Drusilla at the Bistro

Okay, so the story behind this project is a little complex.

The original idea predates the Euphemia Alter project by a pretty wide margin, actually going all the way back to about the time of my Drider Kali project. As you can see here, the original was a drawing I did by hand, which is something I stopped doing several years ago once I had a pen tablet that was actually good enough for me to use as a full time drawing surface. 

In the beginning the idea was nothing more than another Drusilla project. I had the Drider Kali image, had finished up the Kali of the Two-Six image, had done the Drusilla and Yugi image, had the Beach Day in Crowell project started, so I was on a roll with Drusilla. I sketched out this image on paper. As you can see it wasn’t even complete. It was too large for the sheet of paper, so the top part of her head was cut off. 

Drider Kali

Drusilla and Yugi

Kali of the Two-Six

            Once I had that part done, I started pondering setting. For this one I decided I wanted it to be Drusilla sitting at a table having a drink of tea. In my head it was going to be set either before or after Beach Day, so this was going to be Drusilla after the trip to the beach, or before it, sitting down to a relaxing cup of tea.

Then the project stalled. I was doing so many Drusilla projects, and then had other projects coming to mind. Add to that IRL stuff that generally comes up and distracts, I put this on the back burner and left it.

Kimi Arenzai (and her dad)

I didn’t come back to it until around the time I finally did the colored version of the Kimi Arenzai image. At that time I had a few Cromwell stories in the works. In particular because of my work on the Beach Day project, I had begun thinking more about those people other than Yugi whom Drusilla would trust and rely on, and building out those stories a little more. As evidenced by the Beach Day project, C.C. would be counted as probably her best friend, so I decided to re-engage this drawing as part of a quaint little image of the two of them together at a bar or something like that.

That hit another delay. With my limited time, I wanted to focus more on the Beach Day project, or some of the other projects I had in mind. I decided I had so many Drusilla images, I could afford to work with someone else for a little while. So, I had the idea that C.C. would be in this one, but hadn’t done anything to get that down.

Euphemia Alter

Then came the Euphemia Alter episode. As you know from that project, it started while I was thinking about a Cromwell Universe story I wanted to tell centered on Fate/Stay Night (really Fate/Apocrypha if you want to be precise). I was considering a different roadblock at the time, which was what to do with C.C. By then I had already in my story introduced the C.C. of the First Moon universe, so Drusilla was already familiar not only with the existence of alternate universes, but directly familiar with the versions of herself and C.C. in that alternate universe. I was wondering, therefore, if it might have made better sense, just to avoid retreading the alternate persona track even more, that I cut Drusilla, C.C., and probably Anzu and Rini, out of the list of the Two-Six that would be used in my Cromwell Holy Grail war.

All that minutiae aside, I had decided to come back to this drawing at the time I was mulling all of that over. I had committed to the idea that it would be titled “Drusilla at the Bistro” so that basically said what you needed to know about what the background should be. But that only gets you so far. French bistro, Italian bistro, outdoor, indoor, would the background be a shot of the shop, or would it be something more naturally scenic? While something more technical and formed like a shop would be a new challenge for me, I am typically captured by the idea of something more scenic.

The actual story of the background is a lot more complex than the image itself fully conveys, although you can probably figure it out with enough careful deduction and attention to detail. The mountain range in view, with the facility depicted, is Chaldea from F/GO. I added another “facility” lower on the mountain. Since this isn’t the Chaldea of “our” Earth, the exact facility and its layout is slightly different. The lower facility is actually the “welcome center” of sorts, where guests actually enter, hence it has a little more design to it via the wall of black glass (still gotta cut down that danger of snow blindness). It’s obscured, but there is a path that leads to a heliport. I also relocated it from the South Pole to another mountain someplace with much friendlier climate, including a pleasant view of the open sea.

As you can probably guess from the apparent altitude, Drusilla and C.C. are not in a typical chalet. Functionally, they are actually in a café on the observation level of one of Drusilla’s ships as it maintains altitude near the Chaldea facility.

The Drusilla portion of the image is fully original. As mentioned before, I was in the midst of a number of Drusilla projects at the time, and decided to do one of her sitting down, the idea turning into her sitting at a table having a cup of tea. I added C.C. under the premise that C.C. is probably Drusilla’s best friend aside from her siblings, Yugi, and her own clone. I plan on a “family dinner” project in the not-too-distant future (hopefully) put Drusilla on display with them.

