soranamae

Sharlayan

Added 2021-09-19 16:29:14 +0000 UTC

Wanted to do another Y'shtola pic before Endwalker, but this time something more intimate and sensual.

I started out with another scene at first but that didnt really work out so I just trashed it and tried this instead, and fortunately this one did. Im always super picky with making sure everything makes sense when drawing a popular/known npc, especially with things like body language. Ive seen some horrible Y'shtola pics from certain known artists that completely butchered the character because they got her vibe all wrong and clearly didnt know anything about her, so yeah.

Then as I said before I also Ive been wanting to do more closed eyes expressions so I knew right away I wanted to do that again with her, both for general elegance and also because she is basically blind anyway... Which lead me to one of those random "shower thoughts" (such as when I drew headphones on my au ra and it sparked a debate on how exactly au ra would wear them), this one being... How does Y'shtola read?

Well, my theory is that (some) books have aether energy of some sort that allows her to do it, think of it like braille irl, because why not? Now Im not exactly a lore person so if this has already been answered, I just missed it, lol.

Anyway, the next part was figuring out what she would be wearing while by herself. I thought having her naked would be too much but some sort of sheer lingerie? Cant go wrong with that.

Also Im so glad they added those feathers to her design in 5.0 because they just make her so much more appealing to me making up for the short hair, on top of being a focus point that instantly makes you look at her face.

For the nails I usually like matching them with the lips but since I do red nails in so many drawings, and here the book happens to also be red, I thought black was the better choice. Not only do they stand out more but I also feel like its a better match for her anyway.

Lastly I wanted her to be in some kind of cozy yet luxurious setting, and then when I started to add the bookshelf and the plants I realized how much it reminded me of Sharlayan from the trailer. Its basically a city of scholars surrounded by nature and I feel like this is pretty much what the average room would look like. So that felt very satisfying, matching the aesthetics of the scene to the lore.

I always forget to mention something lately but thats all I can think of right now. Also this is pretty good timing since that job action live letter just happened and Im sure people are getting hyped for Endwalker (if they werent already), even if its still 2 months away.

Summoner definitely "won", but I thought most of them were pretty cool. Monk also stood out to me with some great new animations and that anime dash, Reaper is looking edgy and cool in general, Sage is actually more appealing than I expected... I love both the animations and sound effects so Ill definitely be trying it. And for my main White Mage, well we are getting Holy 2... and more healing, lol. But the change Im most excited for is the cast time reduction of healer dps spells to 1.5 seconds (which was already the case with AST), finally some mobility and not having to worry about clipping every time you wanna cast an ogcd.

Not that Im gonna raid or anything, I gave up on that back in Stormblood, but even in casual content quality of life changes are always welcome.

Well thats it, this post has gotten pretty long and I said what I wanted to say. Not sure who will be next yet, because Im struggling with having too many things I wanna do and being undecided on what to do first. I still have a bunch of commissions I really wanna get done soonish anyway, mostly FFXIV chars, but then I also wanna keep throwing in pics of mine in between and some non FFXIV stuff as well.