Waiting For The Sun - Second WIP

After whats seems like an eternity, I have finally produced the second wip of "Waiting for the Sun". Yes, a picture of mine has actually gotten out of the "first wip" phase and is one step closer to completion. As I said before, I consider this piece to be one of the "Season Set", a concept I unofficially started with "Winter Walk" nearly a year ago. This one pictures Norika Olivian, the new name for Noir Odonic admiring the sun. As someone with a bit of a "femme fatal" style of personality, it would make sense for Norika to enjoy spending outside and enjoying the sunshine.

After completing the first version of this picture, I decided to go back and actually re-draw the entire body. For those who may not be aware, the original version of this was actually multiple pictures and sketches that I "Frankensteined" together and while I liked how the results came along, there was something about it that maybe didn't quite flow. Normally after the initial feedback I aim to fix the elements people pointed out, but for this one I decided to re-draw her body, feeling that now I had the idea down it was worth making sure it came together properly.

I do think the body itself looks a lot better as everything seems to flow more naturally as a result. However as re-drawing the body was my primary focus I decided to lift some aspects from the previous version, namely the face, hair and hands without making any real tweaks or improvements to them. To be honest I wanted to see how they sat on the new body before I perhaps looked more into re-drawing them/replacing the placeholders (as well as adding new ones for the feet). I did make some notes based on people's feedback last time and while I will come back to revise them and address those issues, I have been toying with doing a "2.5 revision", and leave a third wip for when I'm much closer to completion.

With regards to the new body, generally I am overall pleased with how it looks with the exception of the legs. There's something about legs and me that I always struggle to get right. I feel they're a little thicker than they should be as, while I don't consider Norika to be a petite-but-busty woman (I like to keep breast and body size in proportion), I do think the legs could be a little thinner. I'll admit that I'm not 100% sure on what best to do with the pose as well; is she standing in place or walking? It's something I'm still not quite decided on. I also tweaked her colour pallet a little but I'll admit I'm still a little mixed on it, as I did like the crimson/burgundy against black/dark grey look. However as maroon has served as a key colour in a past design, I wanted to bring it back here to add a little contrast.

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As always, criticism and advise on what has been done is appreciated. I am planning to add on more parts of her body and flesh out the hands (I found a great tutorial on how to build them in stages that I plan to use for the next wip) and I am toying with having her walking in the direction her body is facing, but that may not fit in as well with the "looking at the sun" concept.

The following pictures helped contribute ideas or provided reference for parts I was struggling with:

• Wannabe Lip Tutorial
• Wannabe lip tutorial #2
• FEMALE - Walking Pose 16,17,18
• Drawing Base Tutorial

The following links also served for inspiration to varying degrees. Please note that some may consider them NSFW (especially the one of Reka Ebergenyi) so please be aware of this when clicking:
Catherine Bell Pic #1
Catherine Bell Pic #2
Catherine Bell Pic #3
Reka Ebergenyi Pic #1