Metroid - Samus Underwater Lesson

For this week’s picture I got a chance to publish a picture that I got an interesting history with. One idea that I originally had for a LAMA picture was to feature Samus in her younger years as depicted in the Metroid manga scuba diving with LAMA gear, had to vary Samus pictures somehow by picking alternative versions of her. Metroid is indeed a bit hard series to have fanart of since it got only one major human character after all, Smash helps with that a lot though by having more characters to interact with Samus ^^. Unfortunately I was not able to find many potential artists that could have drawn Young Samus in LAMA gear when that idea was on my mind, as such I decided to make an arrangement with another person who shared my interest in the Metroid series. This person is Lusaphira with whom I ended up with brainstorming a scenario that she could commission from our beloved line artist Shoxxe. After a plenty of exchanges of ideas and consultations from TheSakuraSamurai (big thanks for a lot of technical details ^^), we decided to have a scenario with both Young Samus and Adult Samus in the same picture since we love both versions a lot.

We also came up with a storyline for an encounter with these two versions: in order to ensure that the Galaxy would remain in peace, the Galactic Federation used a sample of Samus’ DNA (they got that during her medical treatment after she was infected by the X-parasites) to make a clone of her so they could always have their most skilled bounty hunter available just in a case Samus would meet an untimely end. After the events of Metroid Dread Samus finds about her clone since the Federation hires her to train the clone to be as effective bounty hunter as the original. Since Samus had ran out of bigger bounties and adversaries to face after eliminating the Space Pirates, Metroids, X-Parasites and Evil Chozos, she accepts this contract and starts to train her clone by accustoming her to various planet ecosystems. One of those ends up being a water planet where the two are training in underwater environments as seen in this picture. For this training the clone Samus was given LAMA gear to use during the underwater training since it is the most comfortable for beginner divers, plus since she is still relatively young and idealistic she finds it the most cute. Gotta love some the enthusiasm of the youth even in serious training situations ^^. Meanwhile Adult Samus decided to use a double hose scuba setup with a hood for the underwater training since she finds it the most practical, her long ponytail would just get in the way during a dive. Also having more freedom in the movement is a must for her since it might be a deciding factor in a life or death situation, after beating the one-hit means death mode that is called Dread Mode in Metroid Dread I can easily get behind that line of thinking ^^. I personally think that Adult Samus’ setup is cool as heck since I love this kind of scuba gear in old-school spy movies, it fits Samus’ motif as a special operative that is sent to dangerous missions like spies. And quite often she has to be sneaky like spies as stealth sections are a regular thing in Metroid games. Lovely to see that other people share my love for double hoses as well ^^.

Eventually the two Samus encounter a sea creature that swims near them. As part of her natural instinct, Adult Samus grabs her paralyzer gun and starts to aim towards it since she is taking no risks of getting jumped by it. Young Samus meanwhile swims closer to it and starts to pet it since she hasn’t seen such creatures before in her confinement, must be exciting to see big sea creatures like this close. To the surprise of Adult Samus, the creature seems docile as it doesn’t show any signs of aggression towards her young student. Despite of this sudden turn of events, Adult Samus still keeps her distance and her paralyzer pointed at it since she is not into taking risks. I guess she must still be on Dread Mode mindset of “touching anything dangerous is lethal”, plus I think that she is starting to get fond of her clone by doing her all to keep her out of danger. I suppose her motherly instincts for the baby Metroid are manifesting in a different and more subtle way here, hopefully their bond is enough to allow both of them to learn new things and techniques from this training ^^.

Since I’ve already covered my thoughts on the Adult Samus many times before, I’ll shed some thoughts about Young Samus. I personally liked that part of the manga that showed her training to become a bounty hunter since it fit perfectly to the backstory and shed some information on Samus’ past. It was that time during the early 2000s when we started to get a lot of expanded backstories for a lot of video game characters, ranging from Shadow the Hedgehog getting his own game to Final Fantasy 7 Compilation getting track. For Metroid this new backstory lore was engaging since there was barely anything before that, and most of that was confined to instruction manuals. Fusion especially managed to increase my interest in Samus’ past since it featured her relationship with Adam prominently, I always wondered how their story played out and how it shaped younger Samus. We eventually got a whole game dedicated to that in the form of Other M…….and that single-handedly killed my interest in exploring Samus’ past. Less said about that game the better ^^. Still I am glad that we at least got interesting lore about her relationship with Chozo in the manga, that part even got expanded in Dread by implying that Samus is more comfortable with speaking Chozo language than human languages. Kinda explains why she isn’t that sociable with humans in other games ^^.

The colouring process of this picture was quite engaging since I got a chance to colour both of my favourite scuba gear types in the same picture, worn by my two versions of my space waifu no less ^^. Needless to say that I was able to colour both versions of Samus efficiently without me getting exhausted at all, I guess my experience in colouring her zero suit has finally manifested. For the background I decided to use a darker colour scheme this time since this scene is taking place quite deep underwater where only a dim light reaches. I also used a new kind of renders for the background to give it more of aquatic vibe, it should look a bit more dynamic in lighting department. I decided to give Adult Samus’ zero suit her Dread colours for this picture in order to make her feel more distinct from Young Samus who got standard blue zero suit. Dread colours also give an impression that Adult Samus is in her battle hardened form after beating the devilish dread mode compared to more inexperienced Young version. Plus it also implies that Adult Samus is passing a torch to the new generation by granting her old zero suit to her, would signify a great amount of trust between them ^^. Overall this was one of the most enjoyable pictures that I got a chance to colour in a long while, always a pleasure to work on more Metroid stuff since that series deserves extra love after the long hiatus. Big thanks to Lusaphira for allowing me to make my own colour version for this picture alongside brainstorming ideas and to Shoxxe for doing amazing work at drawing this picture. I highly recommend you all to check their stuff in their galleries, Lusaphira writes some engaging fanfictions while Shoxxe’s linearts never cease to amaze me. If you got interest in either of these you can’t go wrong with them ^^.

Hopefully you all like the picture and are excited for Metroid Prime 4!

Alternative colour version by TheSakuraSamurai:

https://www.deviantart.com/the-sakura-samurai/art/Samus-s-Underwater-Lesson-Alt-Colors-951052766

Lineart by @shoxxe

Concept by @lusaphira

Colours by @petrus92

Special thanks to @The-Sakura-Samurai

Metroid and Characters are © by Nintendo