Chumi, rejoicing with our Satyr reveal: The long awaited… Swiss Elysi! We’ve also waited years to introduce him, granted the same is applicable to all the Deltritans LMAO. Let’s talk about our beloved boy!
Kim, at the maid cafe: The first of our Satyrs to be properly introduced!!! I feel like people had a pretty good idea of what a Satyr was gonna look like LOL, but their species did go quite the several iterations as well! Likewise with our Nymphs, we’ll go more in depth on how we developed them once we meet all of them 😉 But for now, behold – SWISS ELYSI!!!!
Miles, beholding: YAYYYY! I’m gonna sneak in this commentary too, because I had some decent participation on the art side of things for once!
Floral, clapping hands: Let’s gooooo!
Haven, Easy bein’ Cheesy: New boy time!
Swiss concept art by Haven
Haven: Ah... Beta-Swiss my beloved, wait I don’t mean that as an allusion to anything. His deal was that he’s a strider-like but
Chumi: It feels like Swiss has changed very little since development on him began. I remember a lot of work being the nuances of his design (accessories, outfit details, tweaking his hairstyle) but the base of him persists throughout all of our art.
Kim: We all had a pretty solid idea of what his overall style was gonna be like to be honest. The hardest part was honestly just his hair. I know the One thing we felt really strongly about was that he had to have the classique Homestuck hair swirly.
Miles: Yeah, he crystallized very quickly. I feel so grateful to this team because I remember the exact meeting I pitched Swiss’ character concept (along with the other saytrs) and I’d done only one of the designs myself but by the end of the night we already had the basics down for each of them, and Swiss was practically locked in! Obviously we got kind of perfectionist about him down the line but it was so cool to see him spring from my mind to the visual world. I love my artists so much…
Floral: Swiss felt so real from the get go!
Swiss concept art by Kim Quach
Kim: Concept art Back when he used to be more of a gold boy… Swiss is just all about satyr pride though, it made more sense for his jewelry to match his now trademark silver-y text color instead… Oh hey, you can see an old iteration we were experimenting with for his sign in this too LOL.Also this picture reminds me, we even made a custom brush just for Swiss’ laurels! Work smarter, not harder babeyyyy.
Floral: I was a big fun of the crescent bangs that mirrored the back of his head, they were so preppy but it really was too much going on, the implication of his bangs now is so fun.
Swiss concept art by Kim Quach
Kim: Haven was looking at this asking me “why does this say justin” and the only explanation is that I was trying out different hairstyles from google images and one picture was just labeled as some guy named Justin LMAO.
Swiss concept art by Annie “Chumi” Lee
Chumi: Pardon this old art LMAO. We went through A LOT of ideas for Swiss’ hairstyle. One thing we kept in mind is that we didn’t want it to be too Strider-esque because he’s not a Strider! Another thing is that there is a lot of stuff going on at the top of his head, ie: his ears and horn. Thus, we ended up pushing his hair swirls and cowlicks so they’re more on the side of his head versus the top. You can also see inklings of different iterations of his outfit.
Andi: Lots of experimenting with his hair. We were trying to figure out the swirl direction a lot. I think I recall us spending an entire art meeting trying to figure out his hair, and I think we found the sweet spot! Should he have bangs? Should he have a slick back? We ultimately decided on slickback. :J
Kim: Swiss’ whole deal is like trying to assert himself as the guy who (supposedly) has it all together, and that lil’ bit of personality reflects in how he styles himself as well. But, of course, not everything goes his way as much as he’d like it to… just like his stray little cowlick that refuses to stay in place.
Miles: Yeah, him having one misbehaving curl of hair was really important to me when we were trying to nail his shape down. I love his sort of blown-back look, but like Kim said, I specifically was really into the thought of him being completely unable to get that one bit of hair to behave and being low-key kind of annoyed by it. I bet that if he didn’t have his tail in a bun (which, btw, is how I’ve always interpreted it; I don’t think he’d actually crop it) it’d also have a little misbehaving floof to it. I know part of the thought I had when we were going through his hair adventures is that I wanted it to be almost Dio-esque, which is funny because he’s not really much of a Dio at all. I really love what we landed on, I think it actually might be my favorite Homestuck Hair in the entire series. Actually I don’t even think this, I know it for sure. It’s just an incredibly dynamic shape and I think it matches his stylish and slightly frenetic energy.
