Beast of Sin Euphemia Alter

I only just realized this never made it up, which is really bad of me. Nevertheless, behold the angelic face of ruin. The amalgamation of gentle death and volatile passions finds release onto the battered world.

The original concept for this new image began when I started thinking about the ending for R3 Alter. My plans were that there would be three endings, much like a visual novel or similarly styled game. In at least one of the endings, Euphemia's plans fail and she ends up being corrupted in a very literal sense by the same power she was trying to attain. The result is that she transforms into a monstrous form. 

A late decision I made was to mimic BoS Euphemia completely after an FGO servant, meaning this is not the last you'll see of BoS Euphemia. I haven't decided yet which this one will be, but it's either her first or second Ascension. 

In terms of the actual artwork, my plans for her started with a desire to build around Tiamat from the Seventh Singularity, Absolute Demonic Battlefront, from the FGO mobile game and the anime. I also wanted to incorporate a bit of Archdemon Mercedes from the mobile game Epic 7. However, my plans for using Arch-Meru were based around the idea that the "real" Euphemia "perished" and her body was actually taken over by a malicious will, not unlike being consumed by the Black Mud from the Grail. 

I changed my mind on that, however. I decided that I wanted Euphie Alter to be the owner of her actions from beginning to end. Her actions, whatever they ultimately would be, whatever effect they would have on the world at large come the ending, would not be explained away by something else or someone else. This is one of the messages from the end of the Geass anime - coming to terms with one's own actions and taking responsibility for the results. Given that Euphemia's life ends in the anime due to events outside her own control, I felt it would be in poor taste for her fate to again be to disappear under the tide of time again, her body moved by a will not her own. 

From an appearance perspective, however, I ended up not directly borrowing anything from either. Aside from having horns, and they're not even the same style of horns, there isn't really any physical resemblance in BoS Euphemia and Tiamat. 

If anything, you could make the case that BoS Euphemia has more in common appearance wise with Sessyoin Kiara. Euphie certainly doesn't have the same sort of lewd grin, but the not-much-there attire and the shared title definitely unite them stronger than anything between Euphie and Tiamat or Euphie and Archdemon Meru. 

I deliberately went away from the super tightfitting clothes motif used by Tiamat and Meru, wherein you can't hardly tell if they're wearing clothes, or it's some sort of fabric-like skin, or maybe even tattoos or body paint. I went the opposite direction, her clothes basically draped on her body, barely held in place at all such that a light breeze could probably cause a wardrobe malfunction. Symbolically, the thing that is holding her dress together, much like what is sustaining her in the story, is a different form of Geass to anything seen before. 

Her head is tilted to the side in a manner like that of Flare Corona from Fairy Tail. I wanted to have a subtly creepy affect to her, beyond any monstrous elements attached to her. Flare's appearance, combined with her off personality, was a fascinating touch in Fairy Tail, so I thought to borrow that. I was already going to give her horns anyway, so I decided on the mismatch in size as an element of the depiction. For that reason I'm leaning towards this being her first Ascension, as the explanation is that she is so unaccustomed to the weight of the lopsided horns, she's unable to keep her head up straight. 

It's hard to see unless you get in close, but the horns are "scaled" with each scale having an internal red spot, an idea I wrote of regarding the scales of the dragon C.C. saw when she first found the reborn Euphemia. Her eyes are based on the other Alters in FGO, i.e., they're a pale yellow color, devoid of a clearly defined pupil. 

I wanted to make her hands unnatural, yet recognizable. I didn't want to go all-out and make them dragon claws - that seemed too simplistic. At the same time, really crazy ideas like hypodermic needles or stuff like that seemed too B-movie craziness better suited for a science experiment monster rather than a supernatural one. It lacks a little flare, however, so I might revise that some in any future Ascension pictures. 

Her feet, however, which cannot be seen clearly, will look like a prototypical lizard's feet. I specifically note that hers are more boney and gaunt than the actual beasts she commands. 

Her wings were always going to be feathered, and growing from the small of her back. I noted in a something I wrote several years ago that typically when fiction writers depict creatures as angels or demons, wing color and the presence of feathers are only a couple of factors that give away the alignment. Often time demons are more readily depicted with wings growing from the small of their backs, while angels will have theirs in the more obvious and typical placement of the shoulder blade area. Given that demons are fallen angels, there really shouldn't be any difference. Nevertheless, it remains a handy visual cue. 

Originally, the wings were going to be white to highlight the juxtaposition of her being both an incarnation of good and evil. But, I became enthralled with the rainbow phoenix feathers idea, and so that took over. 

The trail was also always going to be a part of this project. Originally, however, I was going to have it end in a snake's head. This was to complete image of a chimera that her completed package of odd bits and pieces would add up to. But I thought a conventional snake head would be too dull. So I then switched to the idea of a cobra's head. A snake head was already out of place though. There is little if any snake imagery or mythology in Geass, certainly my R3 Alter story, so having a snake tail would make thematic sense on this project by itself, in context it would not. 

The idea of a dragon head seemed to make more sense given the story. My hesitation, however, was in that the dragons mainly depicted in Euphemia's rampages in my story, much like those depicted for Jeanne Alter, are European style, not Asian. European dragons, even when they have long necks, are not really serpentine. Given that the dragon is different from Euphie Alter's dragons, I also made the horns of her dragon tail different from her own, again fitting more of Eastern depictions of dragons rather than Western. Color of the dragon's body as well.

The background has some elements that were always there, and some that had to change over time. The sky was always going to look the way it does - perhaps not always that exact color, but yes, it was always going to be a very dark, stormy, looking sky. I questioned whether to add lightning, and probably will if I stick with this background on other Ascension levels, but for this one I didn't think it was particularly necessary. 

I originally wanted to do a city skyline instead of mountains. Unfortunately, my depiction looked very out of place and awkward, so I had to back off that. It's still possible I'll go back to a cityscape option when I work on the other Ascension art, but I don't know that for sure yet. 

I gave her a massive cornet ponytail. With most of my projects there's commonly one element I choose to add for reasons I can't recall by the time I get to the ending. That's the case here with her hair. In her prior incarnations in the R3 Alter story, I make a point of trimming her hair down. For reasons I can't remember, I decided to got the absolute opposite direction. 

That's just about everything on this one. If you do have any questions, feel free to comment or message me. I do wish I hadn't let so much time pass without checking that this write-up was posted. I have a few more things planned with this project, but none of those (maybe just one of those) will be ready before the year's out. In the meantime there's plenty of story out there. I've posted several chapters for the R3 story in the last couple months, with at least one more due out soon. It could be the last bit of story for a while. Next year is gonna be busy for me, so I won't have time to do a lot of writing. Enjoy the story as it comes.