Head Under Water, And You Tell Me to Breathe Easy For Awhile

As a preamble, this update was inspired due to several things...watching the movie Atlantis: The Lost Empire, going swimming at Typhoon Lagoon, a picture Evie drew of two of our characters as mer-folk, and discussing a story project featuring an aquatic race with my sister LC in the last few weeks before she left.  All of this water-themed fantasy stuff made me want to whip up a few new pieces in that vein, and I've also included a lot of old stuff from my hoarding drawer and dusty computer files that I've just been sitting on for awhile.
First, here's a very old pic of mine, which I might have drawn anywhere between 2005 to 2007.

This was concept art for LC for a story project about a person who is entrusted by a dying mermaid with the care of her baby. (You can tell how old this drawing is by how rumpled the paper looks x_x )

Fast forward to 2009, and you get this. (I didn't get around to signing it until I dug it out recently, that's why the date makes it look more recent than it actually is x_X).

This is one of my all-Photoshop pieces, and it took more hours than I care to remember to finish.  I drew it for a client on DeviantArt who paid me $100 for it, the only parameters being that he wanted her doing a back flip underwater, topless, and he didn't want her to look like Ariel. I edited in the shell bra for posting here, not because I'm necessarily opposed to nudity, but it just looked odd.  I sort of think all of it looks odd, frankly--not one of my favorite pieces.  I like the concept and I enjoyed the challenge of the dynamic pose, but I feel my execution is off.  Maybe I'll revisit this someday when my coloring skills and anatomy knowledge have improved.  Oh and I used three textures from DeviantArt to help make the background, so here are the credits:


"Texture 1 - Watery Snow" by Saekaeru
"texture 15" by Sirius-sdz
"Water" by rosalinestock

The sketches in this compilation range in age from summer 2010 to recent, 2011. (click to see closer!)

These are concept sketches for LC's aquatic-race story project tentatively titled Echelons.  I LOVE this story, and I'm so excited that she's let me contribute so much. :D  If I had to describe the plot I would say it's like The Count of Monte Cristo meets Atlantis: The Lost Empire.  The fancy-looking guy top-left is Lord Rhiiyel, the deranged theological powerhouse of the Zanaran society. His "antlers" is actually a headpiece made of coral.  LC wants him to look really glitzy and have fabulous hair.  The bald, one-eyed woman is Aeika, and I don't really know how to explain her role in the story >.> She's important though. I adapted this design of her from an avatar LC and I put together using TekTek.org's Dream Avatar Simulator to use as a springboard.  The next pic is one of my favorite scenes from the story because it's really tense and yet stupidly funny at the same time. The disheveled human man on the left is Kaeden, and the Zanaran man on the right is Audahn. I didn't design either of them, but I've helped LC figure out what she wants Audahn's face to look like, which I sketched below the scene on the left. Audahn is SRS BSNS. >/ The sassy-looking guy to his left is Terryne, and he's one of the characters I got to design from scratch. This sketch is also the newest, which I think you can tell. I've finally started drawing more detail into my character's mouths, yay! Lookee there, he actually appears to have teeth and a tongue instead of a gaping hole in his face.  Speaking of gaping holes in the face, the guy on the bottom of the page that looks like he's been through a meat grinder is Seph, another character design I got to direct. He's my favorite. He's Audahn's head manservant, so he's basically Batman's Alfred.  Like any good head manservant he's organized, sarcastic and fussy.  Oh yeah and he's also a vengeful murderous mastermind. 

Now onto some personal stuff...this is a compilation of concept sketches of an aquatic race for my story project. The bits in this also range from 2010 to recent 2011.

For my story project I wanted an aquatic race.  The natural staple for such a role in most fantasy stories is mermaids, but I also didn't want my folk limited to the sea.  And thus I came up with these, which I am calling Merrows. They have legs and a tail, which they can use to walk around on land, but they can also fuse them into one streamlined "traditional" tail for more effective swimming. This lends nicely to two of my preferences when it comes to drawing mermaid tails--I like them quite long, and I like them to have a distinctive knee join instead of just a coil of muscle and flesh. These were definitely inspired by the Zoras of The Legend of Zelda series, and originally I even considered making their hair look like fins as you can see from the figure on the right near the top.  I've since axed that idea in favor of hair, since I want to play with different styles and don't want them *too* much like the Zoras.  Merrows are more amphibious than they are fish-like.  They have scales scattered over their body, but mostly their skin is smooth and slick and predominately blue. They have dark scleras instead of white and their ears are pronged and frilled.  While most of these sketches would suggest as much, they actually don't run around in the nude.  I imagine them wearing wraps around their waists in a Polynesian, African, or Asian style so that they're comfortable whether they have legs or just the fin. The full figure on the top left is the newest sketch. And the turtle...? Evie should recognize him, I use him to fill up empty space on sketch pages. He's right at home with all of his mer-friends. XD

And last, one purely indulgent piece for me and Evie, drawn a month or two ago...

Vahaadi as a Mer. <3 His current-swept hair was fun to draw.  Originally I was going to deck him out with all of his usual jewelry and his waist sash, but I'm too pleased with the long, sleek lines to clutter him up.  Besides, he'd probably drown under the weight of all of his gold trinkets, mer or not! I made myself quite sore trying to do this pose in a mirror for reference, so while it is possible I must assume he is in motion, because that's not a pose anybody should hold for any amount of time.