Ready?

This is my take on a One Piece-esque bad-ass line-up of characters. I worked on this for nearly three days! The image is HUGE, so I strongly advise you to click "Download Image" and check out all the details!

So, Shades of Green. I still don't know what the hell I'm doing with Shades of Green.

I'm sort of between a rock and a hard place here, because I'm so attached to these characters, but the more I sit down and try to work on the story, the more lame and amateur-ish I think it is. And I know that's normal for anybody starting out doing creative work, and I know the only way to move past that point is to just do a lot of creative work and shovel through that roadblock. It's just really tough for me to throw myself into telling a story that I'm not fully behind.

So, I'll have to work through that on my own, and I humbly ask for your patience. In the meantime, though, I feel like I should reveal more about the major players that we haven't even met yet. You may recognize some of these characters from previous drawings, though they look a bit different. Their appearances haven't been retconned, though, it's just that until now I've only drawn their "three years ago" designs. This is how they appear in the present day of the story. And I feel I need to address a certain someone.

In the past, I've only ever uploaded drawings of "Three Years Ago" Van, and only in black-and-white, and I've been shy about revealing her name because I wanted her connection to another character to be a spoiler. Even this piece I originally planned to be in black-and-white, until I gave into my urge to color it.

And even then, I strongly considered putting "Vanessa" at the top instead of her nickname, still clinging desperately to the silly idea that I could hide her identity. But, outside of just removing her from the picture all-together, I think I made my own bed on this one. She's got bright red hair, she's standing right next to Nilla... people were going to put two and two together whether I was subtle about it or not. And seeing as how I'm not even sure what I want to do with Shades of Green, I figured holding onto that particular spoiler just for the sake of holding onto it wasn't doing me any good anymore.

So, fuck it. Consider this the formal, informal reveal of Vanessa Aferson - Nilla's older sister. She's kind of an important character.

Anyway, about the piece, I'm really happy with it. I worked really hard on it and I think it shows. I had a lot of fun experimenting with Photoshop brushes and sort of "painting" the lines and shading in a way quite different from how I usually roll, an I think it turned out great. I hope you think so, too.

Here's a detail shot of the background images, if you're interested:
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And here's some step-by-step shots on my Tumblr:
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