Outdated Art

Art and characters that were at one point a huge part of the WoOO story. But as years went on and things changed, these ideas and people slowly became obsolete. I might also use this page as a dumping ground for old designs and such.

One of my main influences back in the early days was a manga/anime called Durarara!! where throughout the story you see most of the cast anonymously communicate in a chatroom and come together in mass at some point towards the end. And I thought that was such a cool idea that I tried to implement something similar in my own story. Cosmo and a couple of close friends would have made an online chatroom that dealt with discussing mental health during a time where that was still not taken very seriously, and throughout the story Cosmo would have found themselves logging on and chatting with friends online (maybe even unknowingly talking to some familiar faces in New York). That little plot point is gone now but maybe I'll find a way to bring it back someday.

Two unrelated goobers I drew in highschool that I would later recycle into Cosmo and Reuben. Cosmo used to be named "Ella" and was a lolz random skater girl, while Reuben was a guy with bad hair named "Ethan". I had a small idea for a story named "E Squared" that dealt with the misadventures of Ella and Ethan but decided to give up on it and focus on other things. It wasn't until years later that when I started on the first draft of WoOO, that I decided to take these forgotten characters and give them a facelift.

Two very old and very bad looking protagonists. I know we all gotta start somewhere but hoooooo boy, are these guys ugly. This was when the idea of World of Our Own was fresh in my head and I was still developing a style/any understanding of character design. This was around the time where the story was about Cosmo living with a bunch of monsters, if you look closely at Reuben you can see some claw marks on his face (what was with me and eye/face trauma?). I wanna say I drew this around...mid 2010, so maybe a year or two after high school.

A couple years later I tried to fix their designs; gave them better proportions and faces and head shapes. They're looking a little better here, still not at the quality current me would be happy with but we're getting there. This was still around the time the story took place in the mid 2010s, so we haven't made the switch to the 90s yet.

The first drafts of the 90's reboot designs, I think I drew these during the late 2010s. I'm still testing the waters with how I want these guys to look but we're getting so close to their current iterations, look at Cosmo rocking those JNCOs. This was also around the time Reuben was still an amputee and I was learning how to draw prosthetic limbs.

Darcy has had less rough drafts compared to the main duo but he still had his ugly years as I was figuring him out. His first incarnation had much longer hair and was a lot angrier. The second pic is around the time I made the 90s switch and was giving the guy a new coat of paint. It's a lot closer to his current design, minus the egg head and tiny face.

An older depiction of the Harris boys back when the story took place in the 2010s. Louis pretty much stayed the same but Lee was originally a DJ (and had a tiny mohawk, I guess). Their names were also swapped at some point so for a brief moment dancing twin was "Louis" and painting twin was "Lee". The second picture is somewhere in canon limbo, I'm not sure if this was before or during the 90's switch since we're still using Lee's old design. But it is one of the more polished versions of the brothers I've got. I really got to draw these guys more...

Some old Hyde designs. I'm embarrassed by the first one in particular because of how overly anime I made their hair??? Back in the day I used to use those old anime doll dress up games to help get a feel for how I wanted my characters to look and I guess Goku's second cousin was the best I could do for Hyde. The second one is much closer to their current design, even if they aren't serving as much cunt- the guy can still offer up a feast without even trying.

This was Locke, a friend and ex-boyfriend of Cosmo. Kind of a confident goofball who liked to play soccer. Before Cosmo moved out to New York, they were just two bi dudes who had no one else to talk about their sexuality with and ended up falling hard for each other. Their relationship was a long distance one and eventually that distance puts an end to things, but two stayed good friends. Not based on anyone but the long distance romance was based on a previous relationship I was in at the time, so when things went south poor Locke got cut due to obvious reasons.

A mysterious guy who went by the username "Peacekeeper" and was often called "Harlequin Jim" by Cosmo. A chatty fellow who was a phycology professor in a school during the day and a fiction writer at night. Back in the day, Cosmo had an interest in psychology and Jim was the one who awakened it. The two would do a lot of talking and Cosmo often joked that Jim was their therapist due to how often they went to him for advice. He'd wear a mask whenever he did a video call with anyone. This guy was actually based off of a friend I made on Neopets who would write little horror stories for the Neopian Times. Haven't heard from them in ages, I often wonder how they're doing.

One of Cosmo's childhood friends before he moved away to France for school, only for the two to bump into each other again years later in New York. His name was Lesley Beckham, although he preferred to be called "Beck" because he hated how girly his name sounded. He was a rich kid who acted kind of snotty to everyone except Cosmo. There would have been some puppy love crushes going on between these two throughout the story along with some issues involving Beck's insistence to solve all of Cosmo's financial problems with his own money, which just didn't sit right with the guitarist. Beck's personality and the budding romance was based off of one of my exes, so...yeah...his removal from the story is obvious...

One of the other ideas I had for WoOO back when the internet and chatrooms were a huge part of the plot. Cosmo would have been an admin for the chatroom they made and often did update videos/video calls in this outfit. Cosmo's online persona was basically a loving, supporting, parental figure who had some online notoriety and a niche following. Very outspoken about mental health, gay rights, and wanting to see the world become a better place.

An old concept I had for Cosmo while I was still developing the story. The big question throughout the beginning of the WoOO plot centered around where Cosmo came from and what made them runaway from home in the first place and- at first- that came in the answer of a hate crime that would leave the guitarist scarred and bitter. But as years went by and things kept changing, I started to distance myself from that plot point. While having queer people suffer being queer is a problematic/over used troupe...it comes from a very real place. It's 2024 as I write this and queer people are still being targeted/harassed and don't feel safe in their states and cities. Queer kids still get kicked out of their homes. I can't put up drawings of pride flags and supportive notes at my coffee shop job because it's "too political" (which is funny considering we're owned by a woman of color and most of the employees are queer girls, might as well shut the whole damn place down if you wanna get politics involved). A customer was openly transphobic during a shift at my casino job. My best friend is Bi and is scared that his religious family will find out and forbid him from seeing his younger siblings. I've been the target of some pretty nasty aphobia in the dating scene before I met my boyfriend.

It's still here and it's still very real for a lot of people.

And while I'd love for every coming out story to be a happy one (and they are in WoOO), if I plan to have the story grounded by some realism I also have to shine a light on the less than happy parts of coming out. It will never be as bad as what I first planned in the early days of writing WoOO, but it will be there.

Depressing rant aside; in the end, I made Cosmo's reason for leaving kind of ambiguous. Sometimes you just gotta leave because things are shit and that's okay.