Beach Day In Cromwell – Father/Daughter

Of all the ladies of the Book of the Shadows series I’ve drawn, I wager this girl has the biggest set of the lot.

It has a lot to do with volume. I’m sure Hancock competes highly just on the fact that her height can lead you to misjudged just how big hers is. I mentioned in the preview that Euphemia possibly was the biggest, for similar reasons to Hancock. But, most folks wouldn’t think to lump those two together in this discussion. There would be a default assumption that Hancock was bigger, but there’s an argument to be made that Euphemia might be.

The thing about anime is that very few female characters have short hair. And by short, I mean anything shoulder length or shorter. In the real world, very few women have long hair, being hair that reaches past the shoulder blades.

But long doesn’t equal big, which is why I say Euphemia probably beats out Hancock. Boa Hancock is supposed to be incredibly tall for a human, let alone a woman, at around six and a half feet tall. Her hair is about half her height in length, which would put it around 3’3”. Since anime characters aren’t conveniently standing side-by-side or next to rulers, the only option is to estimate relativities. If you say that the average woman would be about a foot shorter than Hancock, about 5’6”, that would mean hair 3’3” long would come down to around their hip or thigh. You get a loli-type character who is very short or young, and suddenly their hair could be pooling on the ground. Not knowing the actual heights of two characters, you could be led to assume that the average height character has the longest hair of the bunch, since you are most likely to recognize the loli as being very short and therefore compensate for that fact, while more likely to not easily reference the height difference in two ostensibly fully grown people.

Big hair, however, isn’t only about overall length. For example, adult Rini of Sailor Moon is a relatively tall woman, and her twintails are about ankle length. That would easily place her as having some of the longest hair of all anime characters. But while you would certainly describe her hair as long, you wouldn’t really call it “big” because of the style. Because it is a twintail style, it is deliberately rather thin. In other words, it lacks volume.

This is a similar reason why someone like Hancock who has her hair unbound and relatively long, might be considered big, but not particularly so since it is so straight with only a bit of fanning out towards the end.

By contrast, Euphemia’s hair, with its waviness to it, appears a lot bigger. Relatively speaking their hair reaches the same place on their bodies. But, given Hancock’s greater height, Hancock’s hair is actually longer.

But Aoi Kimi from "Kyoukai Senjou no Horizon/Horizon on the Middle of Nowhere" is something in between, or perhaps a fusion. Her hair isn’t as wavy as Euphemia’s, but it’s so much longer. And the way that it is usually depicted, bound up in large bunches, enhances that appearance of having a lot of volume. You look at Melie from Radiant, and her frock is just hard to comprehend in its mass.

Kimi is voluminous in other areas as well, but I figure that would be self explanatory.

As for the image, as stated, this is a continuation of the Beach Day in Cromwell project; the Arenzai family celebrating a tropical beach Christmas on Neo Nemesis. As is apparent, the scene here focuses on Kimi and Yugi.

I wanted something somewhat comical for Yugi in this project. It was always my intent that he would be in some sort of compromised situation. My original plan was that he would have a terrified expression as one of his other children was blindfolded for the tried and true watermelon splitting gag. But, alas, I’m saving that one for a different scene involving one of the other kids in Yugi’s place.

When considering which of Yugi’s children at the time would bury him neck deep in sand a few feet from the water, I needed someone who could be borderline malicious, but surely on the safe side of that bar. Generally speaking, of their children, only a couple would conceivably do something like this at all, and of those, a couple would most like do so as some sort of oblivious act at the direction or assertion of another sibling. Not surprisingly, it is the two with the most prevalent succubus heritage that presents the greatest likelihood of doing this sort of thing with Yugi. As suggested by Kimi’s position and expression, there is someone looking on with her. That will be revealed in a later project; maybe next Christmas, possibly end of summer.

What to do with Kimi’s hair was not as much of a problem as it might otherwise have been. Realistically, there isn’t much that could be done with it. Practically speaking, it would be most sensible for her hair to be tied up in a bun or something similar to Drusilla or C.C. in this same series of images. However, technically speaking, I don’t know that is really plausible just due to the sheer mass of her hair. It is hard to even comprehend what exactly that would look like, besides some comically tall beehive.

The swimsuit Kimi is wearing is the same from her official artwork. Like Drusilla and C.C., however, the coloring is in keeping with Christmas, so red and green. Her footwear is original, but nothing particularly special. I've gotten better at eyes, but I don't do anything particularly special here to accentuate that. My next piece, which will be out in late January/early February, is a much better example.

Years from now when I've finally finished drawing all the other characters currently planned for this project, I will be merging all the images into one large scene. Unfortunately that will be a chore of unifying the sand and water design and effects. I like the water in this one the most, but I like the sand in the original Drusilla one best. Unfortunately, I don't know that I can really replicate the sand effect from that Drusilla image. The method for that was just too unique to be replicated after the fact. But, that's a worry for another time.

Anyway, thanks everyone who's stopped by to check this out. Hope you like it. If there's any other info you want, or any comments, feel free to let me know. I hope you have a terrific Christmas.