I used this image of C.C. as the basis for seating her at the table, though the positioning and placement of her arms is clearly unique. I changed her facial expression. It’s meant to appear that she’s teasing Drusilla about something. This was a holdover from when I first decided that it would be C.C. sitting with her. It was at about the same time I had done the Yugi and Drusilla project. The thinking was that C.C. was going to be teasing Drusilla about what her plans were for the birthday date with Yugi depicted in that image.

I normally have my characters, within my stories, drinking some form of tea. The only real notable exception has been the recent entries in the Geass R3 stories where I have Euphemia and Shirley drinking quite heavily and regularly. In any case, for this image I thought it better that this C.C., who is just a little more willful and in a less inhibiting environment than most other iterations I’ve worked with, to have something other than tea. It’s not always so easy to visually differentiate between tea and coffee, so I didn’t want to do that. Not to mention I don’t imagine C.C. as being much of a coffee drinker.

So, I instead gave her a sort of fruity-like drink. We know what Pizza girl’s favorite solid food is, but we don’t ever get a solid idea of what her favorite beverage is. When she’s seen drinking something throughout the anime it usually appears to be water or sports drinks. One of those is rather plain and the other is not really something a bistro or restaurant would serve. So, like in the reference, I gave her a drink to “match” her hair color. There’s not much way to define it one way or another, but I will say that it’s an alcoholic drink, rather than just juice. I imagine this C.C. quite enjoys her cocktails. She can’t really get drunk, so there’s nothing to keep her from drinking a little heavily.

The dress and colors for C.C. are essentially originals. The fit is a little different, the skirt much longer. The colors aren't directly based on anything I can think of. Drusilla has a dark aura to her, regardless of the things she does. Consequentially, her clothes are typically fairly dark as well. In the next project I do with her I’ll probably make a concerted effort to give her something much lighter in color, theme permitting.

Once more Drusilla’s hairstyle has changed, albeit still featuring a braid incorporated into the overall style. I’ve tried to match her hair color to the same as the others, but I can never seem to get an exact match. Even using the eye dropper from the same original files, even double checking the HSL and RGB codes, working within the same program, the hair color just never quite matches up. I don’t know if it’s just my eyes seeing it different for whatever reason, or what else I could do to make the two fit. So, I gave up and started making some manner of adjustments to try out a new similar yet different shade of indigo.

Other details of little note? I originally made C.C’s lipstick red. However, it looked really awkward and gaudy. I tried to ignore it for a long time, a couple weeks actually, and it never until the end looked right. So, I finally just changed it to a light shade of pink.

I'm not thrilled with the mountains. They're extremely "flat", and I more or less gave up on them. 

I don’t have a real clue what the flower is. It was kinda supposed to start out as a tulip, but I then thought about going with a lily. But a lily seemed a poor choice too. And I wasn’t going to do a rose. So it turned into this not fully descript orange flower with spots.

The glass of C.C’s drink, the vase on the table, the pot, and the cup Drusilla is drinking out of, are all the same color, just with varying levels of transparency.

That’s about it. Can’t think of anything else to ramble on about, so I’ll say I’ve covered everything, unless someone comes up with a question. As of this posting I am about done with the final line art for my next piece I plan on releasing for Halloween. I’ll admit it’s not a particularly groundbreaking piece, but if you’re aware of my past works and have liked them enough, I think you’ll like this one too.

An all new piece will hopefully follow that in December for the holidays. This one will be part of the Beach Day in Cromwell series of images. If you might recall, Beach Day in Cromwell is a hybrid Christmas and summer series, where Arenzai Universe’s Drusilla is have a beach outing with Yugi and their kids as a Christmas celebration. Due to the offset timing between Earth and Neo Nemesis, it’s summer in the Arenzai capital city at the time of year it would be Christmas in Japan on Earth. In years past it’s varied whether I put out a new entry in the building collage for Christmas or by the end of summer in the US, sometimes both. But, with the Bistro pic taking up the summer slot now, and not having a more traditional Christmas idea ready to develop let alone finish in time, Beach Day it will be. The entry will slot in beside the Cornelia image. The character will go by the name Lishu. Good luck to you in figuring out who that actually is before we get there since that’s not the name of her real character. I’ll offer two hints. First, she has a younger brother not related by blood. Second, there is no anime of this character’s story yet. That just leaves you a few thousand manga to guess from.