Recently Danny Choo asked for fanart submissions for an upcoming magazine he’s working on called the “Worldwide Otaku Report.” Here is my submission featuring Danny’s character, Mirai, having some summer fun.
When I started working on this image I wasn’t sure what I wanted to draw. I wanted something fun and colorful. Something bright and cheerful to match the character. So I thought since it was summer Mirai standing in some water wearing her signature bikini was a good start. I liked the idea of her hand close to the “camera” splashing water, which became the start of this image.
The pose from the back really helped add some interesting angels. The two arms point towards the face where you can see she’s having a good time. Of course, being a bikini image it had to be a little sexy. Certainly no complaints here. This took a while to get to a point I was happy with.
For coloring I went with high saturation. I wanted it to have some “pop.” I added some gradients to add some depth. I spent a lot of time on the eyes. I love to experiment with different eye styles. These have details that gives them some interesting features. The water also took some time. It’s not exactly what I had in mind, but I think it turned out okay. I colored the linework, something I like to do with my images. It helps to soften it up and add more color. To top it off I added a huge sun flare to really brighten it up with some beams to add highlights to the image.
While I can always be really critical my own work, I think this came out okay. What do you think? Have you ever drawn fanart? How were your results?
