shoe event horizon

These characters are from a little story I cooked up that will hopefully be my entry for the next Tokyopop Rising Stars of Manga contest. These three will be drawn in a bit more of an anime style for that, but I wanted to design them in a cartoon-ish style first.

The boy literally has no name. It's part of the story. The cat's name is Sasha, she can talk and appears as a cat girl (so unoriginal, but she is the nameless boy's cat, and Sasha bugs him even more in a humanoid form so it works). The girl's name is Marie, she's a crybaby and extremely shy.

The next bit is a description of the story that I posted in my sketch blog awhile back:

The little kid with the cat happens to come home one day to find that his mother has sold his name to a witch for a new pair of shoes. Now, Noname (as he will now be called) is kinda pissed about this. Not only has his mom sold his name, but his mom doesn't need anymore shoes, as she already has a seperate house dedicated to nothing but her shoes.

So, Noname sets out for the witches house with his cat, Sasha. Now, Sasha may look like a cat to everyone else, but to Noname she looks like a human to him (this kinda ticks him off because Sasha bugs him to no end).

This is where the story deviates a little. The long version I have planned has Noname and Sasha taking a long journey to find the witches house, having little side adventures along the way. BUT, for the version I hope to be doing for the next Tokyopop Rising Stars of Manga, the witches house is in the city Noname lives in, so I'll go with that version.

Noname arrives at the witch's house. A lot of other people in the city have either sold their name or had it sold for them to the witch, except Noname's the first one brave enough to go and try and get it back. So, he knocks on the door -

and that's all Marie comes in later.

I want to call this whole story "The Shoe Event Horizon", but that has really no connection to the story (other than the shoe part), and the only reason I like it is because it's a reference to the H2G2 radio show (and it makes me laugh).