Halloween's Embrace

(Note:  Drawn using sketching, MS Paint, and GIMP).
(Edit:  This version adds a blurry glow effect.)

Artist's Note:  Happy Super Mega Early Halloween!  You know those times where you do practice pieces and they come out awesome?  This was one of those pieces.  Every month I go through a phase of who my favorite OC is, so when I do my practice gesture drawings I just put that character's face on it, and this month it's apparently Darramere.  Also, this serves as my contribution to Halloween one month early, mostly because I don't feel like holding on to this for another month.  I'm pretty excited to get Darra out into the wild

Really, though, Darra should be happy she at least got some of her underwear back, because in my version we were going to find out if purple was her natural hair color...

Here is some trivia about Darramere:

Full name:  Lavaya Darramere.  Her name "Darramere" comes from a zone in World of Warcraft called "Darrowmere" in one of my favorite locations in any game, the Eastern Plaguelands.  It sounded kind of like "Guinivere" in my mind whenever I heard the name, so I worked "Darrowmere" into a more feminine sounding name, and viola.  Darramere's first name is Lavaya, sharing a similar 3 syllable naming pattern with most elves in CIFR, but since she was an orphan, she had to pick her own last name and liked it a lot more than her first name. 

Age:  22 years old at the time of the comic.  Older than Camarra (who is 19) but younger than Aly (who is 25).

Height:  About 5'6."

Personality:  Darramere is extremely intelligent when it comes to the sciences and in strategy.  Unfortunately, her thought process uses very cold logic, so she comes off as lacking compassion, even though deep down I'm pretty sure she does care about people.  Darramere also thinks very highly of herself, bordering on overconfident and arrogant, but she is a great ally to have on your side.   She does not, however, see eye-to-eye with Camarra, because Darramere is an abrasive foil to Camarra's never-ending spring of cheer and happy.  "Tsundere" is a somewhat accurate label for her, though Darramere leans much more cold than warm.  Darramere is a Druid, meaning her heritage is of a people who worship nature and who see it as their mission to protect the natural environment from the corruption of humanity, but whether Darramere fully subscribes to Druidic ideology is not yet clear.

Physical Features:  Darramere doesn't like exerting physical effort or labor when she doesn't have to, because apparently "It's beneath me."  As such, her physical state puts her slightly on the heavier side compared to Aly, who is basically an amazon type.  This also heavily influences her fighting style, which I can't get into now but will update once we pass that point in the actual comic.  Darramere's favorite color is actually purple, contrary to all the green she has to have on.  She's also very aware that people find her physically attractive, but she brushes it off, mostly because she thinks she's too good for them.  She is bisexual, though leans straight.

Design Influences:  First and foremost is "Stocking" from the show "Panty and Stocking with Garterbelt," because I've always been a big fan of the goth-y look, and Stocking was a very cool looking character who pulled that look off.  The original idea for Darramere, though, came from the Estonian pop singer Kerli's music video, Walking on Air, which created what is now apparently called "Bubblegum Goth."  Initially Darramere had red hair, but I changed it to purple because I like exotic hair colors.   The hardest part about drawing Darramere is the conflict I keep having with her eyebrows vs. her bangs, because while I want her to have this cool goth design with her hair, I don't want to cut her hairline too short, but that also means I have to strike a balance since it's harder to draw and see her facial expression if I have to cover her eyebrows.  There are a few characters I look at for advice when I encounter this (Stocking doesn't help), such as Hinata Hyuga (Naruto), Morrigan from I think Darkstalkers, and literally anyone I can find when I Google "Blunt bangs" or "Goth hairstyle" because it's hard to find this kind of character design. 

And that's it!  If you happen to come across a character anywhere that has this kind of Goth-ish design, feel free to let me know!  As I mentioned, I'm a big fan of this archetype, but I don't know exactly what it's called, so I have a hard time doing research to come back and draw Darra in certain angles or facial expressions.  Otherwise, jump to the following link to get started and see Darramere in action in my comic, CIFR:  rizhnir.deviantart.com/art/Cal…

Listening to:  The Mike O'Meara Show podcast (for sketching) and Hiroyuki Sawano's Destiny (esp. 3:40 min in).  There is almost no song composed by Sawano I dislike, probably one of my favorite soundtrack composers of all time (he did Attack on Titan's soundtrack, as well as for Mobile Suit Gundam Unicorn).

Special Note:  The idea for the background comes from a free-to-use Microsoft Powerpoint slide, although I mixed it up with a few other ideas.