New Lunar New Year, new Zodiac. Happy Year of the Tiger!

Self Critique: I should’ve maybe turned Rhapsody’s open paw into more of a profile view, but I guess that would would do. The cloth shading of the platform Xiuying is on might have a few too many uniform wrinkles to my liking.

Xiuying and Rhapsody are back together once again to ring in the Lunar New Year, this time celebrating the Year of the Tiger. Rather fitting since Rhapsody is a catgirl, so I definitely didn’t want to pass up this opportunity. If anything, it’s a good thing I brought these two back together again. During the planning stages, I had hoped to create three different pics: the one you see now, and two individual pics for both Rhapsody (Valentines Day) and Xiuying (Lunar New Year). However I realized a few days into the sketch phases on this pic that things would take pretty long since I’m drawing both ladies here with variants. As luck would have it, Lunar New Year and Valentines Day are once again going to be separated for 2023. So I decided to save the poses I prepped for next year. And given that the holidays will be separated again next year, Xiuying would be bringing in Rhapsody to celebrate with her this year!

Onto the qipao designs. For Xiuying, at first I was going to give her a yellow qipao with faint darker yellow tiger stripes with some kind of floral pattern, something different to Xiuying’s usual red and gold qipao with the flowing back. However the more I read into the festivities, the more I read that it’s better to wear something red for Lunar New Year. So I switched it to red with slightly dark red stripes. The tiger design on her qipao I’ll get to in a bit. Designing Rhapsody’s qipao was more straightforward as it’d be something of a callback to Xiuying’s normal outfit, suggesting it was Xiuying that chose it for her. Even her hair is a bit different, with it being much straighter and the back tuft of hair being tied up into two big buns (I should do a Silly Sketch of this of Xiuying doing this for her at some point). The dudou on both Rhapsody and Xiuying (if you’re viewing the lingerie variants) has less of the tiger motif, and more of the orange one as it’s said that it brings good luck to eat tangerines and oranges during Lunar New Year. It was surprisingly tricky to nail down an accompanying floral pattern down for each. Rhapsody I figured out, but I didn’t want to do the same thing for Xiuying. One random encircling of the oranges later, and I settled on what to do for her.

The tigers on both qipao and in the background were traced from a 3D model of a tiger that I found on Clip Studio Paint assets. At first I looked on Wikimedia commons to get a photo of a tiger in the public domain. Unfortunately none of the result had what I was specifically looking for. So the next best thing was a 3D model. For the qipao designs, I traced the outlines, stripes, followed most of coloration, then shaded them twice over on my own, once for the tigers themselves, and again for the shading of the outfits. The head in the background was traced for the outline and stripes. It was about to be used on Xiuying’s qipao early on. When I changed it to the sitting tiger design, I thought it’d be a waste to not use the tiger’s head. So as a throwback to the Year of the Rooster pic I did for Xiuying back in 2017, I made it into a background element.

With that said, Happy New Year to all, and bare your claws to any trials that may come your way this year!

Done on Clip Studio Paint Pro. Wacom Cintiq 16 tablet used. Body-chan models traced for construction lines for both characters, then drawn freely afterwards. Tiger 3D Model from Clip Studio Assets traced for qipao designs and background element.

Xiuying and Rhapsody are © DeadPhoenX