Swiss concept art by Kim Quach
Kim: A small snippet of my canvas from that aforementioned meeting and my endless torment trying to get his hair right LOL. I had the most trouble with trying to find a flow of lines that felt quick and natural to the hand to draw… It’s always my number one priority character designing!!!
Chumi: Let’s talk a bit about Honeyfall Gymnasikkou Campus!
Honeyfall Gymnasikkou Campus Board by Miles
Honeyfall Campus Initial Concept by Floral
Chumi: Miles put together a really nice moodboard for the vibe of the campus. We loved the ridiculous buff shirtless guys holding up the roof so of course we kept them. I think one of the initial questions for the campus was where to put Swiss, as he lives in housing separate from the normal student dorm.
Miles: Yes! Apologies for putting AI slop in there but the image was so fucking funny to me that I really didn’t have any other choice. I was really excited to try and tackle Honeyfall because it was our first Satyr Environment and I wanted it to really SELL Swiss’ particular corner of their society. An all-in-one living/education system of high prestige, that clearly pulls a lot from grecco-roman styles felt like a great intro. There are a lot of other cultural influences on Satyr culture than just hellenistic, and I’m excited for us to get a chance to hopefully show off more of the Asian-inspired stuff, but you can definitely see it a little bit here.
I was looking for gorgeous college campuses to model Honeyfall after when I was making the inspo-board, and Kyung Hee University’s Seoul campus had such a spectacular look to it that fit almost exactly with what I pictured, so you see a lot of it on the inspo-board. Cherry blossoms also fit Deltritus’ Pink/bluegreen vegetation, and make for a really striking pop of more obvious Asian influence amongst the largely greccoroman styles of Honeyfall. I wanted to really emphasize that sense of prestige and antiquity here, even though Satyrs in general are actually a very technologically advanced society.
Floral: With this initial concept, I was trying to apply our own Deltritus design language that I loosely worked out!
Honeyfall Gymnasikkou Campus Concept by Annie “Chumi” Lee
Chumi: I had to tap into my 4 years of studying Latin and Roman culture for this one.The general shape of the campus is, of course, a horseshoe, lined with statues and arches. Greenery, waterways, and sakura trees were emphasized because satyrs need wide, naturey areas to frolick and play as horses do! Honeyfall definitely has a very utopian look to it: beautiful white buildings surrounded by beautiful flowering trees, beautiful flexing marble statues, beautiful fountains…
While there is a main academic building, a sprawling ascending staircase / amphitheater would be the site of public debates, assemblies, and oration. A statue in the middle serves as a landmark and meeting point for students.
A lot of Roman structures were rectangular with a central garden, which was referenced in the bathhouse / sports field, along with the dormitories. Swiss would end up in separate privileged housing for his status as cohort captain (plus we just wanted him to live in a house vs a public dorm), and his house would be the largest and tallest of all the housing options. This gives him the ability to literally watch over both RA and normal students. The only thing I didn’t figure out was the orange section in the middle.
Honeyfall Gymnasikkou Campus Near Final Concept by Kim Quach
Kim: It’s beautiful… The world of education… The important key notes we wanted to hit: the campus needed to feel GRAND, have lots of stupid muscle statues, and plenty of running space! These satyrs are always on the move doin’ something, they needa get their energy out!!
Dorm Reference Board by Miles
House of Marcus Lucretius Fronto in Pompeii, Italy
Floral: When starting to design Swiss’ quarters it was apparent there needed to be color and so we took inspiration from recreations like above. A loft also seemed like the funnest layout, definitely something new to Homestuck.
Cohort Captain Quarters Concepts by Floral
Edited Upper Floor Concepts by Floral
Floral: Above is a solution I had to help make panels for the bottom floors, so no matter what everything still matched up.
