“Why is Pacific’s Iowa not a bimbo?”

Er, that is a very odd question, one. Two, I really wouldn’t call KanColle’s Iowa a bimbo. It’s not nice and it really isn’t accurate. Theirs is honestly a very Japanese take on “American shipgirl.” From the star-shaped pupils to her buxom chest to stars and stripes to her very outgoing personality, the design fits.

Pacific’s Iowa, however, have different focuses. A pretty good rule of thumb: at a bare minimum, Pacific girls should be someone you want to take home and introduce to your mom and dad. Even the wild and abrasive ones have a certain sort of “womanly” quality that supplements their personalities. In other words, a common core of values are shared between all of our girls.

Iowa just happens to be more of a “quiet country girl” or “serious and quiet” type. Here’s a  sketch from November from a long time ago. This character isn’t Iowa, mind you. But this should give you an idea of what kind of girls he likes to draw.

See the resemblance? Characters like Iowa came pretty naturally to November, since he’s really pretty fond of drawing girls of this type. Specifically, he likes to draw girls with slimmer and “daintier” builds. He also likes sundresses and straw hats.

So, when it’s time to make a shipgirl that’s well, quite easily fitted with the above, it’s no wonder she got drawn.

(Meanwhile, I have a grand old time trying to convince the guys to draw the men of Pacific. Go figure, right? I’m not gonna make our people do things they don’t particularly like to do. Cute girls? Yes. Sexy girls? Yes. Ordinary girls? Yes.

Guys? Eeeehh…. )

Fixed a few things with the site & made sure Sune’s post went through. Website upgrades tend to be a tad more difficult than we think, since neither Zero nor I are really good with anything involving technology.

Generally, if you see a mail call missing, it PROBABLY means that we had a front page update or something “bigger” than our usual updates. Believe me, I really do enjoy popping in here to show off what we’ve done, and it’s a good way for us to see what we’ve made.

“How big are the Abyssals?”

Mostly very big. Smallest ones tend to be bigger than modern warships and larger ones seen so far are kilometers in size.

Something that I’ll point out is that unlike KanColle or even Strike Witches where antagonists take consistently humanoid forms, we rarely use the human form for our Abyssals. If something’s looking human she’s either a character or meant for very specific purposes (like the humanoid anti-shipgirl unit we showed a while earlier).

Instead, most of our Abyssals tend to be monstrous in form. By this, I don’t mean grotesque or unusual, but rather you will note that we have a strong affinity for creatures of the deep and other “legendary” creatures. We’ve so far only shown the grunt scouting units of the Abyssal fleet, but in general, they tend to resemble oversized whales or fish bedecked with armor and weapons. Polished and sleek, of course, but nonetheless still “fishlike” (that’s the term Sune uses, anyways)

Also, you may have noticed that our Abyssals have an “eyeless” “helmet” or “mask.” Again, for this type of Abyssals, that’s a defining trait. From an artist perspective we wanted to show that these things aren’t simple monsters, and that an intelligent hand played a role in their creation. The overall goal (as hopefully you’ll see in our own upcoming Abyssal book) is to give them a sort of otherworldly, vaguely high-tech sort of flair.

Sometimes I skip a question because it’s relevant to a future update. It’s not because I don’t want to answer it.

“Since the abyssal thing is being kept hush-hush, I’m guessing shipgirls don’t appear at USO events?”

No.

At least, not in the way you’d expect. For starters, there is no reason to believe that the USO even know STEC has shipgirls. 🙂

Secondly, after STEC goes public, the answer is still probably no for the vast majority of the situation. There are only a handful of shipgirls and you need them fighting the Abyssals or performing other objectives. I don’t think the shipgirls themselves would object (and I have a feeling Tennsy concerts might be pretty popular), but you really have to think about the practical situation and whether or not it’d actually be sensible to pull the girls away from the frontlines.

Honestly, the best case for the USO might be waiting to see if USO-fairies pop out of Avalon. Those might be better suited for their objectives.

“Makes me wonder whether or not Marble written her very own fan work or doujinshi during off duty.

Though, I wonder if her puns also transfers over to her works… XD”

Heeeeey. Are you saying I can’t write? I can write! I am a significant contributor to the Avalon Weekly! Langley sometimes put my stories up on the kitchen fridge!

…That’s because Langley needs a calendar, idiot. The Avalon Weekly’s literally the right size for the freezer compartments. 

Marby likes to write. It’s her hobby. As K9 mentions, she writes a large range of works. However, I’d like to point out that what passes for fanfiction for us (in the context of Pacific) is more like, Marby’s (sometimes very questionable) stories about her friends.

A shipgirl who declares herself a long-time reader of Marby (who, by the way, is definitely not Marby) speaks on conditions of anonymity. She describes her work as “tremendous,” but observes a distinctive tendency for her to veer off on very unusual directions.

Basically, coupled with her occasional head-in-the-clouds tendencies and you sort of “get” what kind of a girl she is. Marby’s a bit awkward in the sense that she has no real filter for what’s going on in her little head. If she thinks of something she’s likely to just blurt it out. It’s not that she doesn’t want to be social. It’s more like she’s BAD at recognizing that some things aren’t necessary, and she’s read far too much that her jokes end up either so esoteric that nobody gets them, or they’re basically really bad puns instead.

Naturally, Sune really likes to use Marby for her stories and the bits that she builds. She’s definitely one of the funner ones to use in that regard. The chibi Marby is definitely one of my favorite chibis because it just really, really fits her. 🙂