(Updated 1/7/2022)

Made quite a bit of progress since the last update, even though it’s been slow going due to the creation of the new BFA, the Main Circle, and Merch Shop Poisson. Now that those things a done, where am I up to now? I finally got up to the Base Color phase of Piranha. I went back and edited her skates to have more detail, keeping them more in line with another JSR character that I’m working on. As much as I want to get to shading this right away, the next step I actually want to get to is the 1st sketch of the background. I fired up Jet Set Radio again to get some references of the location I want to put Piranha in, as well as some buildings in Shibuya-cho. I’ll have to take some liberties with the location, but it shouldn’t change things too much.

(Updated 2/16/2021)

Got to work on the 1st Sketch phase of Piranha. And as you can see from Finne’s heads, unlike the previous rudie Mew, Piranha will come with a nude variant. But just like Mew, this pic is planned to be just as dynamic with some exaggerated perspectives. Initially I was thinking of having Piranha flipping though the air. However all the angles that I tried with the Body-chan wasn’t quite working. So I settled on something just a bit more basic. I already have an idea of where to make the scene take place. The issue is getting s good view of it in the original game. I may have to either look up some footage of that large incline section of Shibuya-cho, or fire the game up and check it out myself.

(Updated 1/14/2021)

Another in an overdue list of characters I plan to draw, here’s Piranha from Jet Set Radio. And a rare move, I had to do this digitally after I botched the traditional coloring session. The main issue was her skin tone. I used both Faber Castells and Arteza Watercolor Brush pens for the ¾ view and head-on view respectively. And while I have a complete set for both tools, the end results were sub-optimal. With the Faber Castells, I simply don’t have the right tone as it’s not available. They’re more known for their Polychromos Colored Pencils with more color variety. The color I chose ended up being disastrous and not optimal. As for the Arteza, while I could theoretically get the right skin tone with some water, my sketchbook isn’t made for watercolors. And when I attempted, it was tearing the paper. So had to stop and everything over on Clip Studio Paint. I thankfully have 8 pages left to the sketchbook, so I’ll be transitioning to one of the watercolor sketchbooks soon.

Talking about design, once again there’s subtle discrepancies between the promo artwork and the in-game models for Jet Set Radio. And this is true for pretty much every single character in this game. For Piranha, it was the waistband of her pants, the location of the star on the bottom of her pant-legs, the design of her skates, and the シ tattoo on her face. It did make me wonder if that was a star on her face, but nope, it’s a シ, which references her Japanese name, シュガー.