The Plan Assets by Floral
Floral: For furnishing Swiss’ quarters I tried to imply as much of a cultural range as possible with items at hand. While Dirk’s initial interests revolved around Japan and Plato, with Swiss’ particular school taking after Greek and Roman architecture, we felt like (from his perspective) he’d want to imbue his little boys with every possible philosophical perspective, from both East and West.
Considering Dirk is a guy from the future where people have been extinct for over a 1000 years, I think human culture only has reality to him in the ideas they form and aesthetic. It also may be an overcorrection to the lack of culture in Earth C, where the basis of human society is late 2000’s America and… only that.
Chumi: The fancy loft… I’m so jealous. Those are just the perks of being a Cohort Captain.
Miles: YES! Swiss is a character that came to me very, very strongly and it was pretty immediately clear to me the kind of guy he was going to be, and part of what I wanted to make sure of was that his dorm came across properly. What’s interesting is that Swiss is actually living in much cushier digs than most Satyrs, who enjoy nice but not luxurious and certainly not private dorms while they’re going through their primary schooling years. Having his own loft apartment is a privilege only Cohort Captains get at his age and Swiss has absolutely made the most of it. In contrast with Ly’lacs chaotic jumbled room, Swiss has precisely cultivated his living space to create an atmosphere of cultured dignity. What I really, really like about this, though, is that little aspects of his more hyper enthusiasm still pop through: his Sword wall is so, so unrestrained. Like, it looks nice, but it’s SO many swords. You can tell he couldn’t decide on which ones to put up and probably spent ages thinking about it. And also he has an insane vision board behind a private curtain that takes up like half of his living room wall.
Assets by Kim Quach
Kim: I helped contribute drawing the fucked up abominations that are the busts in Swiss’ house. I tried my best to emulate Andrew’s style of busts, but I think mine might be comparably too detailed... But y’know what, that adds a different layer of humor to them LOL. I think the Steve-O one is my favorite.
Chumi: For those wondering, it goes Steve-O, Vin Diesel, and I BELIEVE… Will Arnett.
Miles: Yes! It’s Will Arnet, here, with one T, and it’s pronounced “Will Arneigh”. Because, you know. Horse. Bojack. Satyr. They’re horse guys. Maybe you’ve picked up on that by now. I was so happy that we got to continue the sort of forgotten Homestuck trend of weird ass scary busts of real celebrities.
Unedited Weapons on Walls
Floral: And here are the weapons in their original glory. Again these are meant to be as ornate as possible, and especially here the range in cultures needed to be evident. There are celtic, turkish, indian egyptian and even Elden Rings. Here are some other unedited assets.
The Clark Sickle-Leaf Carpet
Rococo Style Table
Rococo Style Chairs
Floral: The major consistency between all these pieces is they are as seemingly expensive and opulent as possible. Like Mile’s said, this is not the normal living situation for Satyr’s of Swiss’ age. It’s so pretentious and self aggrandizing!
Chumi: Onto the panels!
Panel 878 by Floral and Haven
Haven: Floral put this lovely panel together and then I jumped in to give him his hops. Everyone loves his hops.
Chumi: The people were ranting and raving about his hops (me too).
Panel 877 by Kim Quach
Kim: I had the honor of drawing Swiss’ winning smile… Our first close look at his face…!
Panel 882 by Annie “Chumi” Lee
Chumi: His lil’ smile!! He’s so happy next to this giant scary bust of a man.
Kim: I love the framing of this panel (and the following ones LMAO). The way you cannot escape Steve-O’s magnificent gaze.
Floral: He’s so fucking scary!!!!
Panel 883 and 884 by Kim Quach
Kim: I would share more sketches like I usually do, but since these panels are so relatively simple compared to our more hardcore Candy panels we do, there really isn’t much of a sketch LOL. However, it’s the pro-side of returning to some ye classique Homestuck simplicity! So we can get these panels out to you, our dear lovely readers, faster!
Covers by Floralmarsupial
Floral: I did 8 of the 10 book covers for the flash and it was so much fun photobashing everything! I tried to give every cover its own distinct look and though I’m not a graphic designer I was happy with how these aligned with other books I had seen. Again these are also supposed to be expensive looking books, first editions.
