I really had so much fun painting this piece- not the least of, because it inspired me to listen to A LOT of old J-pop tunes and crawl through a backlog of Kingdom Hearts fanfiction I saved when I was 15. And damn, it was so great. Embarrassing, but great.
The pose I chose for this picture was also fairly deliberate; in most art of him, Riku is always looking down, scowling or in defensive poses. Because the title song of KH3 is "Face my Fears" (which I hated and now I love and someone pls make me stop replaying it), I thought it would be good to represent that by making him look up and smile, as I figure this might be the game where Riku finally finds his peace.
Meanwhile the rest of us will be trying to work out if the plot in this series was only ever just a bad dream...
Anyways, as usual, your comments and thoughts more than welcome!