WARNING: THE FOLLOWING POST IS NEEDLESSLY LONG.
This is what you get for posting at four in the morning.
So uh I decided to try and get over my terror of doing it wrong and start drawing some humans.
Actually that wasn't as hard as I thought it would be.
Hands and feet are still an issue, also I'm pretty sure the head is too big for the body. Should have followed my stick skeleton more faithfully I suppose, but that could have ended up too tall.
I'm actually far more pleased with this than I expected to be at the end of this session, but please do point out everything that is wrong with it anyway. The proportions definitely need work.
My real main problem is that it took ages. I wasn't timing it but it was definitely longer than 30 minutes and this isn't even a particularly complicated pose. I think I am treating this too much like pixel art instead of a drawing.
Even though I'm happy with what I've done here, it's not going to be practical to draw like this all the time unless practice makes me faster, going to have to experiment with my older style of thick coloured outlines (my time spriting has given me a bit of a phobia of outlines ): ) or maybe pencil thin ones.
Uh, also I suppose I'd better give some character background. Wall of text probably incoming.
In fact damn this is far too long, I'll split it up into what is absolutely necessary to read and what you can safely go on not knowing if you hate reading for some reason.
This stuff is all irrelevant background detail.Brianna Ironcrown was grown in a tank, along with her sister Erin by a cult called the Chromatic Temple in a different dimension. The cult preaches the superiority of humanity above all races and the purity of human genetics, and waged war first against human mutants and then against aliens, until after an unimaginable length of millenia they had conquered most of their own universe.
The thinking went that as humans are so pure it would be heresy to send them into battle, so ironically they ended up breeding their own armies of mutants in place of training human soldiers. This led to the creation of two main species, the Sequester foot soldier race who were very heavily mutated and genetically designed for adaptability in battle and the Angel race who were much rarer and designed for leading troops in battle.
While the Sequester were engineered for brute strength and survivability, the Angels were instead tailored as powerful psychics to direct the troops in battle. Psychic Sequester were also bred, but the scientists discovered that the strength of the psychic was directly dependant on their free will and intelligence of the being, imposing too many restrictions on their minds simply left them with weak or powerless creatures while doing the opposite produced incredible power but beings who were smart enough to refuse to lead their species to their death, knowing that their creators thought of them as lesser beings deserving of death.
They solved this quandary via a complicated chain of command, psychic Sequester blinded and crippled at birth put in charge of squads of their lobotomised brothers and threatened with their starvation if they disobeyed, relayed commands through an excessively powerful Angel whose psychic reach could extend across much of a planet but kept contained and docile by a bond of trust to a second sister Angel with far weaker powers, whose loyalty was assured by a tiara of black metal allowing the humans sitting safely at home to monitor direct her thoughts, her powers not being strong enough to overrule their control.
The first, powerful but imprisoned Angels were all called Erin and the second kind, far weaker but still just as shackled, called Brianna.
The circumstances understandably drive many Angels mad, and the genetic modifications necessary to unlock their powers cause them to lose control and destroy themselves upon reaching puberty. Many treatments are administered to delay puberty and extend their life spans, but they are also given drugs to speed
up their development from fetuses, so this extension doesn't really add anything. Most angels are lucky to live for seven years in total.
This particular Brianna is one of a few who managed to break the loop, their interdimensional craft taking them to an encounter with a powerful Dark God known as Armok. Bargaining with the demon for the power to free herself, Brianna managed to overcome the mind control device and escape, trading the city-sized battleship, all the Sequester soldiers in storage within and the population of hundreds of Erins acting as the ship's power supply and operating system as well as a few backup clones of herself to death and consumption by the demon and sending herself to a random planet that could support life and had some kind of civilization, ending up in Brawl City.
Ok you can come back now this is the actual character description :VBrianna (as you may have noticed) has two forms, her Angel or "Normal" form which she will be in most of the time, and a "Demon" form. Assuming a Demon form gives her a powerful set of alternate abilities, but is more of a sidegrade than any kind of super mode, as it also means that she loses access to many of the powers she has in Angel form.
