Compost pile of love

[I hope that my three days of suffering have not been in vain and this trend is still relevant. 💀🖐️]

• Maybe I'll post this video to my tiktok account, let's see, and after editing the Fan Art on these characters a little, I'll show it in this post.

Today is release day for the Mega Man Battle Network Legacy Collection!

WE MADE IT, FOLKS!!

Yes, I know we're celebrating the game's re-release, but I took a character from the anime for this event -- specifically, Oozono Yuriko, shown here in Cross Fusion. This piece is based on the final fight in episode 19 in Stream, taking place on the hospital roof. I... didn't know whether I could show other characters in the shot, so it's probably not as apparent, but for context, her opponent here not pictured was Bombman. Honestly, the whole scene is a lot shorter and less relevant than I thought (there's another unrelated fight in the same episode that kinda overshadows this one,) but it stuck in my memory regardless. [Insert a joke about my regular medical field-related rambles here.]

Yuriko isn't my favorite character, but she is still one I'm fond of, and one I feel gets picked on a little too much sometimes. Like a number of the anime cast, she kinda got the short end of the stick in terms of... everything, so I guess I'm doing my part to try to make up for that. Somehow.

This piece is super late, due to a number of issues; most notably, this month I've had problems both with chronic pain and mental health, and it's kinda hard to draw when you feel like you've been hit by a bus. The other issue was the good five or so drafts I had before landing on this particular composition, and the sheer amount of digital art and editing skills I had to learn very quickly. The sketch was drawn digitally here, but everything from the refined underdrawing to the coloring were done traditionally, with multiliners and alcohol markers. It's by far my largest piece in a couple years at least, possibly overall. (Yeah, I know it looks kinda simple, but inking buildings and other structures with a normal ruler is harder than it looks, I've learned.) There's a few errors here and there due to both exhaustion and expedience, but I think it's acceptable enough.

Here's to a new breath for the series, and here's to all the folks who've worked so hard on this collaboration!