Septembug 2020

 What’s Septembug? When’s Septembug? Why’s Septembug? These are all good questions! For every day of September 2020, I designed a character to fit in an otherwise typical fantasy setting where little bug people go about their daily, sometimes magical, business. For the purposes of the challenge, bug meant more than just true bugs or even insects. If it would fit right in on a bug-themed sticker sheet, then it was good to go! 

All of the finished character artwork is available to view for free on my blog. This pdf contains additional behind the scenes files and design process descriptions that bring a little more life to each character.

Potential Phobia Warnings

- stylized arthropod characters, including spiders

- real photos of arthropods, including spiders

Because I used a broad definition of the word bug, there are many designs based on spiders and other arachnids. The designs are stylized of course, but I tried to maintain the original anatomy, mostly in the faces. 

The Septembug book itself only contains six real images of bugs. The animals shown are a caterpillar, bee, moth, beetle, millipede, and a wasp.

The names of the available behind the scenes files should indicate whether or not they include the reference photos I used while sketching. Those that do have photos contain plenty of close up images of real bugs.

About the Behind the Scenes Files

There are multiple versions of the behind the scenes file. All of them are Clip Studio Paint files, and most should also open in versions of Photoshop that support layer groups and nested layer groups. Opening in Photoshop may alter the original layer mode settings and display differently from the final look. 

Free versions exist because I want to share my photo references and inspiration, but I do not have the rights to the images I pasted in. To make them different from the paid versions, the free ones have the character art layers flattened. There are also versions of both free and paid behind the scenes files without any photos for anyone with bug-related phobias.