The fourth and final of the conference series, it's time for Sam!

Sam was by far the most troublesome of the quartet... mostly due to a sad lack of character development in Cheer! thus far penned. While there are plenty of plans and ideas, at this point there wasn't any easy-to-draw pairing for the creative component of the squad.

The obvious choice was her Dad, since that's the relationship that most defines Sam as a person. Sadly, however, I'm still highly inept at drawing men. Girls are my default, and thus when I try to draw a guy, I end up concentrating too much on how to make him "not a girl", which tends to lead towards inhuman rather than masculine. Even referencing the comic, my few attempts to draw Mr. Smith failed so utterly horribly that I ended up scrapping his involvement for my own sanity (and the fact I really wanted to finish Sam's picture). Sam's pose and expression was good though (originally drawn to be looking over and up at her much much larger Dad)... so to salvage that part of the comic, I went for a little touch of a Juliette reference and went for Rob. While it's never been depicted in the comic, it was always my though that they were enjoying the early days of a high school romance, so that works. And Rob isn't nearly as large-manly-man as Mr. Smith, so he's a lot easier to draw.

Do people still refer to young couples as "sweethearts"? I'm not sure... but the only other thing I could think of is "lovers", and that always implies a much more mature and physical relationship that these two certainly don't have at this point.