It's been a while since I've done a digital painting that was this gruelling. I'm taking a visual design course this semester and for my personal project I decided to do three gruelling digital paintings of Samus Aran-- as homage to the greatest video game character ever created. I spent over 50 hours toiling away at this (mostly trying to get the damn background to look interesting), but I'm still not satisfied with how it turned out. I may go back later and refine it a bit more, but after working on this almost every day for the past month I can't work on it anymore; I'm just too tired. -_-

Here's a detail view:

Detail

Inspired by this OCRemixed song:

[link]

Photoshop CS2: 50+ hours
Photo ref of close friend of mine used.
Original size: 7200 x 10800

[edit] I was originally planning to add rain because it's heard throughout the song, but my fatigue got the better of me so I added that after getting 14 hours of sleep. :3 Plus I submitted it a bit bigger. And made her look a bit older. Thanks for all your helpful comments, kiddos! It's muchly appreciated!

And for those who haven't played the game (or just didn't notice) Samus can summon her ship by remote, which is why it's flying on its own in the background.

[EDIT] Sorry people, I had to reduce the size because of continuous art theft. I'll be shrinking and watermarking all my work from now on.