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tea-ddie · 11 days
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This poll is for round two of the Hottest Ballyhoo women bracket. Ballyhoo is a queer-noir graphic novel which follows a playwright and her play that goes terribly wrong. More illustrations of both characters are under the cut.
Wow-e, folks, these are randomly matched up but this one is tough! Not to mention that these two lovely ladies are lovers themselves. Sometimes you have to fight your darling.
Evelyn Gold
She's a stunning beauty. A singer, a charmer. She's the leading woman in her own baby blue band, the house band at lesbian bar "the Lilac." She looks awfully handsome in a tux.
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Mei Jiang
Mei is an actress, a drama queen of the highest degree. She can be a bit divisive, but damn, if she isn't having fun and making the most of her life, having a gay old time.
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tea-ddie · 11 days
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This poll is for round two of the Hottest Ballyhoo women bracket. Ballyhoo is a queer-noir graphic novel which follows a playwright and her play that goes terribly wrong. More illustrations of both characters are under the cut.
Delia Wells
Delia is a reporter for the Tribune and a bit of a menace. She is infamous for pursuing a story, no matter the consequences.
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Gina LaRue
Gina is the "it" girl. Fabulous, mysterious, and with a closet of outfits, wigs, and accessories that would put some of the biggest divas to shame, she most certainly stands out in a crowd. She's an actress who might be holding a secret or two—but she can get away with it with eyes like that.
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tea-ddie · 11 days
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This poll is for round two of the Hottest Ballyhoo women bracket. Ballyhoo is a queer-noir graphic novel which follows a playwright and her play that goes terribly wrong. More illustrations of both characters are under the cut.
Marjorie Miller
Majorie is an ex-circus performer turned 1950s housewife. She's sickeningly sweet and determined to hold onto the life she's made for herself.
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Oretta Adams
Oretta is the playwright whose work causes all the problems in the first place in Ballyhoo. She's a bit reserved but has a lot to say—things that come out in her writing.
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These two grew up as best friends so here's a drawing of them hanging out:
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tea-ddie · 1 month
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This poll is for round one of the Hottest Ballyhoo women bracket. Ballyhoo is a queer-noir graphic novel which follows a playwright and her play that goes terribly wrong. More illustrations of both characters are under the cut.
PEARL LAWRENCE
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Pearl is a genuine flapper turned drama director. Tough with a no-nonsense attitude, she's here to make sure that the show will go on, no matter what.
DELIA WELLS
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Delia is a reporter for the Tribune and a bit of a menace. She is infamous for pursuing a story, no matter the consequences.
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Find out more about Ballyhoo here and, if you'd like, you can get a copy for yourself here.
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tea-ddie · 1 month
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This poll is for round one of the Hottest Ballyhoo women bracket. Ballyhoo is a queer-noir graphic novel which follows a playwright and her play that goes terribly wrong. More illustrations of both characters are under the cut.
Marjorie Miller
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Majorie is an ex-circus performer turned 1950s housewife. She's sickeningly sweet and determined to hold onto the life she's made for herself.
Unnamed Stage Manager
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Listen, I needed an even number of characters for the poll. And she has a few spoken lines, so she makes the cut! She's sweet, and mildly based on one of my real-life friends whom I adore.
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Find out more about Ballyhoo here and, if you'd like, you can get a copy for yourself here.
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tea-ddie · 1 month
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This poll is for round one of the Hottest Ballyhoo women bracket. Ballyhoo is a queer-noir graphic novel which follows a playwright and her play that goes terribly wrong. More illustrations of both characters are under the cut.
ORETTA ADAMS
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Oretta is the playwright whose work causes all the problems in the first place in Ballyhoo. She's a bit reserved but has a lot to say—things that come out in her writing.
GLADYS FLORES
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She's the butch of all time. Protective of her community with a soft-side for those closes to her. She can be intimidating in a way that makes certain femmes at the club fawn over her.
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Find out more about Ballyhoo here and, if you'd like, you can get a copy for yourself here.
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tea-ddie · 1 month
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This poll is for round one of the Hottest Ballyhoo women bracket. Ballyhoo is a queer-noir graphic novel which follows a playwright and her play that goes terribly wrong. More illustrations of both characters are under the cut.
Gina LaRue
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Gina is the "it" girl. Fabulous, mysterious, and with a closet of outfits, wigs, and accessories that would put some of the biggest divas to shame, she most certainly stands out in a crowd. She's an actress who might be holding a secret or two—but she can get away with it with eyes like that.
