Jes & Cin

I did a series of exploratory sketches about the Mom of War fantasy Indonesia concept a few years ago. Thought I'd share some of those sketches throughout the coming days!

Meet the Dia, powerful genderqueer spiritual leaders of the pulau. Their titles are inspired by "dia", the gender neutral pronoun in Bahasa Indonesia. They're loosely based on the Bissu, non-conforming spiritual leaders from Bugis culture in South Sulawesi.

Coming out as trans is a process 🌸 sometimes it means eating at your friend's gerobak early in the morning before anyone else shows up.

A gerobak is a type of food cart you can find in Indonesia. This one serves bakso, Indonesian meatballs 🍲

Working on Lunar Boy gave me many opportunities to explore how queer people navigate culture. Kebaya is a piece of traditional clothing found throughout Southeast Asia, and it's always been really dysphoric for me to wear.

So I tried to design a kebaya look that's a bit more dapper for Aminah to wear in the story. She's a young butch who's always working out what culture means for her.

Aminah through the ages, finding out how humbling starting over can be 🦋

(Aminah is from my upcoming gn LUNAR BOY)