a post today with a whole bunch of photos of the pencil stages of the page full of Dan that was the first post on this account, plus some extra info about the process, and you can unlock that and a whole bunch more for as little as £2/$3 per month. I’d be really delighted if you go and check it out! Art is my full time job, and the more money I can make through Patreon and selling my work at conventions, the more time I’ll have to work on projects like RSBS. If you’ve been looking for a way to support the comic more directly, Patreon is the best way to do it. - Mairi 

Check the reblogs for a link, or just look up spacecapart on patreon! 

Can’t be a patron right now? Reblogs are always appreciated! 

(PS - We’re drafting up several fun patreon posts on the development of some of our character designs, including some sketches and inspiration boards from me – get excited! - EK)

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Are you interested in seeing more WIP shots like this one? I (Mairi) have a Patreon page under my usual art handle, spacecapart, and I've started using it to share progress shots of all sorts of things that I've been working on, including stuff for the comic! I put up a post today with a whole bunch of photos of the pencil stages of the page full of Dan that was the first post on this account, plus some extra info about the process, and you can unlock that and a whole bunch more for as little as £2/$3 per month. I'd be really delighted if you go and check it out! Art is my full time job, and the more money I can make through Patreon and selling my work at conventions, the more time I'll have to work on projects like RSBS. If you've been looking for a way to support the comic more directly, Patreon is the best way to do it. - Mairi 

Check the reblogs for a link, or just look up spacecapart on patreon! 

Can’t be a patron right now? Reblogs are always appreciated! 

(PS - We’re drafting up several fun patreon posts on the development of some of our character designs, including some sketches and inspiration boards from me -- get excited! - EK)

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More art of our Dan! We’d love to see your take on the DTIYS!

Here it is - my entry for my friend & collaborator @spacecapart‘s ‘draw this in your style’ challenge of Dan Gibson, the protagonist of our webcomic-in-development @redshiftblueshiftcomic!

This was great fun to try, and I encourage folks to check out the dtiys - the deadline is the 9th of August, but we’d always love to share more art of Dan if you want to give it a go after that!

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EK has done most of the art of Peregrine so far, but here's my version of him! The sketch on the left was the first time I ever drew him and was me figuring out how to draw his face, and the one on the right is from the page of Dan sketches that I did, which was in order to start pinning down the style that I'm going to eventually use for the comic proper. I'm very fond of this grumpy bird boy, he's great. 

You may have noticed that each of our characters has a colour associated with them- Dan is sky blue, for instance. Peregrine's colour is this sort of darker green, as opposed to Patch's lime green. You'll see more of the colour association thing as we start to draw more of the gang! Keep an eye on that, it may or may not have narrative reasons behind it... - Mairi