u/ALittleLessThan0

Australia is excited for a challenge and Canada is genuinely fucking concerned, lol. The US just wants a bucket of popcorn or something… Couldn’t care too much until Imperial Japan forced them to, I guess.

I would have included New Zealand, but it’s too tiny for the scale of this comic at the moment… The Kiwis might be added later though, it’s sort of tbd right now.
South Africa and India aren’t included because, at least the way I interpret their involvement in my AU, they weren’t necessarily voluntarily helping during WW2. It was more of an obligation for them, whereas Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the USA were helping more of their own accord — US especially, considering they were a fairly long time past being a British colony at that point.

If you saw the post I made yesterday/are seeking extra context for this, I’ll have you know they’re in comparison to WW2-Era UK/BE, which it what’s causing the USA to be small here, lol.

And the outfit is based off of WW2-Era US military uniforms, by the way! (Minus the sunglasses, of course. Though, fun fact, the US having access to sunglasses at the time is actually historically accurate.)
(I promise it says “x48” under their eye, you’ve gotta believe me..)

I’ve noticed most people tend to size their country-humans off of vibes, which tends to at least vaguely mimic a logarithmic scaling factor for their heights overall. There’s nothing wrong with that, I’m just much too particular to allow myself to also do so. Instead, I’ve been going with a linear approach to scaling countries’ sizes so I can determine their heights. This lets me be much more internally consistent when I draw them, and not doing so would probably drive me a bit crazy because of how my brain works.

Well, while trying to draw a silly little comic involving the UK and France, specifically around the time of WW2, this linear scaling factor has caused me a problem. The UK (specifically so from this time period, but also kind of just anytime pre-decolonization) is so unreasonably huge that including it in anything automatically dwarfs everyone else. The UK makes it so the other countries just become harder and harder to draw because everything is just too small. This is a problem for me because I want the size of my country-humans to be directly proportional to their approximate area during whatever time period I’m drawing them in, AKA they have set heights. Because I want their heights to always be proportional to the country’s size, I don’t want to do the easy thing that I’ve seen other people do where they just allow their country-humans to be able to change their own heights whenever, thus allowing them to be inconsistent in their heights when drawn.

I think, expressly because of this issue, the UK might just be the bane of my existence.

The only solution I can think of that I would be even somewhat happy with is allowing countries to change their height to correspond strictly to the area of specific regions of the country they represent. For example, instead of drawing the UK in accordance with the size of all of its territories, I might draw the UK proportionally to the area of just mainland UK. This option is likely what I’ll end up going with if I decide to change what I’m currently doing, but even it still irritates me quite a bit, since I want their heights to match the size of the entire territory of each country, not just specific regions of them.

The heights of the UK and France in the image are only their heights in the foreground of this comic, too. The size becomes even more of a problem when including perspective in the equation, which I have to do, because otherwise I will always be bothered by it when looking at the finished product. Both France and the UK are supposed to actually be in the background of the comic, too, which makes France even more tiny! T•T I included the USSR because it was the second largest country at the time, and the UK makes even it look small… :[[[

(Less opaque version of the sketches to make the expressions easier to see, since I didn’t color the line-art at all.)

The first three flags are all the part of the USA that remains capitalist in my AU after the Second American Civil War! The first iteration of the flag is the flag of the “Revised American Confederacy,” which is just what that side calls itself in the war, then their other two flags are the national flag of the “United Confederate States of America” and the UCSA’s flag during wartimes. The last three flags are the part of the USA that becomes socialist! The first of those 3 is the flag for the “States of Socialist Reform,” which is the name of that side during the second civil war. Then it uses the second of those flags when it becomes its own nation, the “United Commonwealths of North America,” which is before it fully organizes itself properly. Then, last but not least, when it figures its shit out it uses the third of its flags as the “United Commonwealths of the Pacific Ocean.”

The clothing is especially messy because I didn’t feel like working on it, sorry gang. The UCPO’s outfit is inspired by soviet military uniforms, the UCSA’s outfit is inspired by US military uniforms. The USA is just wearing a suit because that’s just what I draw it in, lol; I only included the US for funsies. (Also, why do even slightly complicated flags have to be so hard to draw on a sphere? T^T)

In the ‘Union and Confederate States’ map the purple states are the “border states,” AKA the slave states that stayed in the Union during the American Civil War, and the green area is made up of the New Mexico Territory, Kansas Territory, Utah Territory, and Nebraska Territory, because they weren’t necessarily set slave or free states yet. (Though, it should be noted that the Oregon, Washington, and Minnesota Territories are all considered part of the Union despite also not being states yet, and the same goes for the “Indian Territory,” AKA Oklahoma, being a part of the Confederacy.)

Anyways though! In the first map, the darker, slightly more cool-toned red is the United Commonwealths of North America (UCNA), and the brighter, more true red is the United Confederate States of America (UCSA). I consider the UCSA to be the actual “remnants” of the USA or the true successor of it in this AU, because the UCSA is the one that’s still capitalist, but the UCNA is the one that is generally more pleasant to exist in. I’m still writing and working it out, but in this AU the basic idea is that the ideas of communism became a bit more popular in the US than they did in real life during the Worker’s Rights Movement and Women’s Suffrage Movement. Then it kind of spirals from there as the nation becomes more and more polarized. On its own the UCNA would have probably been wiped out during the Second American Civil War, but the USSR saw the opportunity to potentially destroy the US and make it either a satellite state or at least a very close ally that would tremendously advance the USSR’s power and influence, and so provided the States of Socialist Reform (the name of the UCNA during the war) with much needed military support and resources. Unfortunately for the USSR, the UCNA did not like them, whether it helped the UCNA or not, lol. I’m still figuring out when exactly the war starts, but it’s around the very beginning of the Cold War. WW2 ends and the US turns around and trips right into another (physical) war in this AU.

Also! The border might seem strange, but it’s because the vast majority of it is determined by rivers and mountains. And I only say “the vast majority” and not “all of it” because the couple of straight lines where there was no natural feature to follow that wouldn’t cut more than I wanted to out of either side.

Is it just me or does Kentucky look like a cat? On the Union and Confederate States map Kentucky is the second distinct purple shape, and when you look at the same spot on the UCNA and UCSA map, it looks like a cat to me. I need to know if anyone else sees it, lol.

I didn’t spend very long on this, and I didn’t use any references, so pardon any anatomy problems and such. I just wanted to draw the US going goblin mode lol.

Sorry, Venezuela. I would have included you if I had realized I had already included the 9 largest, but I was doing it based on size and decided to depict the countries that had areas of at least 1 mil. km^2. I only realized that I could have just done the top 10 in area after I was pretty deep in…

I used photo references for the posing and clothing (+ images of the flags and the clothing references for color picking).
I don’t know why I patterned Peru’s poncho so intricately but didn’t do as much for Bolivia’s. I drew Bolivia first so it wasn’t even me getting tired of working on this or something. Idk. Also, I really like the U.S.’s pocket square being its own flag lol.

They’re roughly scaled by their areas btw (Bolivia at roughly 1.1m km^2, Colombia also at that but slightly larger, Peru at roughly 1.3m km^2, Mexico at 2m, Greenland at 2.2m, Argentina at 2.8m, Brazil at 8.5m, and Canada at 10m.), except for the U.S. because its in the foreground, so I just ignored its size in comparison to the others…
Please excuse any potential mistakes in my Portuguese and Spanish, I was using free translating tools T•T

Oh, also, this is my first time here. So, hi! :D