Carmen Calvo
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Carmen is an actress and a very gentle soul. Staring alongside the dramatic Mei and Gina, she seems more muted in contrast, but she is a star in her own right. She's grounded and a kind person.
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Find out more about Ballyhoo here and, if you'd like, you can get a copy for yourself here.
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tea-ddie · 1 month
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This poll is for round one of the Hottest Ballyhoo women bracket. Ballyhoo is a queer-noir graphic novel which follows a playwright and her play that goes terribly wrong. More illustrations of both characters are under the cut.
MEI JIANG
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Mei is an actress, a drama queen of the highest degree. She can be a bit divisive, but damn, if she isn't having fun and making the most of her life, having a gay old time.
KIT HOLIDAY
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Kit is a photojournalist for The Tribune. She's quiet, a bit haunted, and mostly keeps to herself, hiding behind the lens.
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Find out more about Ballyhoo here and, if you'd like, you can get a copy for yourself here.
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tea-ddie · 1 month
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This poll is for round one of the Hottest Ballyhoo women bracket. Ballyhoo is a queer-noir graphic novel which follows a playwright and her play that goes terribly wrong. More illustrations of both characters are under the cut.
EVELYN GOLD
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She's a stunning beauty. A singer, a charmer. She's the leading woman in her own baby blue band, the house band at lesbian bar "the Lilac." She looks awfully handsome in a tux.
AUDREY MORRIS
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Say what you will about Audrey, you can't say she isn't dramatic. After the unfortunate passing of her husband, you'll always find her dressed in black, but she doesn't let that cramp her style.
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Find out more about Ballyhoo here and, if you'd like, you can get a copy for yourself here.
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tea-ddie · 1 month
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Hello, my friends. I am excited to announce that starting March 29th, I will be running a very silly poll tournament to determine who the hottest lady in my graphic novel, Ballyhoo, is.
Round Two will go up April 18th and conclude April 25th.
ROUND TWO
Marjorie Miller vs Oretta Adams
Mei Jiang vs Evelyn Gold
Delia Wells vs Gina LaRue
ROUND ONE ARCHIVE
Pearl Lawrence v Delia Wells
Oretta Adams v Gladys Flores
Gina LaRue v Carmen Calvo
Mei Jiang v Kit Holiday
Marjorie Miller v Stage Manager
Evelyn Gold v Audrey Morris
This is purely for goofy silly fun reasons, but I hope y'all participate! If nothing else, just to look at the ladies. I love drawing beautiful women.
Cheers!
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tea-ddie · 2 months
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Floyd & Barry.
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tea-ddie · 2 months
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Barry / Floyd & Beatrice / Flossie
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tea-ddie · 2 months
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Ron/Ronnie from Ballyhoo.
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tea-ddie · 2 months
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Hey! I'm doing some cool stuff this spring, and if you're based in Chicago or Milwaukee, check out these events! They'll all be rad as heck.
More info about all of the events below the cut.
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tea-ddie · 2 months
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@snoozzzes's character Blackbell from their fantastic webcomic, Dead or Alive. This was for an art trade and it was such an honor to get to draw Blackbell! They are everything to me. READ DEAD OR ALIVE! It slaps!
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tea-ddie · 2 months
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New self-portrait/profile picture! I love telephones.
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tea-ddie · 2 months
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Something that may or may not be clear about my book, Ballyhoo, on a surface level, is for how long it's been in the works. People who've known me for several years will remember the very first draft of the comic from 2018/2019. That version was specifically made for Webtoon and has been more-or-less scraped for the current version of the story. Because of that, all of Ballyhoo's characters have gone through pretty big changes—not just in their design/my art style evolution/etc, but also in their occupation, some elements of their backstory, and more. I've started working on Book 2 and have been making some new concept art. I realized as I looked to the future of the project, it was a good time to look back. This post will go through three of the main characters: Evelyn, Marjorie, and Oretta, and explain how we got to where we are in Ballyhoo.
Evelyn Golubev
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2018: Evelyn was one of the very first characters I ever created for this story. She was originally the femme-fatale-type—her girlfriend had just mysteriously gone missing. She worked at a vaudeville-type club as a dancer and, besides being somewhat hot, ominous and foreboding in the way that a femme-fatale must be, that was about it. I was still definitely trying to understand my art style and struggled a lot with making the hair look as "natural" as I wanted. Her outfits all leaned pretty heavily femme and her makeup was heavy... but uncanny as I didn't fully understand how to color makeup on a face then.