I also tried to have as much fun with these as possible. Influence Sheeple is actually a splicing of gay porn vhs and dvd covers. I also tried to get more of an apparent Japanese influence within the culture by mixing with ukiyo-e paintings. I was also trying to include pieces from the Renaissance that was specifically Flemish (Rise and Fall) along with Medieval Woodcuts (Grey Rain.)
MILES: Swiss’ Librarium section was really fun, for a number of reasons. One of the most exciting ones for me was that I got to do the music for it, so I wrote a song I called UNIMPEACHABLE. Getting to join the Homestuck music canon was so sick, and if you can believe it I actually started learning to produce music JUST for HS:BC. I spent a frankly kind of small amount of time learning FL Studio (which I still always call Fruity Loops despite never having used it until this year) and I obviously still have a long way to go, because the song is pretty rough, but I was really, really proud of how it came out; Mr. President from the HS Official Discord actually helped me do some of the audio mixing on the song to get it sounding a little cleaner, which I appreciated as a newbie. I saw someone on the HS Official Discord ask if Toby Fox did the music for this section, and that’s probably the single best compliment any song I ever make in my entire life is going to get. Whoever said that, I remember. It meant a lot to me.
MILES: I wanted to sort of play up Swiss’ affect of coolness with a slick, jazzy theme, and I had some shamisen plucks in there to emphasize the East Asian influences in Satyr society. I’ve definitely come to think of saxophone as Swiss’ Signature Instrument, whereas shamisen is more of a satyrwide instrument, and the main sax-melody (which I still like A LOT) in this song as Swiss’ leitmotif, so I hope someday we can see that woven into future songs as the HS:BC musical canon evolves to take on a life of its own in that same self-referential way that Homestuck songs tend to be. Having done one song, it really makes me wanna do a billion more, but I want to get a whole slew of other people into Homestuck first! Maybe I can noodle a few more out for some future albums... :J
Panel 890 by Annie “Chumi” Lee
Chumi: Ah yes, the PRIME CONFIGURATION. We’ll talk about satyr romance later, but Swiss clearly has some big (and very very secret) plans. Unrelated, but I saw that someone was making a Swiss handwriting font using this as a reference. This is just my regular handwriting in all caps. I have the canon Swiss handwriting, it is me.
Chumi: Many of these next panels were a joint effort between me and Andi, who provided the sketches and did many of the more complicated animations! Shoutout… to ANDI!!!
Panel 893 by Kim Quach
Kim: I like how he’s still trying to keep his Winning Smile as he’s gritting his through this conversation teeth LMAO. Oh Swiss… Just Barely holding it together.
Panel 896 by Annie “Chumi” Lee
Chumi: Swiss looking so devastated… How could he do this to Steve-O. Andi’s sketch was already pretty perfect so all I did was line it! His sadness….
Andi: Ah yes. Cloppy. I was thinking about how to illustrate this digital creature from time gone by. I was actually a little anxious trying to figure out a way to do it justice because I was even thinking about 3d animating it and everything but opening up blender was a bit too daunting.
I realized I could mimic 3d by using an airbrush tool and posterization for that old computer look and I think it did the job. I made a quick mock up and shared it with the class.
Andi: They definitely liked it lmaoo. I went ahead and made a cleaner version. Quite awesome.
Andi: Actually no, not awesome. Fuck that guy.
Chumi: Andi did such a good job with the Cloppy stuff!! His smug ass expression…The little eyebrow quirks… It all comes together so well. I get why Swiss hates this lil’ guy.
Kim: This looks exactly like something I’d see on my desktop in the early 2000s that will give me a virus. It’s so real.
Andi: I also did a lot of the panel animations regarding this. Using my trusty lovely tool of choice, Adobe After Effects. I am planning on switching over to Animate for these kinda things but for this update, I think I did a fine job.
Panel 895 by Andi R.
Kim: Andi went SO hard for this panel. Our Beyond Canon sakuga... This boy’s ANGRY and jumpin’ off the damn walls!!!
