At one point in time I made a The Origin of Stefan post. I think it's time for me to let the origin of Tomato and (more importantly) (?) TB out of the bag. :V
Note: I may or may not have mentioned some of this stuff before.
Both Tomato and TB have very weird origin stories. But first, Tomato:
At around the winter of 2008, I was at my grandma's house with my cousins. One of them asked me to try and draw him. Now if you know what my art looked like in 2008 (just see my portfolio), you'll know that I could not at all draw realism or real people. xD Anyway, I tried to draw my cousin and completely failed. In fact, he looked kind of womanly with an "hourglass figure". Not knowing what to say or how to make up for my failed attempt, I said "HERE, LOOK. THIS IS YOUR BOYFRIEND."
(My cousin's straight, fyi.)
Anyway, he rolled with it, and was like, "OH YEAH, MY BOYFREIND. MY MODEL BOYFRIEND."
"YEAH! HIS NAME'S TOMATO."
At this point, "Tomato" looked nothing like the Tomato we know today. :V Unfortunately, I have since lost the drawing of my cousin/threw it away. But yeah, Tomato at this point was 1) A model, 2) My cousin's boyfriend, and 3) A guy with an hourglass figure.
Next year my family went to Paris with that same cousin of mine. Somewhere along the way we suddenly remembered the whole "Tomato" ordeal. It might have actually been in Paris when we came up with Tomato's name, because Takara suggested that he turned into a tomato at night and fought crime. (???!?!) My cousin had actually decided that he and Tomato had already broken up or something, but Tomato was still really entertaining to talk about. We were sitting around in our hotel one night doodling and talking about stupid stuff when we all decided to try and draw a sketch of what Tomato would look like. I actually do have some sketches of what Tomato looked like at this point, as well as Takara's design for Tomato. I'll scan them in and post them either this weekend or some time next week. :M
We all thought that this "model-by-day-crimef-fighting-tomato-by-night" thing was hilarious, so Tomato came up a lot while we were in Paris. I would sometimes point to random guys with red hair and say to my cousin, "LOOK, THERE GOES TOMATO."
WHICH, (kind of discursively) BRINGS ME TO THE ORIGIN OF TOMATO'S BOYFRIEND.
I've been kind of reluctant to reveal this, because I always say things like "No one knows his name for unknown reasons"... but now you'll know the real reason why no one knows his name.
So my cousin and my sisters and I (plus the adults) were out wandering Paris when we saw this guy wearing a greenish t-shirt and rolled up jeans sitting on a wall beside a river. Sound like anyone? xD This guy was writing something down on a piece of paper as we passed him, and eithe me or one of my sisters decided to quip, "HEY LOOK, THERE'S TOMATO'S SECRET ADMIRER! Look, he's writing love letters to Tomato!" We all joined in with stuff like, "IT'S TOMATO'S BOYFRIEND!" and things. We were far away enough from the guy that he didn't hear anything. (And he might've only spoken French, idk.)
At this point, we decided to be really kind of freaky: We took 2 pictures of this random guy from Paris. I actually still have those photos. xD
That really should have been the end of Tomato and Tomato's Boyfriend, but I had a weird urge to draw them. And thus, Tomato and TB became official "OC's" of mine.
So yep. Tomato is a failed portrait of my cousin, and TB is a random guy from Paris. xD
The reason no one knows TB's name is because I don't actually know TB's name. He was originally a real guy from Paris that we happened to stumble across. I would feel weird giving him a name considering I don't know the guy. xD And yet, I don't feel weird drawing him anymore. At this point, he's pretty much just my character since I came up with his personality/etc. He doesn't look a whole lot like the real guy anymore. :M But the inspiration was from some random dude!
TB living in Paris is also the reason for the OFAV cast living in Paris. TB being the only French guy in the OFAV cast is also because of that eventful day in Paris: that guy was probably French, so TB is also French.
(I have no idea why no one in OFAV is French. orz)
(Actually, Danny might be. But at the same time, that'd be weird.)
So there you go! the origin story of Tomato and his boyfriend. Never did I realize that I would be drawing comics with Tomato and TB again, or even have a whole cast of characters to interact with them. :D I'm glad I do now though, because the OFAV characters are some of my favorites.
And thanks for reading! :M Hope you found this interesting! Or really weird.
