Waka Appears

I had a wonderful, relaxing vacation, and I just had an excellent Passover Seder with my family. I had just enough time to get this finished before I go back to school tomorrow at the crack of dawn, though, so that's good. I started it a few days ago because it was raining and gross out and I had spent the bus ride playing three to four straight hours of Okamiden. And it made me want to monkey around the the Okami style some more, hence why this picture exists.

And exist it does! I mentioned way back when that the original Okami helped bring me out of a slump, not just idea-wise, but it inspired me to pick up watercolors again, in addition to some well timed Cicely Mary Barker picture books I found in a rentable Skiing condo's bathroom up in the snowy mountains of Vermont.

But anywho, I have actually done a fair bit of fooling around with my Okami-imitation style. In fact, right next to this picture, on the same page of watercolor paper, is a small picture of Kuni and Chibi I painted some time last week. And there are a few doodles and practice-paintings scattered around in the mock-Okami style.

Waka is one of those characters that I never get tired of drawing. I doodle him a lot in my notebooks. You can just put him in the most interesting poses, with his gangly arms, baggy sleaves and pants, tall wooden sandals, flowy headdress... Just infinite possibilities. Not to mention I love the character himself. Waka is probably my favorite character in the game. Everything about him is just wonderful. He's funny and tragic. Rude yet polite. Silly yet serious. Smoothly becoming whatever he needs to be, without breaking character, since there's just so much character to go around. From him, as well as those who react to him (Namely Issun). Good writing with a diverse character. In a game full of wonderful, diverse characters, even.

I'm actually really happy with how this came out. I worked hard to try to make my outliner pen stroke mimick brush strokes, to varying levels of success (Though I did sneak a little hatching in there on impulse... I'm not sure if that's good or bad...) Some parts are a tad sloppy, and the background fades a bit, and I blame that partially on scanners since it's traditional art and it was made using traditional light blah blah blah... But still, it's something I'm experimenting with, so of course it isn't perfect. In terms of the design, I should have used a smaller pen on his face for his eyes, it's bothering me. And I love how the headdress came out, though the birdface on top is a bit big. Just a little thing that's bothering me.

But, yeah. I got something uploaded before I went back to college! and it's DECENT!

Also, I feel like the title is a tad misleading. Waka looks like he appeared a few minutes ago, and just now jumped into the frame.

Okami is the property of Clover Studios, which was absorbed by Capcom. Hence Amaterasu's COMBO COMBO COMBOS in MvC3. Also Viewtiful Joe.