A Sound Christmas!

Hey everyone! Welcome back!

And a Merry Christmas to you all! Well, Merry Christmas Eve, anyway, but close enough. I'll be sure to post up a message on my twitter and facebook on the actual day, but today is my blog day, so you all get this a day earlier.

So, I mentioned last time that I had a challenge of doing a Christmas image that involved at least one of the characters from the Naruto RPG in a Christmas theme and I had a week to do it in.

Uh...well, I would have had a week to do it in. This past week has had a lot of unforeseen events happening. Nothing that harmed me, but there has been illness, injuries and health issues that have had me working cover shifts or longer shifts at work, leaving me with....uh...two days - less, really, if one also adds taking care of my dog and general personal care like eating etc.

Still, I have done my best, and, while its not as good as I would like, and needs some polish to it to make it my usual standard of digital images, it is as close to finished as I can get it for now. I may add to it later to improve it, such as aditional shadows and smaller details, etc, but in terms of the challenge, this is what I have.

So, what was the image I ended up with?

Well, I decided to do a picture of the three youngest characters on the forum - the Yume Twins - Kuro and Shiro - and their recently adopted brother, Amatsu Hikaru. I had thoughts of the three of them dressed in Christmas outfits, presenting a present to someone, either to the person looking at the image, or someone standing in front of them (such as their parents).

This was the rough sketch I came up with:

So, from left to right, Kuro would be wearing a reindeer outfit, Hikaru wearing a Santa outfit and Shiro wearing an elf outfit. The hoodies on the twins is open, as the tops underneath would help indicate which twin is which to those who are a bit unsure about their personalities (Shiro being more outgoing than Kuro). Hikaru is meant to be mildly blushing as well, since he is generally unused to such things and also has the twins with their arms over his shoulder.

Using this as a base, I created the line art:

As you can see, I added a few things - the headband that Kuro wears now also has reindeer ears, while Shiro's hat now has the elf ears pinned to it, the way some Christmas Hats do, with his actual ears being a bit more obvious, since the initial sketch made out that he actually had pointed ears.The fluff around Hikaru's Santa outfit is also a little more fluffy, and the present now has writing on the tag. I wanted to keep it a tad ambiguous as to who the present is for, thus the present is 'for you', so the person looking at it can make their own decisions on that.

That done, I added the base colours:

As you can see, Kuro wears the dark top, while Shiro wears the light one. This is standard to what they do in the story, so people can tell them appart (unless they're playing tricks and they switch shirts). The present is a bit bland - unfortunately this is a part that I ran out of time to put detail in. What was going to go on there was holly images. I may add this later, but the characters were a bit more important. 

With the little time I had left, I put on the basic shadows and lights in eyes and hair:

The basic shadows helped to put a bit more depth to the image and the very blank present is a bit more interesting, while the lights make the hair and eyes look a bit less blank as well. 

There is still a lot more I would have liked to add, such as darker shadows, some extra details in the hair and fluff as well as the decoration on the present box. But For the sake of the challenge, this is the ending image. I'll certainly be adding more details and such before I upload it to my DA or website, however. :)

The image has two names. The first name is 'A Sound Christmas', since all three characters live in (the RP's version of) Sound Village. The second name was 'Dreams of a Heavenly Christmas', because the surname of the Twins roughly translates to 'Dream' and the surname of Hikaru roughly translates to 'Heavenly'. The first is easier to say, but both names relate to the image, so this pic now has two names. lol

For now, though, I just have to see how those on the forum will like what I have managed, and I hope you like what I have done so far as well!

Until Next Time!

Merry Christmas!

Tara