(Updated 5/16/2022

Finally back to working on this after over a year. In the time between the 1st sketch phase to now, I’ve gotten up to the Base Color phase. So far this has been the most time-consuming Basing I’ve ever done, chiefly because of all the patterns that Wu-Ruixiang has on her hanfu, headdress, and shield. At first, due to the lack of readily available patterns from her, I was just gonna phone it in and use patterns that closely resembled what Wu has. Honestly, tt wasn’t looking all that great. But then I managed to find a 3D model pack from the XNALara community. And of course, it contained her textures. They weren’t that hi-res through. So I went through the painstaking task of manually tracing over most of the relevant patterns in higher resolution. You can see some of the texture previews in the sidebar, as well as more of them in action.

I went ahead and compiled all of the patterns I’ve done for Wu-Ruixiang into a texture pack. You can go ahead and download it in the link below. If dropbox pesters you with a popup, just close it. The download button is on the top.

Wu Ruixiang Hi-Res Texture Pack (.zip)

Special thanks to PharoahIllusion for making the raw textures available. You can find his stuff over on DeviantArt.

(Updated 2/17/2021)

Here’s something I finally get to talk about in full after many, many months. For those not in the know, Wu-Ruixiang is one of the new characters in Samurai Shodown, wielding a shield among a roster full of mainly sword fighters. Instantly loved her character and design, I even gave her a hashtag on Twitter, #EmbraceWaifu. I drew the concept back in 2019, and was one of the first ones I colored in using Pigma Brush and Faber Castell Brush Pens. There was some difficulty with design consistency between her in-game model and the 2D artwork in her cutscenes, mainly centered around her headdress and the tassels under the fishes. I found it easier to follow the in-game model when it came to drawing it on the sketchbook. But when it came time to start up her pic (a year and a few months later), Her in-game model led the way. The shield is actually a Feng-Shui compass, as in the game she hails from the Feng-Shui Clan. The references available don’t have many good views of that shield. So I looked up what a Feng-Shui compass looks like, and boy oh boy there’s a lot of different designs. I kinda just tried my best with what I could see and went from there for the concept sketch. Her qipao (or hanfu-like outfit in this case… I think) also came with its own set of challenges, primarily around the collar and bust. Again because of the references available and some discrepancies between the in-game model and 2D art, it was a little difficult to understand what certain design elements were doing (like the pink and black parts). Eventually I figured out what was what and made the changes during this 1^st sketch phase. Hopefully I don’t come into new surprises in the later phases.

While I’m talking about the 1^st sketch phase, I was kinda conflicted with what kind of pose I wanted to give her. Initially I was gonna have her sitting on her shield near a body of water. But with quite a few sitting poses I’m planning to do and how plain they tend to be, I wanted to do something a little different. So I scrapped that idea in favor of something more dynamic that leaned in on her more clumsy side. When she’s disarmed in the game, she loses both her shield and her glasses. Both of her supers put her near danger of the beasts she summons. One of them she even summons by accident! With that in mind, I changed the pose and scene that’ll be all about that accidental summoning of her dragon. And this’ll all be happening high above ground! And that shield, as incomplete as it looks now, will play a key role in the whole pic. It won’t be easy, but I think I can pull off a little trick that could make the shield easier to deal with once I get to the Base Colors.