I've got quite a bit to say on this one.
Okay, so, first, let's start with this: Ever heard of a game called
Night Slashers? It's a fairly obscure monster-themed beat-em-up by good ol' Data East, back during the heyday when the arcade market was at it's
finest. I find it a refreshingly nice game, for a number of reasons, one of them being the spectacular way the monsters die--they melt. Oh, and how they melt. It's actually quite satisfying to beat these monsters into blobs of goo.
One of the heroes happens to be a Chinese female exorcist named Hong-Hua. I'll be honest; for a female heroine design, she's actually quite bland and stereotypish. She just seems like a generic spiritualist Asian girl who uses exploding charms and kung-fu. Still, that didn't stop me from damseling her on a whim, particularly because it was getting close to Halloween. Plus, I wanted to go with something obscure; I'm sure the average person would have chosen a Darkstalkers girl like Morrigan, or someone from Resident Evil, like Jill Valentine. But I wanted to do someone no one would
ever think of... so I picked Hong-Hua.
Eventually I sort of gave up trying to complete it for Halloween because there was just too damn much and I was running myself ragged staying up so late just to try and complete it in time. It's really my fault, because I started it halfway through October.
Anyways, it was going to be a rather simple DiD picture, but as I began to plan it out, it became something more... and things took off from there. The end result turned out to be rather interesting to work with.
I rather like the monster designs in Night Slashers... there's quite a variety of baddies to choose from here, and aside from the occasional head and color swap with a few models, there were a lot of unique ones to be had. So I picked a few that I wanted to represent the villains who overpowered our heroine and plan to seal her away in a tight coffin before her friends can come to her rescue. It gave me a chance to try and add some variety to the picture, as well as some personality.
The coffin itself was sketched, then "inked" in digitally with the line tool, because, sadly, the kind of ink pen I use is not well suited for long, straight lines like that. It's just not. Nor is my inking hand. I had to improvise with something digital for this occasion. I had little choice, you see. But I think this made for a better substitute. On another note, as I worked on this pic, I think I could have had the view tilted to add a bit of drama to the picture, but by the time this came to mind, I already drew out the girl, and I didn't want to redo the entire picture just for an effect.
Even though I started this up on a whim, I am actually fairly satisfied. I hadn't put this much effort into a picture in quite a long time, and this pic kind of became something special. I wish it turned out better than how I was expecting, as it looked better in my head than it did in execution, but nothing's perfect. I also wish I hadn't goofed up on the hunchback's shirt/scarf. Actually... it was supposed to be a scarf, but I guess I didn't realize that. Hard to tell sometimes when you're using sprites as a reference.
This is a character of mine that I've had for a while, and over the years she's developed rather nicely. She started out as a simple carpenter who could fight with her tools. But overtime and with a few changes, she became a ninja carpenter. I figured that her carpentry weapons could also work as ninja weapons too, and went with that because I thought it was pretty interesting. 
