Character Design Challenge 3 - Mermaids and Mermen

   As the post title has pretty much stated, this month's theme for the Character Design Challenge is Mermaids and Mermen. While I was initially planning to go back to another old character design of mine, I decided to instead do something similar yet a little different. I had originally designed a Chinese jellyfish fairy sometime ago and had wanted to do a revamp of that very much like I had done for the previous character design that I had done. But as it was yet another Asian-oriental related design, I felt that I would save it for another time and do something different. 

   And so, I began quickly looking into a variety of other Jellyfish types before eventually coming across the Black Sea Nettle Jellyfish, a contrastingly darker species of jellyfish as compared to the pearly sort that I had given my other design. Known to be found in the waters of the Pacific Ocean. Its range is thought to be from Monterey Bay in the north, down to southern Baja California and Mexico. Those locations further added to what I had in mind for the character design itself.

   After seeing some really lovely examples online, I decided to use one of the many images available in NASA's Royalty-Free Image Resource and placed it over my sketch to aid me in the design's colour scheme as I went along. I did struggle with this design for quite a bit and erased and repainted several parts over and over. This was due to the fact that I was trying to avoid making it appear too busy as well as give it a decent silhouette shape (Which I still believe can be done much better). 

   I ended up placing that planet texture over the entire thing again as I eventually erased and painted over most of it while struggling with my character's shape (I even drew a fish-shaped outline over her for reference after awhile, namely 3 triangles). I also experimented with a lot more brushes this piece as compared to the previous one, there isn't much shading for this one in comparison, either, but thankfully the character still does not completely blend into the background itself.

   And this is pretty much my very last character design for this module, but I hope to continue dishing out more original designs for months to come as this has been a really good if not enjoyable practice. This one is already getting more notes on Tumblr than my previous piece (Though neither of them are going to beat the Zelda piece, seeing that it is fanart, regardless of how God awful it actually is...) so I can only hope to garner more interests in my original works as I keep improving with each submission.

   I might try to get a few Qwertee designs done before I round up this studio brief once and for all!