Concept Art Feature: Yupia (Dead Forest)

The following post contains light spoilers for Story #9.

Yupia has been a character I've drawn fanart of for years - her overall design and color scheme is fairly simple, which makes her iconic in the stick figure community. This make her fun to draw, since it allows individual artists' interpretations stand out.

Whenever I'm drawing an OC, one of my goals is to stay true to the original spirit of the design. It's important to avoid the "cheap knockoff" feeling. At the same time, I want to mold the character to serve best serve the story. Therefore, any alterations I make to Yupia must also be improvements. Whether its the addition of cel-shading, adding more expressiveness, or even removing extraneous elements - I'm trying to refine her appearance to a certain characteristic "purity".

For example, my early fanarts of Yupia had more exposed joints (at the elbows, knees, and stomach). I also gave her jet ports on her back, and

This highlighted her robotic nature, but at the cost of stick figure-like simplicity. The actual nature of Yupia's exterior is vague - is it skin or is it cold metal? Her stick form refuses to answer that question, which I feel adds an unsettling, unpredictable flair to her.

I've been criticized for depicting Bog as too slimy, when in "reality" (authenticity) Bog is a stick figure with acidic/slimey skin. I could list multiple reasons for my why I went with a slimy Bog, but maybe there were missed opportunities to make Bog feel even more authentic. Hopefully my depiction of Yupia avoids the "too this, or too that" pitfall, and strikes a perfect balance.

I was actually hesitant to draw Yupia the other day out of fear of "messing her up". Her look has a canon that's been built up over the years by the community, and I can easily stray too far.

My good friend Guitan popped into chat and encouraged me to just start drawing, which is incredibly good art advice 99% of the time. I still struggled to eek out an animated scene, but after a few hours, I was sufficiently warmed up to produce the above concept art (at the top of this post). I feel very confident in this depiction of Yupia - "my" Yupia. A murderous Robot-Cyborg with plenty to be resentful about.