2024: Evelyn Golubev, or better known by her stage name, "Evelyn Gold," still works at a vaudeville club, but beyond dancing, also sings and performs at other bars and clubs across the city of Portapolis. She is the frontwoman of her Baby Blue Band, which is the house-band at local lesbian bar, the Lilac. Although she still holds some of her femme-fatale vibes, I wouldn't necessarily describe her as a "femme" in the queer spaces she occupies. She wears custom blue suits at the club and brings a swagger that would make any girl blush to her performances. In both versions of her character, she holds a few secrets that she protects fiercely, but in the currently version of the story, the consequences of these secrets coming out feels more intense. Overall, I think her character has become more refined and deliberate in the story.
Marjorie Miller
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2018: Oh, Marjorie. Her role in the story has shifted pretty significantly from the first drafts of the story—in this earliest drawing, she's pictured singing at what was a lesbian house party. She was always a bit desperate—trying to fit into a space that wasn't really for her. I knew she had grown up outside the city, probably in a more rural area, and was trying hard to fit into more classy and elegant circles. She mostly functioned as a background character in the lesbian scene who held a secret that would help solve the mystery (because of course this story was always a mystery).
2021: This was about at the time I was re-developing the story and laying out the groundwork for a new version of the comic. Despite scrapping the house parties, I wanted to redraw that specific scene... mostly because I liked her dress. Marjorie's hair, similar to Evelyn, was something I became more comfortable drawing with time. In 2021, you can see me trying to separate the way her somewhat messy waves and curls fell. Like I said, at this point I knew the house party scene with Marjorie wasn't going to happen, but I wasn't sure what her exact role would be. Was she a hopeful performer? Someone who performed alongside Evelyn in the Vaudeville club? Something else entirely? What was her life like when she wasn't singing? Well...
2024: Marjorie Miller is a married woman, living her perfect, heterosexual, suburban housewife life with her dearest husband George. This might seem like a hard pivot—it also feels like a hard pivot to her old friends Oretta and Evelyn, both of whom she's mostly fallen out of touch with. Despite the changes in her life, she is content with how it's worked out for her, or at least pretends to be. Still, beneath the picture-perfect surface is a woman who was, in every version of the story, desperate to fit-in and who is living a life that feels out of her depth.
Oretta Adams
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2018/19: I don't have a drawing for this, but my earliest ideas for Oretta included her arriving in Portapolis on a train. This was always her introduction and it's how she arrives to the city in Ballyhoo, too. Back then, I knew she was an old friend of Marjorie's and Evelyn's who would open up an aspect of the mystery and story that both of them wanted to keep hidden for whatever reasons. I'm sure this sounds woefully underdeveloped—and that's because at that time, it really was. However, this was around the time where I started to have an inkling that maybe the trio's shared past was in the circus.
2021: Because her introduction was so vivid in my mind, a lot of Oretta's early concept art is her at the train station. Pictured in 2021 is a more relaxed version of Oretta: she smokes, she's dressed very casually and comfortably, and, of course, she has her suitcase. It was important to me that she always dressed for comfort and for herself first and foremost. This is part of why Oretta's outfits in the current story consist of a lot of 40s work-pants and sweaters.
2024: As I started writing the comic in 2021/22, it became shockingly apparently that Oretta was the main character of the story. Her being the factor that opens up secrets multiple people wanted to keep hidden put her in a prime place to act as both outsider and instigator. Oretta, Marjorie, and Evelyn share a background in circus performance and it started to make sense that she would be a writer/playwright, taking her experience in showbiz to a backstage role. And it is her play—possibly inspired by past events—that triggers the main events of the story. Her play is a catalyst for too many things coming out, and everyone seems to have a good reason for wanting to make sure the show will not go on.
In Conclusion...
Ballyhoo has been a long time in the works! I hope this is interesting, or maybe even inspiring for those starting longer stories? Things will take time, but it will be worth it. I'm really happy that Ballyhoo: Book One is out there in the world, and I'm honestly so excited to get to keep working on this project. I might do more posts like this about other characters or other aspects of the story—again, it's been in development for what seems like a pretty long time and I have a lot of thoughts about how different aspects of the story have played out.
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