Shaenon here. Thought we’d share some random sketches and stuff on Sundays.

This was one of the earliest sketches I sent Jeffrey when we started tossing around ideas for Skin Horse. Sweetheart was much more long-muzzled and aquiline in these early doodles. Eventually I started making her look more like a sled dog. I still don’t feel like I have a handle on her visually, but hopefully I’ll get better with time.

Unity’s character design reflects my deep-seated desire to draw the hairstyles of two of my favorite comic-book villainesses, Harley Quinn and the obscure Marvel character Deadly Nightshade.


Meanwhile, Channing says: I really like this picture. I used it as my desktop for a while. My early drafts of Unity were written with the presumption that she’d be wearing a trenchcoat or something, which is all well and good, because, hey, trenchcoat, but I fell in love with the sweatshirt look the moment I saw it. This is an outfit that screams “I’m still a juvenile delinquent at heart!” which really worked into my portion of her scripting well.

Sweetheart here pictured is, as Shaenon notes above, not a terribly good snow dog. She looks kind of like a Sloughie, but then there’s that tail and chest ruff which suggest a Collie-like component to her as well. It’s an attractive but not terribly practical build for the environment she comes from, and all in all, I’m happy with the changes that took place for the “final” version.