Sailor Saturn Henshin

For this one, I wanted to hybrid a few things together that I like about Hotaru.

For one, I drew Hotaru with slightly more round features. I really like how Michiru looked in the manga when she first appeared with a fuller body, and I wanted to see that on Hotaru. I never liked seeing the girls too skinny. 

The costume is drawn to match how Hotaru appears in Sailor Moon S. The crystal was the most labor intensive part to draw, and it took me a while to figure out how to draw the shoulder pieces. It's like feathers of a wing and flower petals all at once, so I wanted the shoulder guards to look like they are protecting her arms, fluttering around delicately to reflect Hotaru's gentle nature.

Her face is slightly drawn like how she appears at the start of Sailor StarS. I liked the childlike roundness of her face in that season. It's the one spot where she looked her actual age, so I wanted to bring out her natural cuteness.

For coloring, I really pushed myself to paint her the way she appears in Sailor Moon S. It's hard to do the shading right, because her bow is super dark in that season and her skin is so pale. I'm not sure if you can tell, but every inch of her is done in multiple shades. I've been reading my old Toei art books to try and figure out how they did it.

Finally, the background. I wanted to challenge myself to draw the background from Sailor Moon Crystal, but it still has my own flavor to it. I hand draw all of the backgrounds for my Sailor Moon art, but this one took quite a bit of effort. Toei just doesn't get enough credit for how their staff mixes the colors and makes these effects.