We had another tie in the first shoot polls, half of which belonged to Princess Rosalina of Super Mario Galaxy fame. Rosalina’s got a lot of appeal, and I know many people would consider her the hottest of the Mario princesses. Her partner here is a former NHML winner, Peni Parker, who I haven’t done anything with since her debut. The other Spider-Verse characters have been making more appearances lately, though, so it’s nice for her to get in on that a little here I think.
Anna was the last of the three-way tie for this First Shoot poll. While I don’t feel like I do a ton of Shaman King stuff these days, I did have a while where I was doing it somewhat regularly, usually with Yoh. Since almost all of the SK content I’ve done was yaoi, though, Anna just didn’t come up much. I had one Subscriber who pushed for her a lot, though, and she ended up in NHML nominations and similar things. I put her on the poll and, well, she just barely made it in with Nolan and Namari. With her random partner here, I thought they might connect over some shared frustrations with their respective partners/love interests/whatever.
Here is the second of three characters who tied in the most recent First Shoot poll. Dungeon Meshi/Delicious in Dungeon has quite a few cute characters, and I’d like to do more with the series eventually. Namari’s easily the character I’m most attracted to in the series, though, as she caught my eye in the credits from the beginning. She doesn’t become relevant until a bit later, and only for a bit, but I hope to see more of her in future seasons. Her random partner here is Delilah, a character from Gate I don’t know super well as I never watched that show. She was one of the earliest NHML winners, actually being the first Near Hentai Monthly Lady in July 2016, following our test-run of the concept.
Our most recent First Shoot poll featured another three-way tie. The first of the three characters who tied is Nolan Grayson, better known as Omni-Man from Invincible. I’m not personally a huge fan of him, but I see the appeal for others and decided to include him in the poll. His tie here coincides with a number of other Invincible things that have already come through, marking something of a resurgence for a show I haven’t watched in a while. Omni-Man’s randomized partner for this shoot is Cell, and I had a pretty easy time working out their dynamic.
This First Shoot poll was won by Gwen Stacy, specifically the one from the Spiderverse movies. Those films sit in a weird place for me, as there’s several characters I was interested in drawing from them, but a number of factors kept me from doing anything with them. I don’t think I’m comfortable talking about those factors here, but Gwen’s a popular character who’s getting to make her NHS debut now. I figured the most logical reaction from her to arriving in the Studio would be to fall back on her experience with hopping between dimensions, so that’s the angle I took.
The third and final winner from our last First Shoot poll is Tauro, the enthusiastic archeologist from Tears of the Kingdom. He’s a fairly minor character in the game, but he’s got a good look and I figured some of my followers would be interested in seeing him in action. I was reminded while working on this why I don’t tend to do much stuff with the modern Zelda characters, though, as his design is very busy and it was frustrating keeping track of his little accessories and whatnot. At any rate, he pulled Tadashi from Big Hero 6 for his partner, who we haven’t seen in a while. So that’s fun.
Tengen is the second of three characters who tied in my last First Shoot poll on SubscribeStar. Since I don’t watch Demon Slayer I don’t really know much about him, although his headdress is annoying to draw so I don’t expect to do much with him (or, if I do, I’ll probably be using his less common hair-down design). His random partner is Yuki, the snow girl from Interviews with Monster Girls. Yuki reminds me a bit of Tengen’s wives, or what I’ve seen of them, and I think she’s a suitable partner here.
The last First Shoot poll I wan on SubscribeStar had a three-way tie. Canute here is the first of the three winners to debut. I think it’s kind of fun that he’s coming into the Studio the same way that Thorfinn did, probably because I’m not really into Vinland Saga but a lot of my Subscribers are.
Nelliel Tu is a character who’s been getting some attention on my Discord lately, so I decided to include her in the most recent First Shoot poll. As you can see, she won that poll, so here she is debuting. Nel shows up in Bleach around the time I dropped out of it. I can’t remember if she’d appeared yet or not when I stopped reading the manga, but I know I never got to her full-grown design. While she’s not my personal favorite girl from Bleach, she is up there, and I had some fun drawing her here.
Shantae is one of those characters I know more through hentai and fanart than I do her source material. Even having played her first game back in the day, I still mostly associate her with the various animations and such I’ve seen over the years. While she has plenty of nice characters in her home series she could be paired with, this association I have with her made her feel like a good First Shoot candidate, and I guess my Subscribers agreed as they voted for her in this poll. Her random partner is Judy, one of the two hosts of “Big Shot!”, the bounty hunter show the crew of Cowboy Bebop watch. While I couldn’t think of much specific for these two to talk about in their scene together, I do find the pairing of a cowgirl and a genie kind of charming.
