Sailor Empyrean

I saw the contest fav.me/d61xeen and was like "Hey! A reason to actually make art!" Also I seem to have a thing for NSG concept forms because the last real art I did was of Purity's abandoned ultimates...I'd like to think I've improved a bit. Maybe the experimental shading style helps.

Reference and most of fuku: fav.me/d61xeen nads6969
Hairstyle, odango covers, shoes, and staff: me
Pose reference: fav.me/d1nipq5 SenshiStock
Background: fav.me/d5bxcdi pstutorialsws (number 14)
Character: leopup13

With special thanks to starbunnies for showing me a MUCH better way to draw braids fav.me/d1pstcn and making the eyes actually look decent fav.me/d494r08 . I've always sucked at eyes (and faces), so I used to just leave them off and draw faceless people. Maybe now I won't suck as much. 8D

Of course this doesn't look exactly like the reference picture. Here are the reasons why.

The hair:
You can see the inspiration in this comment thread. Nads drew it in two with heart-shaped odangos, Leo said "no it needs to be one and normal odangos", nads said "okay but I really want it in two, how about braided or tied up", Leo said "maybe." I did check Leo's gallery to see if she'd drawn Empyrean, but couldn't find any.

So I looked at that and figured I needed to compromise and said "How can I make it both down in one loose mass and up in two sections at the same time?" This was the solution. I used braids instead of pigtails because 1) Usagi already has pigtails and so do all her kids, 2) Kaoru wore small braids as Kuroichi, and 3) in the real world, pigtails would just blend into the rest of the hair.

So there you go. Up and down, one and two. Also I put back her normal round odangos like Leo said. (also I am really absurdly pleased with how the hair shading came out, especially the time-consuming braids)

The other fuku parts:
The shoes didn't show in the reference, so I gave her some based on Cosmos' shoes, but in her colors and with a butterfly-shaped wing instead. And since Leo said she might get different covers than ever before, I gave her some based (again) on Sailor Cosmos'.

The staff:
Since Empyrean is Cosmos level and also Cosmos' sister, I figured she'd have a staff as her weapon. And since there was no weapon shown, I gave her one based (what else?) on Cosmos', with inspiration from both parts of her former weapon, the Red Blood Scepter, fav.me/d8xj59l and fav.me/d8y6lu8 .

I didn't discover until I already had the drawing inked that apparently she already had a weapon called the "Bloody Core", which exists only in this deviation fav.me/d71oqvl . My opinions aside, it was too late to insert it into the drawing. Hence the cosmic butterfly staff.

EDIT: omt i won
I asked nads to draw Empyrean, and SHE'S SO GORGEOUS. fav.me/d9bqeov