Aryssa over the years

So here is another bonus for this week. Like the Shoju one in between chapters 1 and 2, this pic shows Aryssa as she has evolved over the years. I actually have piles, and piles of Aryssa pics, and aside from the earliest and latest ones, I really can't remember EXACTLY when they were all made...but you can get the general idea here.

2001: In Aryssa's earliest iterations she had very Samus-esque shoulder armor....well, she was originally going to have a lot of heavy armor. That was an attempt to just make the cat-people heavy melee fighters, since they're almost always associated with agility and speed. The weird things sticking out of her back were supposed to be symbolic of dragon wings, since dragoons/lancers are always sort of associated with dragons.

2002: Basically, a slightly more refined version of all the 2001 designs. A few more details were added in, but were eventually thrown out.

2003: I toyed around with shading and making her darker skin...I decided I didn't like it.

2004: Early on, I did kind of do a lot if interesting ink experiments. This one looked pretty cool from an ink standpoint, although a lot of the details are kind of retarded.

2005: I was trying to incorporate her attitude in a bit more (her shyness, and whatnot) to the drawings, and also throwing random armor and outfits in. This kind of stuff also happened with the other characters (I mentioned this in the Shoju progression chart). The 2004-2006 era was kind of a weird experimental era where the characters had such off-beat outfits.

2006: I kind of like these two. The poses and anatomy were starting to get a lot better, and I did kind of like the outfits, though I eventually scrapped a lot of the stuff here.

2007/2008: Still kind of experimenting with armor and outfits. I think the armor makes more sense here than in earlier iterations, but I still didn't really like it. It is probably my favorite weapon design, though, since it looks the most realistic.

2009: Probably the the first design I really, really liked. I've kind of continually elaborated on it, and the current outfit is really just kind of using this one and reworking it.

2010+: While I really do like the most recent designs like these, I still do like a lot of the aspects of the 2009 designs. So really, it's just reworking and combining the aspects I like of these last couple designs until I get it exactly how I like it.