Halloween 2017 - Eve Witch of the Library

Happy Halloween everyone!

I originally released the sketch of this project a few Halloweens ago. To keep the background brief, in my fan fiction, C.C of Code Geass is one of 12 beings known as the Two-Six. Lilith of the Yamibou series (Yami to Boushi to Hon no Tabibito) is as well. In effect, in my story, C.C replaces the role of Eve, being the wanderer who goes wherever and is chased after by her adoring sister. I change up a bit of the dynamic, in part because Lilith now has so many sisters in my tale. But C.C/Eve is the one she has the greatest affinity towards, thus the reason she was the one I chose to sport this particular outfit.

With the line art, the hardest part was the ruffles, folds, and curves of the blouse at her chest. Using Lilith as a model (because Eve in Yamibou has very few instances of joining her sister in this outfit) presented the minor challenge that Lilith’s chest is much larger. For my Eve, the blouse would have to be baggy, as keeping with the style of it, but also be close fitting to not mislead into thinking I grew out C.C’s chest.

The only liberties I took in recreating the outfit, in terms of line art, was to change the hanger of the lantern into stars instead of moons, and to have Eve wearing boots instead of buckle shoes.

In coloring the image, my first challenge was the color of the outfit. There is not a particularly strong color fidelity in the official artwork for Yamibou. Yes, the skirt, corset, and hat, are likely supposed to be just ‘black’, but the reality is that they denote color gradations of the black with shades of purple, plum, and dark blue. Some pieces even abandon any pretense of black and go with some shade of purple between dark and semi-dark. I couldn’t ever quite figure out if the intent was for the shoes to be a different color from the skirt or not.

Assuming professional animators were more intent and attentive than I would be, I assumed that any apparent difference in color was a deliberate difference in color. If the skirt looked a different color to the corset, looked a different color to the shoes, looked a different color to the hat, that was because these were all different colors. So, that made my original intent a little more tricky, as I had wanted to match the colors to that of the Lilith images I was using for reference. Because I use blue a lot, and don’t get to use purple all that often, I reasoned that I preferred to use shades of purple more so than shades of blue. The corset and the skirt are always virtually the same color, any difference seeming to be shadows and highlights, so that’s what I did. The hat is always a lighter color, and the shoes closer to black. So, that was the direction I went.

The lighting in this piece is also more unique than what I’m accustomed to doing. I generally use daylight or some sort of uniform lighting scenario; the sun up above somewhere between high left and high right in whatever the piece. But here, because of the presence of the lamp, the light source is plainly in view, and not particularly powerful. I wanted it to be powerful enough so that the top of the image didn’t just become lost in darkness, but weak enough to create nice setup for contrast. I used a lot more gradient here, not as much straight shadows, in the hair for example.

The pipe Eve is holding is a nod to another witch in Eve of the Two-Six’s pantheon of identities, Beatrice of Umineko no Naku Koro Ni. The smoke coming out the end was an idea I had from the start, but despite that, I don’t know that I was able to quite capture it the way I wanted. I feel it might still be a little too “flat” looking. I probably needed to go bolder in toying with flow rate on the airbrush I used to try to get the impermanent effect, and getting a greater variance in coloring.

In the end, I’m pleased with this job. It’s got the sort of dynamic I was hoping to capture, and I really do love C.C in this outfit. I have plans on doing one with Anzushiro (Dark Magician Girl) in this outfit too, but I haven’t figured out the pose just yet. I’m leaning toward one of my Dark Magician Girl figures, but I don’t know for 100% yet. I don’t have another Eve/C.C work planned yet either, though the next one is likely to do with the original “Gathering” project. I also don’t have a concrete plan for any Christmas release, so I can’t give any updates on that. But, part of the fun of Christmas is the surprise, right? So, until then, enjoy!!