Friday, April 1, 2016

Sakura Miyazaki: Door Sign

Today, I have some images I drew in March last year of Sakura Miyazaki.  Who is Sakura Miyazaki?  Well, click here for a full refresher (two different links are here, leading to the same character), but in short, Sakura is one of my main heroes for a personal project I call Lucids.

In this concept, an alternate reality exists parallel to the material worlds, a dimension constructed from the subconscious thoughts and ideas of the sentient.  This bizarre reality is known as the "Dream Dimension", and it rejuvenates the minds of those who fall asleep.  Many people's minds and hearts drift to the Dream Dimension while asleep, but those who realize it happens are known as "Lucids".  Thanks to their awareness of the Dream Dimension, they can tap into the Dream Dimension (which have an atmosphere basically made of hammerspace) and essentially gain superpowers.  A Lucid chooses what to do with these powers, and unfortunately, many will use such power to attack the minds of others.  Luckily, should these "Dream Pirates" strike, other Lucids will rise to defend the unaware.  These virtuous Lucids have formed a patrol force known as the "Nites".

Sakura Miyazaki is one such Nite.  She is kind of a mage who specializes mostly in force magic, taking on the occasional alias "Space Girl".  She can conjure white or black "moons", round discs which generate intense force.  Fullmoon, the white discs, pull objects toward them, while the black Newmoons repel objects.  Sakura mainly uses these moons to redirect her opponent's attacks, but since the moons generate their own forces, she can also use them to augment her usually feeble physical attacks.  She can even cast the moons for propulsion: using Newmoons to jump high into the air or over long distances, or casting Fullmoons to pull herself toward a much heavier object she wants to reach.

With this theme of pushing and pulling in mind, I decided to make something creative and odd: an open-and-closed sign.



 

In a way, when Sakura activates a Fullmoon, she is welcoming foreign objects or people to approach her.  With a Newmoon active, Sakura would rather block such objects from approaching her.  I thought this would be a clever take on the signs stores display to indicate whether or not they were open ("Yes, We're Open" / "Sorry, We're Closed").

Of course, there was more to these drawings than just making a sign.  For one thing, most images I have shown where Sakura uses her Newmoon spell feature an angry or stern expression.  While Sakura can be courageous and determined, she is not typically angry unless something deeply frazzles her, so I wanted to show Sakura casting Newmoon without looking angry.  Ultimately, her expression on the "Closed" version looks more sullen.  Almost like she wants to say, "We're not accepting company right now.  Sorry about that.".

I was also using the "Open" version as an experiment in color design.  While I still like the version of Sakura I used for the Group Shot picture, I was wondering if I was still using too many different colors throughout her designI recolored this image several ways trying to simplify it, since too many different colors could ultimately obscure detail in an image and make it too complicated, hoping I could use this coloring to easily turn Sakura into an old-style video game sprite.

Changing the colors for a character I have already established in my head is surprisingly difficult, due to my personal stubbornness for this character.  Sakura's outfit was colored red and pink due to her name, which is the Japanese term for "cherry blossom", and I wanted her eyes to remain green.  Due to these constraints, I found it difficult to change anything else about her design.  For this picture, the only change I ultimately made was her gloves and tights: in the Group shot image, I had them as a pale pink, but starting with this picture, I started using light bluish-gray for the gloves to match the metal pieces on her outfit.  The difference between the metal and the gloves was barely noticeable, so at the time, I figured "Why not?"

I did experiment with several different palettes, though, displayed below.



Please let me know which of these strikes your fancy.  I cannot guarantee I will consider your feedback, but I am willing to listen.

All of this said, though, I have been working on another image of Sakura with a different coloring method, so despite these images being about a year old, they may already be outdated.  Once I am done with that version, I would love some feedback about which version people prefer.  It would be nice to implement Lucids as... something.  A comic, a cartoon, even just concept art for a video game.

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