♦ “Princess” » 86 Kb (Normal), 128 Kb (Original)

The first of my so-called “rant pics”: a four-piece set of simple solo character portraits with boring poses and minimal backgrounds, accompanied by a rant or three. The set includes Ayame, Sango, Kouga, and Miroku, in that order, because I feel they’ve been misrepresented by some of (some, mind you, not all) the IY fandom and I’ve been feeling the need to rant about them for a while now (except for Ayame, really, because she’s been all but neglected).

I finished Ayame’s picture first, because she’s my second favorite IY female and I haven’t seen enough fanart of her out there, darn it. All I had for reference were two grainy screenshots (one of her alone, and one with Ginta and Hakkaku in the background), and none of her from the back, so I took some artistic license. It probably ain’t accurate (I think I may have colored her headband wrong), but there’s nothing I can do about it now. This pic was partly inspired by an e-mail from Jon Mueller, who asked me (very nicely) for a colored version of “Prince and Princess” but since I thought the idea might be redundant, I hope this pic of a colored Ayame might tide him over until the “Wolf’s Pride” CG is finished. And I wanted to draw Ayame, so it really wasn’t any trouble at all.

Ayame is a standout in the female-rival-for-main-character category. There are very few females out there in a comedy-action anime series who will befriend the very person who stole away the heart of her betrothed. Kouga-hon, I adore you, but you are so completely blind. I’d make a longer rant about her, but like I said, how can I talk about misrepresentation when very few actually acknowledge her within the fandom? I suppose this pic’ll just be part of my effort to get her noticed a bit more. She deserves it.

Now onto the pic itself—my God, does the background suck. It’s almost a rehash of the one on my last CG; I’m just so uncreative now (though I did say that the backgrounds were going to be minimal). The fur and hair are subpar, but it would’ve taken longer had I chosen to make them more intricate. I worked on this while I was also coloring the Sango and Kouga solo pics; I had all three PSD files open on Photoshop and jumped from one to the other as I saw fit. That’s a bad thing, by the way. This’s my second attempt at my new “no-outline” coloring technique, and I’m afraid it still needs some work. Also, notice the new fugly big-ass signature; I may have to use that on all my other art.