Panel 903 rough draft by Andi R.
Andi: Blegh. This was so rough. Sorry. Kim took it the rest of the way and did it wayyyy more justice!
Panel 903 Sketches and Final by Kim Quach
Kim: I’m proud to say my glorious contribution to this update was this panel. Shout out to Andi for setting up the composition, and I took over from there! At first I couldn’t decide if we should stick with the classic MSPA style for this shot, or let Swiss’ beautiful vision of satyr life take the wheel. The latter obviously won out LOL.
If you look closely our team’s satyrsonas also cameo in here too… ^_^
Panel 904 by Annie “Chumi” Lee
Andi: Ah yes, the many satyrs of the school. Fun fact:
This satyr was a satyr Andrew drew a long time ago. They named this guy Tuck.
Chumi: Official Andrew satyr!!!
Kim: I remember this guy! Andrew
made this back when we were in the beginning of concepting our Satyrs; we had a good visual idea where we wanted them to go, but they had yet to be fully conceptualized.
Chumi: ANYWAY… Gettin’ another look at other satyrs is always interesting! Look at these chumps, just sleeping the day away. It’s nice to get a look at characters outside of the main cast, and this panel specifically had us do a little brainstorming on general satyr appearances. We decided the satyrs should be tri-colored (white, grey, and black) and their markings should reflect real horse patterning.
Kim: I think it’s sooo cute that the satyrs can be patterned. Bro they are funny horseys… Which, in a way, makes it even funnier that Swiss looks the way he does LOL.
Chumi: Additionally, their coloration doesn’t have to stay consistent (ie their ears can be a different color from their face, etc). There’s freedom in being a silly horse!
Espresso Machine Asset by Annie “Chumi” Lee
Chumi: I was tasked with creating a crazy-looking espresso machine, but thankfully there’s already crazy-looking ones that exist in real life. I just used a normal espresso machine as the base and added the engine one on top. And then there’s the truck exhaust pipes, mecha arms, extra bars, and a chaos stone if you squint. I forgot which chaos stone from which franchise.
Panel 909 by Annie “Chumi” Lee
Chumi: AHHH!!! This was a very fun panel to draw though.
Panel sketch by Andi R.
Panel 911 by Annie “Chumi” Lee
Chumi: Swiss’s garden! I think it was said that he knocked down one of the original walls of his house and erected the brick one to allow for an outside space. It’s so cute! I think the little colosseums as bee hives is such a cute idea too!!!
Panel 912 by Annie “Chumi” Lee
Chumi: Getting a lil’ close up on those jars of honey, formulated for his best bros of course. He’s always thinking about them! I think it’s adorable to make custom honey for your best friends.
Miles: I’m copying this from the Writer’s Commentary, but one of the things we really wanted to do with Swiss is give him at least one interest that was like... less overtly cultivated to be a Social Standing thing. It’s not that he doesn’t legitimately enjoy history and swords and politics and stuff like that, because he does, but his beekeeping is sort of his zen zone and falls kind of outside of his typical concern for his own image and political career. He just gets to help a bunch of tiny friends make delicious artisanal honeys, think about flowers, do a little gardening and chill out for a bit. He’s still a perfectionist about it though. Anyway I absolutely adore how this little bee patio turned out, it has a slightly more rustic look thats super cute.
Thumbnail by Ransom
Chumi: Ngl this panel was so hilarious but also I was a bit intimidated by how to convey a boy being covered in bees in a way that is cute and endearing vs scary and will-cause-trypophobia-in-the-audience.
Panel 913 by Annie “Chumi” Lee
Chumi: I think I did a good job! He just looks so happy, and the bees look happy as well! Swiss is smiling and joyous!!! I just love this guy.
Panel 914 by Annie “Chumi” Lee
Chumi: People have been speculating regarding what this is. All will be revealed in due time, but that’s a really long tongue. I think Swiss is gonna be mad…
Haven: Swiss... your handle...
Chumi: Thank you guys for tuning into our commentary, see you in the next one!