Another Slayers Week draws to a close on the Tumblrsphere and it was fun participating as usual. I was especially excited that my cross posts to Twitter managed to catch the eye of Rui Araizumi himself, which is extremely exciting given how much influence his style and Slayers in general influenced me.
The prompts are usually interesting and non-shipping-centric, which makes it easier for me to get creative as someone who prefers ‘cool’ to cuddly when left to my own devices. So, here we go!
Day 1 Prompt: Pokota- Not a character I’m super into or attempted to draw before, really, decided to try and give him a little of the vibe of a Sonic character being a little mascot dude as he is. I did come to like him a lot more last rewatch, though.Day 2: Mazoku- With so many to pick from, I thought I would go for someone outside the lords/generals/priests but still recognizable, so I picked the tag team terrors of Kanzel and Mazenda from Slayers NEXT. Day 3: Lina Inverse- I think Lina was the grand finale last time, but she gets an early appearance this time out. Lina is always fun to draw, in fact she’s basically my ‘test pattern’ whenever I get a new piece of software or hardware. Tangentially, my pal Evo sent me a new tablet, and these were all drawn on it. Funny, that!Day 4: Supporting Character- Given so many to pick from, I decided to draw Ruma from Slayers Premium simply because I don’t think I’ve seen her get any fanart before. She’s got a cute design, I never actually noticed her cape was tattered and dirty until digging up reference pics. This and Day 7 are probably my favorites of the week.Day 5: Sylphiel Nels Lahda- Or some spelling thereof. I don’t really have a lot to say about this one other than I had to redo her eyes because the first take made her look sly or seductive and I was going more for that gentle doe eyed look. I should also note up to here all of these images had no backgrounds because I was focused on the character art and hadn’t had time to play around much with the paint tools to make half decent backdrops.Day 6: BroTP- Having two women as a ‘BroTP’ feels like stretching the term a bit but they always had a fun chemistry even if I prefer the main series to the specials basically any day of the week. It says something that they can literally fight against each other in a war then nonchalantly sit down and have lunch in a tavern like nothing happened. Best Frienemies. Behind the scenes take, this one was *tough,* to be honest. I was having a Bad Anatomy Night and wound up using my Figma Body-Chan for reference photos, then scaling them to the proper heights made the proportions on the doll feel odd. I feel like I could have done better on this one, but given time constraints and working live on stream I gave it a solid “this is done.”Day 7: Gourry Gabriev- Rounding off the week is the jellyfish brained sword prodigy himself, Gourry. Last time around I had him in an action pose, so this time I thought I’d show off his doofier side where he’s making the “Oh! I get it!” face but more than likely does not, in fact, get it.
If you’d like to check out submissions from people other than me, hit up the main blog at http://slayersweek.tumblr.com.