While in Angel form she is able to use her psychic abilities to the fullest, gauging the emotions of those around her and (with concentration) reading their surface thoughts, although anyone whose thoughts are being read will be able to detect it as a sense of being watched. She can also communicate in this way by speaking directly into an opponent's mind but rarely does as it reminds her of her past. She has a limited telekinetic ability and is able to lift, manipulate and throw objects from a distance, although her power is stronger and more accurate the closer the object is to her body. She is also able to lift herself into the air for flight but this is incredibly tiring, so instead she would usually use this ability to slow herself down if falling from a great height.
Her most notable ability in this form is the power of teleportation. She can instantly jump from her current position to anywhere within vision. This is her strongest ability and doesn't seem to tire her at all, and can be extremely annoying in a battle. She can also use this ability to teleport small objects towards or away from her but (with a few exceptions) nothing larger than a football, and unlike moving herself she does find this somewhat difficult.
Brianna enters her Demon form if blood enters her mouth, including her own. This transformation is not voluntary, so punching her in the mouth is likely to bring about a possibly unwanted transformation.
The transition between Angel and Demon forms is incredibly painful, the emerging pair of horns and wings rip through the flesh, as do the claws replacng her fingers, tearing the muscle above them in order to emerge but despite this it all only takes around ten seconds.
In order to turn back to normal, Brianna must physically snap the two horns on her head which is once again incredibly painful. Again, this transformation is involuntary so anyone snapping her horns off will cause her to turn back. The process in reverse is far less painful but also very tiring and Brianna will generally fall unconcious immeditely afterwards, which is a very obvious disadvantage to changing form in the middle of a fight.
When in the form of a demon Brianna loses most of her psychic abilities, retaining only the ability to gauge people's moods and a far more limited form of teleportation. She can still teleport to anywhere within sight but with the added provision that both she and her target need to be bathed in shadow.
To replace her psychic powers, Brianna gains increased strength, speed and endurance as well as access to fiery demonic magic and regeneration.
Calling upon her demonic powers requires a tribute of pain or blood to Armok, either from her enemy or herself. This gives her the ability to heal herself, summon magical flames that obey her command or call upon demonic minions to aid her in battle. This can create a strange cycle where she inflicts wounds upon herself to gain power, then uses the power granted back by harming an enemy to repair the self-inflicted wounds.
In both forms Brianna's range of choice is melee combat, and her preferred weapon is a pair of extendable psion-blades that are projected by the devices on her wrists. These are powered by her very will, manifested in glowing red energy, and are incredibly sharp. She has an extensive armoury hidden somewhere containing many kinds of similar weapons, such as Psion Axes and Swords as well as different kinds of ranged weaponry that she presumably brought with her from her ship's armoury before she left, but she will generally skip using guns in favour of getting right into the enemy's face unless it is glaringly obvious that this would give them the advantage. She can teleport any of these weapons directly into her grip in either form, though in Demon form she is even less likely to rely on anything other than her blades or talons.
Brianna is the very definition of a Blood Knight, fighting others because it is what she enjoys. In the service of Armok inflicting pain and suffering upon other grants her greater power and his malign whisperings constantly fill her mind, however much of her bloodlust was her original personality and how much was added by either of the two masters she has served in the past is unclear and perhaps irrelevant.
She is incredibly egotistic, believing herself to be better than everyone else and eager to prove it, and has an incredibly short temper. It is possible that she puts this personality on in order to hide the crushing guilt she still feels about consigning her sister and herself to a fate possibly worse than death, and terror about her own mortality as she is unlikely to live for much more than four more years.
God I was right that was a wall of text. I obviously have too much time on your hands. Bet you weren't expecting to have to read quite this much outside of the story section ;)
I hope I can cut it down a bit because otherwise my roster is going to become enormous.
If you hadn't guessed I have a lot of background for these guys.
As I said in another topic, it's a storyline I've sort of been sitting on for maybe three years now, but I have no idea what it's going to end up as and I'm too scared to start doing anything in case I can't finish it.
Well that's finally done.
Will it do for a WIP post? :V
Reason for Editing: Wide image = stretched page = harder to read