First Shoot

First Shoot #21 – Tengen Uzui

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.

First Shoot #19 – Nel Tu

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.

First Shoot #18 – Shantae

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.

First Shoot #16 – Akemi Roppongi

For this First Shoot poll, I decided to try and stick to characters I didn’t expect my audience to know. I wanted to see how they’d vote without the bias of familiarity, so I used characters from older or more obscure properties that I enjoy, but I know aren’t as widely known or popular. Maison Ikkoku is an anime that most will probably recognize for its use in “aesthetic” or “city pop” anime videos and gifs, but it’s a pretty fun romantic anime about a bunch of characters living together in a small, aging boarding house. There’s a fair number of anime in this genre (whatever it’s called), but to my knowledge Maison Ikkoku’s the starting point for this type of series. A staple in a lot of these series is the slightly older woman who drinks and is flirtatious, usually single and a bit bitter. I always love these characters or one reason or another, and Akemi’s a great example of the archetype. I was happy to see her win the poll, even though I liked a number of the options people had to vote for, and I tried to capture her charm here in this First Shoot.

Her partner, Sakura, is the older sister of Nadeshiko in Laid-Back Camp, and I kind of like this pairing. Something about their red and purple colors works well for me, plus I like that they both come from pretty grounded and realistic anime series. They also have very different vibes, with Akemi being something like a lascivious aunt, while Sakura’s more of a stoic big sis type. Anyway, I hope y’all enjoy this debut of an undervalued character.

First Shoot #15 – Thorfinn Thorsson

The winner of this First Shoot poll was Thorfinn, the protagonist of Vinland Saga. I’ve only seen a little bit of this show, but I know Thorfinn sports a number of different looks throughout the series. This one is the one I’ve seen the most, though, and is also the most attractive look of his in my opinion. His partner here is Suzu from Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo, who’s actually one of the longest-standing members of the Studio. She was in one of three pics I drew in 2007 when I was first experimenting with sharing smut online, and she’s been in the 1 Club ever since. Now, sixteen years later I’ve drawn her for a second time to be paired with this Viking lad.

Also, for anyone interested, here is the Q&A video I did for Subscribers in June:

First Shoot #14 – Envy

Envy’s one of two boys who won the last First Shoot poll I ran. Like Mystique from X-Men he could, in theory, look like anyone for this shoot, but that’s not what people voted for! His lottery partner was a surprising one, though. Amber O’Malley is a character from David Willis’s Walkyverse webcomics (first Shortpacked!, though the one time I drew her it was Dumbing of Age). At the time I kinda thought my niche might be drawing webcomic characters, so there’s a bunch of random characters from webcomics I was reading in, like, 2012 or so sitting in the 1 Club. I tried to take these two in an interesting direction despite being such a random pairing.

First Shoot #13 – Yoko Littner

Yoko is a character I kept meaning to include in First Shoot polls, but kept forgetting about her. Before I really came up in the hentai world, she was a big figure in the community, even being the mascot for some R34 sites, iirc. I’ve never drawn any of Gurren Lagann, though, even though there’s a handful of good characters I remember from that series. For Yoko’s First Shoot she happened to get Kazuki, creating an amusing parallel between her and Yor, who got Toi in her’s.

First Shoot #12 – Surge the Tenrec

The twelfth First Shoot rookie is Surge the Tenrec, a character from the Sonic comics. I know this character primarily though her support amongst my Subscribers, since I don’t follow Sonic media, but she seems cool and I like her look. Her random partner here is Satsuki from Ghost Stories, a girl I drew for a Halloween pic in 2021. I’m still working on improving my handling of Sonic characters, but I hope Surge looks alright enough here.