I put effort into this one. 12 layers visible. I won’t post ‘em all here, but enough. Hope it shows! When I spend this much time on one, I HAVE to do the layers thing.  So here’s the starting point – Guoh’s original Freya sketch. He has a few obviously – this isn’t my first. And that’s a good thing ‘cuz I REALLY like Freya. And Guoh has a thing for anatomy I just haven’t seen often by anyone for ‘furry’ characters. Plus it seems rare that an animalistic character like Freya gets a good, ‘human’ backstory. So even though it’s been years since I played FFIX, I still remember her well.  Well, maybe not like this:

First think I did was removed most of his shading since I was going to do my own anyway, but I kept a layer with it still in place so when it came time to shade I could follow his lead.

Flat colors are standard next for me. I went with a bit more yellow than white because I needed a way to put highlights in and if it’s already white… cant get lighter than white. Hair yellow this time because… I wanted to?  As for the partial-pink tail.. hold on and I’ll explain in a sec.

I’ve had people say that my soft shading makes em look kinda ‘dirty’ – and not in a good way. So I’ve been leaning more towards hard-shading. But I really wanted to try soft again, so despite some people’s suggestion, we’re going full-soft shading this time. As for her tail, I wanted it to gradient from pink to her light color – that’s why I didn’t color that part after the bow directly. That’s here too.

Okay. Time for glossiness. Sorry, once again, I couldn’t help myself. Also highlighting which is primarily her eyes. (Higher res would reveal that best) 

Technically that’s it for Freya herself, but I didn’t want to go without a background. If you think about it, she’s in a really odd position here. How is that spear point working? I mentioned the issue to someone else, but I didn’t explain well and he suggested a cityscape behind her for a background. Interesting, but the problem of what she’s sitting on and how that spear tip is supposed to work was still tough. It’s obvious that the spear is at an angle, with the tip closest to the viewer, angling away. But still, it seems most likely she’s sitting on some sort of rock or something that falls away towards the viewer.  

So the rest of this is trying to do a background. I found a kinda neat cityscape from FFIX.

I just used bit of that, but it led me to how the “ledge” she’s sitting on should work.  I won’t bore you with more details. Here’s the end result:

I had to create the sort of wall she’s sitting on, but using colors from the road I think it integrates with the background okay at least. Homemade but sometimes that’s the best you can do. Also, not the tail wrapping around the sign. I thought that was cute and integrates her a bit more, even if it’s not immediately noticeable. Field blur on the city so it sharpens as it nears – primarily so Frey still stands out. Some of the shadows, upon reflection, don’t make sense with the angle of the sun. Hopefully they’re not too jarring because I’m leaving it as-is. I like it even if the light source is ambiguous at best!

Like, in the background the lightsource is obviously upper right and towards the viewer. Boob sheen reflects that too. But then the shadow of the spear indicates left and towards viewer.  Hmm… How does that work? 

Ah, it’s Freya cheesecake. Don’t overanalyze or it falls apart.