I have been productive guys. i actually finished a bunch of drawings and now need to write like... at least three chapters in here... oof not rlly in a good writing mood today, but we'll see how many I'll get done >w<"
But do indeed look forward to some fanart, a character design and backstory update from Maethdess and Feredir and a completely new OC on the side!

I'm also very tired and am listening to music, so there's a good chance that there will be more grammatical errors and typos in this chapter, so I thought I'd jinx it in advance to make my grammar and typing flawless xD

ANYWAYS! I participated in a dtiys by Redsy again!! AND I ACTUALLY FINISHED IN TIME OF THE DEADLINE!!
*hides fact that the deadline is today*

So who's the beauty we were allowed to draw this time around? Nobody less than Sumi and their little float-floof companion Kiko. And as soon as Reds uploaded the chapter with the iconic duo, I couldn't help myself. I don't wanna be mean to all of Redsys OC, but I gotta admit that Sumi and Kiko are my absolute favourites and nothing can change my mind xD

If you're new to the two of them, here are two of the... i think five reference pictures that Reds gave us, which I used the most for my rendition of them:

So since I already tried my hand at giving Sumi a new outfit, I couldn't help myself at giving them a new one, trying to fix up some issues I had with my first try.

The one on the right here is the first outfit i designed for them, for a collab back in September 2019. I tried to get the vibe across and sticking to the original colour palette. And whilst I do indeed view it as a pretty outfit, it isn't quite Sumi, you know?

So when I came to this drawing, I tried to look at their original outfit (the right pic by reds up there), and joted down some things I realised. Black and green were the primary colours of the design, black dominating slighty more than the green, whilst the red was more of an overall accent and accesory colour. Sumi apparently likes more tight fitting clothing, paired with some baggy and loose elements and is quite obviously not afraid to show their body.
Circles seem to play a major role in their design as well and I desperately wanted to find a way to incorporate triangles in there as well.
I also decided to inplement a fourth colour to the mix, since I still liked the idea of brown belts everywhere, but desaturated the colour a lot more as opposed to my first attempt.

When it then actually came to designing the outfit I wanted to push the triangle thing, mostly through the form of the shirt and then through patterns from the waist downwards. I also added circles everywhere to make things less empty and more detailed, whilst at the same time trying to keep a similar silhouette to the original outfit with elements that mimiced Redsys idea a lot.

So yeah... enough talking about cothing design, I'm probably boring you by now and everyone scrolled down to the picture xD, here's the thing i did:

Then it came to the actual drawing. I decided to stick with something rather simple for them, essentially just standing there all cocky with a knife in their hand because... well because they're Sumi, which means that they are timelessly badass 24/7. And then Kiko floating on the side, just beign the most adorable thing I could try and create.

So with a lot of struggles (DANG I haven't drawn the female body in ages -_-"") I then finally created this rough sketch of what I had in mind:

I then started with the lineart, having a lot of fun with Sumis expression... I really don't know why, but I am having a shitload of fun drawing faces with teeth atm haha
I also had quite some fun with the hair, since we all know that I am terrible at drawing bangs... but I slowly do get the feeling that I'm figuring out how they're supposed to work now, so that's something, am I right?

I also got Kiko out of the way pretty quickly, since....... I cannot draw furry things for the life of me. I just can't. But I tried for the sake of Kiko and I think I managed a lot better than initially presumed xD

I then abandoned the drawing for another ages, since school took up all my energy and I was too tired to figure out how female bodies are supposed to work now.
But then the deadline came crawling so I forced my way through and had a surprising amount of fun with it as well! The hand holding the knife turned out really good as well!! (the other one doesn't exist fellas.... it just... doesn't)

So here's the finished lineart!

I had a lot of fun and struggles with the colours. Mainly because I constanly had the feeling that I am deriving too much from the original. The shading really saved my ass on this one, but the flats? Ugh they were very concerning... and sadly I don't have  WIP with the flats exported, so sorry for that ^-^"

So, remember how I said that the shading saved my ass on this one? Yeah it was more of a blessing and curse at once, to be more honest with you.
Quite a lot of the time I struggled with getting their features right, also ending up in the state where you overwork an area or add too many highlights for it to look good. I think I fixed most of those issues by simply deleting about three major highlight layers and a shading layer on the skin, and redoing the entire hair.

The fact, that my computer completely crashed during one of my shading attempts also didn't help along the way of this piece, taking away most of my motivation for about half a week.

Right at the end I also went in with some overlays and added some details, like singular hairs and especially scars. Why scars? Well, Sumi is a headhunter and since they seem to not wear a lot of protective clothing (they're just too badass for armour guys), I thought it would be cool if they'd show their "battle-scars" with pride and unmatched badassery and sass. Idk it just kinda felt like sth they'd do >w<

*yeets final in the chapter*

That's that then!

Hope you liked the drawing more than I enjoyed the process of making it. Sometimes drawings just aren't fun to make at times, and the only thing that keeps you going is your will to see this darn thing finished and rendered. And even if I had some technical issues and had a fistfight with my style in between (btw.... my style won...) I am indeed happy with the final piece!

*cuddles you, gives you tea, biscuits and a blanket*

So, I hope we'll see one another again in another chapter. And until then I hope you take care of yourselves and have a good rest of your day/night/existence ^-^