Catsu Corner: Robatsu Redesign (Patreon)

Robatsu! What a throwback!

My Robatsu/Hey Robatsu was a cancelled Patreon-exclusive, fake visual novel story from 2020. It may have been scrapped but it never stopped living on in my mind, and even now I still think about it on and off, and how I want to someday bring it back again, either as another comic or an actual game/visual novel.

Robatsu himself was intended to be the protagonist or player stand-in, and originally designed to look like a robot Catsu. I wasn't entirely satisfied with his original design, since Catsu is a cat and everyone in-universe is a dog, so Robatsu ended up looking like a weird cat/dog hybrid. So, I played around with ideas and redesigned him to look more dog-like and robotic (and made him cuter while I was at it). This is also the first time giving him color and I wanted something that would look good potentially shrunken down as a game sprite if I went the RPG game route. Also wanted to pick colors that felt "robotic" and "unnatural," and would contrast against the three date-able candidates, Maki, Tako, and Chawan (they'd have warmer tones).

He was never posted anywhere outside of Patreon, so here's a image for reference of his old design so you don't have to go back through old content lol

Anyways, I'm leaning heavily on his colors in the first picture, but I've included a few of the others just to show my process (as well as the sketch since I liked how it looked lol).

Leave a comment and a like! I'd love to hear what you all think of his new design! :3