First off, full view is your friend. And even so, this full view is about half the size of the original, so some of the itty bitty details are lost, particularly on the keyblade.

Anyway, that aside, this is a pic for for her Gaia contest.

Let me tell you, this piece was definitely work. Maily because I ended up having to do it twice. I was finishing up a couple of days ago when Photoshop froze and my file disappeared. Yeah, literally disappeared from my harddrive. At that point I'd guess that I'd put in close to 60 hours from concept sketching until where I'd gotten (I was almost done though).

Needless to say, I was not a happy camper.

Plus with the contest deadline, I had little over 30 hours to work. Yeah, 30 hours to recreate some 60 hours of work. But darnit, I was determined (and I really loved the pic the first time around). So I booted up the scanner, grabbed the sketch, and began again (and didn't sleep last night).

The result is this. I managed to get it done in about 24 hours, largely because I knew a lot of what I was doing and what I wanted to do. I didn't have to try to come up with color schemes or background ideas. I didn't have to try to figure out exactly HOW to create the waterfall illusion (that took quite some time the first time around). So it was mostly a matter of working as fast as I could.

There are minor differences between this and the original. Most notably, I took the largest floating platform out of the background (for those who have played Kingdom Hearts, it would be the one with the archway on it... I just didn't have time to redo that as well). I also took out one of the bubbles and slightly altered the platform that she's standing on.

Costume was created by me. Most of the recent references were black costumed, and I really don't like working with black, so I came up with this crimson and purple outfit.

Keyblade is Ultima Weapon from Kingdom Hearts. I could have come up with my own, but I really wanted to put Ultima into a picture. Ultima was a challenge, but I figured out a relatively easy way to color it. The flipside is that it takes quite a few layers and took as long to color as the skin and clothes combined. It's a toss up whether or not the hair took longer. Anyway, reference pic for Ultima came from official art posted at [link]

Background is Rising Falls from the Hollow Bastion world of Kingdom Hearts. I knew from the beginning that this is where I wanted Kisara to be. Technically she was reborn in the Waterways, but rising falls is just so pretty. There were no good reference pics to go by, so I booted up the PS2, flew my gummi ship to Hollow Bastion, jumped up a few platforms, put camera into first person, and just drew what I saw. Again, in this final version I ended up taking out the large platform. I also slightly moved the bubbles around to keep the picture better balanced. But yay for coming up with your own references.

Character is copyright Kia Ryou.

This picture (c) Ummeiko, 2005. Sketched on paper, inked and colored with Photoshop CS.

I can't wait for Kingdom Hearts 2.