Bettlebug

I'm posting this image here not because of any kind of originality, but because this is the first time I've duplicated this art style and these faces with anything that approaches quality. I guess this would be a good time to say that I'm a huge fan of the French tv series Miraculous Ladybug created by Thomas Astruc. Yep. It's a wonderfully crazy show that works so well. One of the only good superhero shows currently out there. That's all I'm gonna say about it for now, except that in the actual show the protagonist, Ladybug, is a girl and her partner, Cat Noir, is a boy. So my artwork here falls under the category of alternate universe fan art where each character's gender is reversed. I don't approve of just blindly doing that for any and all tv shows or books. In fact usually it messes up the characterization in some pretty significant ways, and I would never want the original characters in the show to be different from how they are now. But for this specific show, where the undertones of subverting gender superhero stereotypes are such a big part of the many things that make it so unique, I think gender reversal is an interesting idea to explore. Frankly, it's the kind of thing that could only be explored and done well in fan works.

Most people call this version of Ladybug some variation of "Beetlebug." I like that the best. Also, most of the art I've seen of these characters has had wildly different outfits than the originals, and I always thought that was a shame. So I drew them to be basically as close to the original as possible (give or take a belt). I drew their heads too big in proportion to their bodies, but I made sure to at least make the heads the same size relative to each other. Also I'm just now realizing I may have fallen into the one-eyebrow-raised trap. It's on the edge. Other than those small notes, I really like how it turned out! I've been meaning to post something about this show for a while, and this seemed like the right thing to do. God's will be done, as always, for everything big and small.