_{Grr terrible title...}

Okay, just to get this out of the way, YES I KNOW PHOENIX'S POSE DOESN'T SEEM TO WORK!!! My comment? Well, it actually does make sense, and if she wasn't being blocked by that lovely man there, you'd be able to see that she is just doing some dramatic twisty, twirly sort of pose. And also, it's not my pose! I take no credit for either of these poses at all, as I copied them from a Code Geass fan art picture, and then I tweaked it a little so that the proportions made sense to me. The picture I was looking at made the girl's torso really, really long, which in retrospect was part of the style, but it looked weird to me so I changed it. So that's that. Please refrain from commenting about the pose and whatnot. Yes it's hard to follow, yes it makes sense to some degree, and yes it also doesn't make sense to some degree. _{And yes, that sentence made NO sense whatsoever.}

Now you might be wondering who that handsome guy who is so kindly blocking most of Phoenix's confusing pose _{which kept my sanity intact while drawing this} is supposed to be. Some of you may recognize him from here: [link]
Yep. That's Starscream! =Lecidre's wonderful humanized version of him.
See, me and ~Fifekun are doing a TFP RP in which we decided to turn all the Cybertronians human. And as I portray Scream in our RP, I was charged with coming up with his human design.
But as I am both in love with =Lecidre's version of humanized TFP Scream, and I am rather lazy and didn't want to come up with my own design. So for RPs sake, I decided to use =Lecidre's design. I AM NOT STEALING THIS DESIGN!!! I am just using it because I really, really, really like it. All credit for human Starscream's design in this picture goes to =Lecidre! =Lecidre did an awesome job coming up with the design. It was PERFECT!

I did change something about the design, but it was a small tweak. It changed the collar a bit on his jacket. I was having trouble getting the open, flared collar that =Lecidre's design included to work with me in this art style and pose. So for my sanity's sake I buttoned the collar up and made it a little shorter. I tried to keep the rest of it the same, though I think I messed up the coloring a bit because I was coloring it during school and had no references. Sorry about that!

So I started out with pencil on this, then inked it with mah lovely Faber Castell Pens, and finally colored it with the markers I already had and a few I got for Christmas. Like the skin tone marker that I used for Starscream's skin. That is now one of my favorite markers!!!

I will admit, while the majority of this picture was done traditionally, I had to use GIMP and SAI to get some things done. Like righting the colors. My scanner is a poopy-head and washes out all the wonderfully vibrant colors that my markers produce. So I have to use GIMP to play with the brightness and contrast and levels and whatnot to get them back to the way they are supposed to look.

And then there's Phoenix's skin.



First off, I could NOT find the right colors in any of my markers, so I had to resort to colored pencils. And finding a combination of those that worked was a chore. But I was so happy when I finally got it and colored it and it looked great! At least, to the human eye.

When I scanned it, my cruddy scanner made her skin EXTREMELY grainy. It looked absolutely horrible! So I tried using GIMP to make a brush out of the textures in Starscream's skin to use for her, but couldn't figure it out. So instead I just went into SAI and started smoothing out the grainy-ness with the blur tool. I know airbrushing a traditional art work is kind of cheating, but I just wanted her skin to not look like it was made of sandpaper! So I smoothed it out until it matched Starscream's, then went about smoothing his and getting correcting this one spot that I'd accidentally smudged red into.

So yes, the picture is airbrushed and otherwise digitally edited, but the end result looks so nice! And I did it all by myself, so it's all my own work. As far as the coloring and editing goes. Like I said before, Starscream's design is not mine.

And neither is the art style. I have taken quite a liking to the drawing style CLAMP used when creating the character designs for Code Geass. The whole show is animated in CLAMP's style, and I absolutely LOVE it! The stylized eyes and detailed hair are my favorite parts. Which is strange, because normally I like simple hair. So anyway, that's the style I've decided to start drawing in. Because my own style had become muddled and faded out in the many years of style mimicking I've been doing.

And just so we're clear: Style mimicking is NOT stealing! It is merely drawing what you see. NOT STEALING! At least, not when proper credit is given. I am not claiming any of the styles I mimic as my own, and I doubt fellow style mimickers do either, though I don't know for sure, so don't count my word as theirs. I will not speak for others besides myself in this instance.
You see, I don't really have my own style anymore. I just copy the ones that I see because I like them. That's how I learned to draw in the first place. I drew what I saw, and studied other people's art, then tried to replicate it because I liked the way it looked. So that's what I do. I draw things that I like the look of. Right now, that happens to be CLAMP's anime style.

Now, about the one thing I CAN take full credit for. PHOENIX!!! I do so love to draw Phoenix. Her hair was SO much fun, and I was finally able to figure out how to do her lipstick! Though I used the wrong color... Oh well, she decided to wear purple lipstick for this picture xD Though I'm not sure I like her expression. I gave her a different one than what was in my reference, because that one was even more OOC for her. Still, I feel the one I gave her is too... calm. But... Oh well. There's nothing I can do about it now.

And Starscream's expression... I think it might be a little OOC too... But that expression is not one I can take credit for, as I used the one from my reference. Though perhaps I should have changed it? ... Well, again, I can do nothing about it now.

So... Long rant about this picture short, this is humanized Starscream and Phoenix. I hope you enjoy and if you fave, please comment! At least with like, one letter or symbol so that I know you faved. Because I tend to just delete messages that say so-and-so has added such-and-such art work to their favorites, thinking "I'll just go thank them when I'm done responding to comments!" and then I forget and I don't. And then I feel bad.
So please, comment so I can thank you for faving if you do!

And as always, thanks for viewing! Oh! And one last note: Don't zoom in on Phoenix's skin, as the airbrushing I did is kind of messy when viewed up close. Thanks!

_{Starscream (the character) belongs to Hasbro/Takura
Starscream's humanized design as depicted above belongs to =Lecidre
Phoenix Rivera and the art belongs to *GertrudeFin}