Lucky Seven

[artistbettyanne]

Here's a bigger update tonight! I got five characters sketched in today (Ranma-kun was sketched yesterday, but since I'd already posted twice that day I didn't want to spam my FList yet again). It's not quite as far as I wanted to get, but I had set this goal for myself as a minium this morning, and since I spent the bulk of the day at my parents, I don't think I did too bad.



First up, Ranma-kun!



Ranma-kun's in a classic seated pose. This particular pose is exceedingly familiar to me, being one I've not only drawn many times but one I've sat in many times when I'm modeling for drawing classes. XD As I mentioned earlier, this figure replaces the figure of Chibi-Chibi in the composition I'm appropriating. As a result, I had to choose a pose that kept the feel of the one Chibi-Chibi was in and that would, at the same time, help keep the balance of the composition. The diagonal composition of this pose reflects the subtle diagonal within the overall composition and thus does just that.



The five sketches I completed today encompass the rest of the "Inner Senshi" from the original composition.

Masahiko Yanagiba (Family Compo) in place of Mercury:





Shion Wakanae (Family Compo) in place of Chibi Moon:





Family Compo is a somewhat obscure manga series by Hojo Tsukasa, who is more well-known for the series City Hunter. Here I've drawn Masahiko as his female alter-ego "Masami," and his little cousin/sister Shion as her male alter-ego, who was dubbed "Shioya" in the most recent installment of the translated series. These two have a complicated relationship with each other and with themselves in the series, but there really hasn't been a lot of interaction between Masami and Shioya yet, so I wanted to play that dynamic up in this image.

Have I ever mentioned that I particularly hate that cutesy, skewed-perspective shoujo artists like and that this image used for Chibi Moon? Well I do, but I used it for Shioya anyway for the sake of the composition. XD I'm okay with how the sketch came out, but I'll have to wait and see if I'm still happy with it once the coloring is done.

Another of my favorite pairs is slated to be in place of Jupiter and Mars. I am particularly pleased with how these characters have been naturally falling into place - I made up the list of characters I wanted to use before I ever went searching for a composition, and the way they're mapping over so well into the composition I chose demonstrates pretty clearly how many artists and storytellers fall back on archetypes when they play characters off of each other. While this feels trite or boring for many viewers, I find it a great way to help a story along when you're tossing viewers in with no information.

Alucard (Hellsing) in place of Jupiter:





Integra (Hellsing) in place of Mars:





I can't decide if I'm happy or not that Alucard looks so much like a teenager. XD Much of that will disappear when I have the figure inked and colored; his red vampire eye will be more prominent, the other won't show through his hair except a tiny glimmer, and the edges of his hair will be much more fluid and pointed. (Crappy mechanical pencils can only do so much, after all.) His smirk will also be much sharper, simply because it won't be so smudgy.

I had a lot of the same problems with Integra. (For what it's worth, they're both drawn on the same page, and it took me three tries to get them to scan properly. Go figure that of everything I've drawn so far, these two are the ones who've given me the most trouble. XD) Integra's cigar is only roughed in, which is why it looks like it could be everything from a snack cake to a microphone. XD I'm looking forward to coloring her hair, of all things - I love Integra's hair, and I love drawing hair, so I can't wait to work more on this.

Last but not least, another character with beautiful hair: Utena Tenjou (Revolutionary Girl Utena) in place of Venus.





I'm stupidly pleased with how cute Utena looks in my style. I'm not a huge fan of the style Revolutionary Girl Utena is drawn in, but I was still pleasantly surprised when I finished this sketch. This is one I've made a mental note not to fuck up when I ink and color it, as happens too frequently with my work. XD

Now that I have a number of the figures underway, I've also started splicing them into the composition they'll be in when I'm ready to ink. This gives me a better idea of how the characters are interacting with one another and saves me having to flip back and forth between pages in my sketch book when I'm trying to decide exact placements later on. This is just a rough; obviously, there are still a large number of characters missing, and I'm inevitably going to be doing some resizing and shifting around before I'm finished.



Now that it's going on 1:30 AM, I'm going to retire for the night and hopefully get started in my sketchbook again bright and early tomorrow. I would like to ideally have the rest of the figures sketched by tomorrow night (7 down, 23 to go...) because I don't want to spend any more than a week on this image.