Sailor Chloris

Who: Sailor Chloris (an original character)
What: Bishojo Senshi Sailor Moon
How: Adobe Photoshop Elements 5.0
When: 2008

Notes: I'm new to roleplaying in a Sailor Moon universe, but I've been a dedicated fan of the series since far back into my elementary school years. Just recently, I picked up a book that I hadn't even realized existed until I happened upon it by accident - the Sailor Moon Role-Playing Game and Resource Book ( [link] ). This book is incredible, I've learned so much about the series that I just didn't know before, since I have very little actual Sailor Moon knowledge despite how much I love it. I'm not going to go into the detail of the book, because you can read the article yourself if you're interested. Anyway, using the guide's surprisingly deep character creation formula, I was able to quickly put together a senshi for myself.

This is Sailor Chloris, the senshi of plants! Her attacks are pink and flowery and fabulous. Her non-senshi name is Aikyou Hanano, "aikyou" being an adjective that describes someone as being charming or amiable (I don't know if it's suitable as a name, but I'm sticking with it), and "Hanano" follows the same formula as all the other senshi's last names and means "of flowers" or "of the flowers." The name "Sailor Chloris" also follows the traditional formula of the other senshi names, because it is derived from the name of a myhical deity that governs the same powers that the particular senshi uses. Chloris is a Greek goddess of flowers and springtime. I know, I should have gone with the Roman name, as the other scouts do, but Chloris' Roman counterpart is named Flora, which I thought would be boring as a senshi name and I already have a handful of characters named Flora anyway. I like this character a lot and will probably draw her a few more times in the near future.

Now, finally, to talk a little bit about how the image itself came about. I experimented with the different brushes available and found one that looks like a very convincing traditional-media colored pencil! I like it a whole lot - this doesn't look like it was digitally colored at all, except for the background. Oh, that reminds me that I need to give credit to the person who made that cute flower stencil brush that is repeated all over the place in the background - it's available here: [link]

ONE MORE THING. Drawing in Naoko Takeuchi's style is HARD!!! After trying it out on my own countless times, I finally just had to settle on copying an existing image ( [link] ) in order to get the proportions and overall "look" to be similar (wow, lots of external links today). That's something I hate doing, but now that I've got the idea down I think I'll be able to emulate the style again in some of my own poses and whatever. It was so weird to break all the "art rules" I've set for myself and draw those freakishly long legs and fingers, not to mention the huge shiny eyes and tiny break in the center of the mouth.

AUGH SO MANY WORDS.