Lucids: "Nocturne"

This was supposed to be up here by Halloween.  Unfortunately, I have been sinking a lot of my free time into Pokemon X and Y.  I have beaten the main story, but now I am trying to raise Pokemon to battle against other people.  Currently, I am trying to raise a Lucario, but there are so many others I want to raise.  So many Pokemon, so many drawings, and so little time.

Well, I did finally put this one together.  I have shown a few different Lucids on here before.  Sakura Miyazaki tends to grab a lot of the spotlight, but she is joined by her friends Ken "Thunder" and Wendy Krane.  This time, I would like to introduce another character from the first Lucids picture I uploaded here but never really detailed.  Here he is: "The Nocturne".

Nocturne (real name: Shawn Walker) was once a member of Subcon Academy's Dream Police.  During that time, many younger Lucids like Ken Thunder looked up to him, but Nocturne did not really befriend people unless he thought they could be helpful allies.  One day, Nocturne was charged and found guilty of destroying the King of Dreams' mind.  For this crime, he was expelled from Subcon Academy and sentenced to mental imprisonment.  However, the Nocturne managed to escape his captivity and now plots revenge upon the man who expelled him: the Dean of Subcon Academy.  Since this turn of events, Ken and Nocturne have become hostile enemies, with Ken often charged with bringing this ghoulish ex-officer to justice and failing to do so.  Sakura, however, suspects that the Nocturne might not be the monster others accuse him of being.

The Nocturne is a rather fierce opponent in battle.  His slim figure belies his surprising strength, demonstrated by his ability to wield his scythe in one hand (though he will hold it in both for stronger slashes).  He has trouble running in his boots, but he can jump quite high.  Like Sakura's moon abilities, Ken's electricity, and Wendy's wind, Nocturne can control fire as a Lucid.  This fire actually starts as a liquid and ignites when he sprays it, a formula he calls "Blackfire".  In addition to simply hurling the fire, Nocturne can douse his scythe in Blackfire in order to tear the space of the Dream Dimension, allowing him to warp from one place to another at will.  Although his skull helmet is very much decorative, while he wears it, he can block out any kind of psychic infiltration.

As for character creation... where do I begin?  Out of all of the first wave of Lucids, the Nocturne is probably the one who has gone through the most reinvention, and honestly, I am not even sure if this will be the final look of Nocturne.  However, two basic elements of his design have endured each iteration.  He always wore rather raggedy clothes, as an element to make him look creepy or scary.  I used to adorn the bottom of his shirt with the same kind of spikes / teeth on his cuffs, but I decided to simplify that to ease drawing Nocturne a bit.  The other element that was there from the start, though, is probably the more obvious: his skull helmet.  This skull masks his face for most of the series and is meant to make him look scarier.  Said skull was inspired by cow skulls you might see in the middle of the desert (or at least like the ones from old cartoons that occur in the desert).  Obviously, because of the sharp teeth on the skull, it is not directly a cow skull but some creature between a cow and a dog.

One of several details that has changed again and again for Nocturne is his color scheme.  Originally, I considered giving him dark gray shirt, but I eventually decided that I wanted a different character to specialize in dull colors like that and make Nocturne stand out a bit more.  Initially, I considered keeping the pale yellow bones and making his shirt a dark blue.  Sakura is red, and Ken is green, so I thought making Nocturne blue would help complete the triad.  This, however, was before I decided to upgrade Wendy (whose wardrobe is primarily blue) from a B-list character to A-list, so now it might be redundant to do two blue characters, although blue-shirt Nocturne might work as an adaptation for before he left Subcon.  I eventually decided on orange as a color to focus around.  People often consider red and green compliments (though really red's opposite color is cyan), so if the blue Wendy was a main character now, then blue's compliment (orange) should go to a main character, too.

Some day, I would like to elaborate more on what exactly changed about the Nocturne over time, because he was altered quite a bit.