Songs without Words

First completed CG of 2009 is of Faxuda, Empress of the Underworld.  I designed her character in middle school originally as the antagonist to Nisuna, but I quickly revised the relationship to a complex mix of intense emotions as Heaven (Aizifa) and Hell (Oizifa) lost their connotations of “good” and “evil” and instead began to represent opposing extremes of viable belief systems.  Nevertheless, Faxu’s design preserves some of the early conceptions of her character, such as the 666 motif (represented by hexagons), a long serpentine tail, blood-red eyes, and an obnoxious addiction to smoking a type of native Oizifalian plant which induces fatal orgasms in lesser mortals.  Despite her seductive and uninhibited appearance in rebellion against her strict demonic upbringing, she is actually a very serious and competent ruler … and also a virgin (due to the premature death of her soulmate).
Snapshots at various stages of the drawing process from sketch to final can be viewed in this composite.

Click for full size.

And just for fun, here is a very, very old sketch of her, from middle school (c. 7th grade).  What’s with that swirl of hair??  Dunno, but almost every contemporaneous character has some sort of tuft … Nisuna has a very bad case of it.  It adds a certain measure of personalization, I think.