Bigger Bros

Fan art of AtomicKingBoo's (Twitter, DeviantArt) new male OCs, "The Bros", who caught my eye enough three weeks ago (!) that I just had to draw fanart of them. At first I was going to just draw regular fanart, but I couldn't help myself from beefing them all up. Heightening my interest is the fact that it's a rarity to see male original characters established in straight art, so besides how appealing they were, I also felt compelled to support the concept on principle, too. There are a few more guys on Atomic's roster, but they were posted after I started this piece, so they're not included here. 

I only had one image to go off of for all these characters, so it was a little tricky to figure out how best to present them -- especially from a muscle growth context -- so I did have to interpret quite a bit and perhaps make a few assumptions. Trying to adapt the art style was its own challenge, as the linework was much more complicated than the usual characters and styles I deal with. I don't think I did too badly, but there are parts that I can still nitpick.

From left to right, a little peek into how I unofficially interpreted them:

Dennis struck me as a happy-go-lucky everyman main character, and his physique reflects that; impressively fit, but not stunning or overly built. A musculature meant to be attainable on the side somewhat.

Grimace (yes, that's his name, take it up with Atomic) and his pale, soft features were the first thing I noticed, so I leaned into the seemingly present goth angle and went for a (pardon my appropriation of a gay concept) "femboy" archetype, exaggerating the buttocks and chest but keeping him fairly lithe everywhere else. I don't like the idea of the femboy, nor am I attached to Grimace as much as some of the others, so it was hard for me to pull this off in a way that still felt tasteful to my own sensibilities.

Billy was easy to figure out; he came off to me as a stereotypical nerd, and if you've seen my other art, you know what I do around here with nerds. A fantasy-fueled superhero's build was the order of the day, and if I didn't spend the last week frustrated with how long this art was taking I probably would've chiseled him out with even more details. The jacket in the original art was a last-minute removal; I didn't like the way it covered up so much of his form and ruined the overall shape.

Zack was also stupidly easy to discern for me; my mind easily slotted him into a jock persona (though not necessarily an arrogant or douchey one). The challenge was to make him appreciably bigger than Billy without challenging the nerd's aspirational stature. The two are relatively similarly sized as a result, though Zack is just bigger -- boasting carved a eight-pack and a cock bulge his sweatpants can't even begin to hide (probably one of the bigger liberties I took in this art!). In short, he's someone you'll see down at the gym later, and he has the body to prove it.

Miguel was the hardest to pin down, but my first impression of him read as a carefree, easygoing type. His body is thus meant to be a bit of a low-effort physique; not really all that big, but larger than the intentionally slender frame I did for Grimace. I changed up the body hair for technical reasons given I don't really have a brush for it in my art workflow.

I hope AtomicKingBoo enjoys this interpretation of his characters even more than I enjoyed his original art, and there are a few alts below -- usually I wouldn't do an NSFW alt involving just a bunch of guys (see that I split them out in the Boys of Summer set last year), but I did so here for the sake of convenience. This is also my first completed art of 2023 -- at the end of March! I've done a lot of WIPs over the past four months, but nothing's been ready to come out just yet. Hopefully that changes in the near future.