Mirabel Illustration Commission

The imperatortitan5046 commissions conclude with this illustration of his character Mirabel, who's entire rambling explanation is posted along with her model sheet. Sure, a model sheet is good for showing what a character looks like as directly as possible, but generic model poses aren't the most exciting thing to look at, and interesting coloring and lighting would be counterproductive details in that case. So to really show off the character, you need more of a splashy standalone illustration, and this is it.

Initially I tried some much more dynamic actiony poses, but they all very poorly communicated one part of her or another, due to foreshortening, overlap, and so on. While the goal here isn't necessarily to perfectly show everything, this is a new character that nobody would have any previous knowledge of, so the first image shouldn't be too unclear. For a comparison, if you look at the character promo illustrations for a fighting game, the poses and angles are pretty straight-forward at first, and only get more exotic in later sequels. Presumably because they figure that by, say, 3rd Strike, we know what the characters look like enough not to be confused by some wacky angles. Also, having used the easy poses already probably figures in. So with that said, I settled on this walking forward pose, and tried to zazz it up with contrasting angles and a little bit of a looking up angle. She's supposed supposed to be a cold killing mercenary, so this is the slow terminator walk of doom. Will the killing blow be the spear? The gun arm hidden under the cloak? Who knows, but that cybernetic eye glow says target acquired. Speaking of which, I initially gave it a red glow, because all laser sights and cybernetic eyes ever are red, but then settled on teal in order to better unify it with her overall color scheme.

As usual, it's all Photoshop.