w.raven circa 2012

Redesigned her suit so it looks even less like Maria Traydor and more like it can be worn even in an aircraft.

Her weapons are now real ones and not made up ones. From here on out is TL;DR but will probably explain why.

For anyone who has been keeping up with my scraps (and possibly my Photobucket somehow), I am thinking of changing the setting of my comic from mecha to actual military aviation. Other than the altered setting, the story and characters will still be the same.

The first problem is my character designs seem to be getting consistently better, but my mecha design is clearly not. I really enjoy drawing characters and sometimes fighters too, but mecha? Not really into it anymore.

I actually tried drawing some pages with mecha fights. Not fun in the slightest.

Second problem, I don't know if you know, but I've actually had a ton of negative feedback about anime mecha and science fiction in general. Obviously I'm supposed to ignore these comments, but I've heard enough of them from an enormous number of people (in the anime/mecha fandom of all things) and for a very long time now that I've pretty much been alienated, and that also affects my ability to even like mecha of any kind anymore, beyond possibly Armored Core and hard sci-fi type mecha. And I probably don't want to draw a comic about hard sci-fi mecha.

Third problem, the storyline is starting to more and more fit better into a military aviation setting than mecha. Based on how much I've been revising the story, anyway.

The first problem could be remedied if I decide to outsource someone else to do all my mecha designs (and possibly draw my mecha fights for me). I don't know how the second problem can be fixed up, it really just seems to me like I was the only person on the planet who liked Jehuty, and for dumb reasons I can't remember anymore. Third problem can be ignored altogether; just that between watching Gundam UC and reading Area 88, I chose the latter.

And on top of all this, I imagine Raven better as an F-22A pilot than as the pilot of an Orbital Frame-esque machine.

If you read the above tl;dr what do you think? Mecha or jets?