Lady Winter

It turned out to be more challenging than I expected, mostly because I originally imagined him as a bit older than he really is.

I want to thank everyone who helped me gather information about his design. Hearing your own interpretations of his appearance really helped me find a good balance between his actual age (34+ years old) and the age we all originally had in mind (somewhere in his 40s–50s).

I added some close-ups on the sides, since Tumblr tends to downgrade the quality of full pages and I don’t want them to end up blurry. I'll use them to explain my design choices!

Here’s Akatsuki without his glasses:

I tried my best and hardest to make his face appear a bit similar but older than Sariel's. Mr. Akatsuki travels a lot, after all. Hence the eyebags/under eye wrinkles.

I tried to make him seem as peaceful and calm as he's described. It also was even more obvious to me after I started Azel's route, but Akatsuki is usually very quiet. He comes off (to me) as someone who only speaks when he has something relevant to say.

But he also has his contradictions. And I wanted to add that. He's someone who travels a lot and wears a katana, and also carries huge bags on his shoulders, yet he wears fancy and bright/flashy clothes nonetheless. He's used to moving around with them. Also, while he's calm, he gets furious enough to wanna murder whoever stands in Emma's way 🤣

And I forgot to say, but I gave him a gold earring too. I got inspired by Kagari's own design and realized he had earrings as well. Maybe these two will end up related somehow, we'll never know. I wanted them to have some similarities considering they're from the same country.

I also added him with/without glasses here:

You can see his outfit better in the first picture, but I did my best and had so much fun designing it. His outfit is described as bright/flashy and fancy, so I chose gold/yellow, and red colors.

I aimed for a sophisticated look. After all, many of his clients are wealthy, so he has to make a good impression! That’s also why I incorporated some satin-textured elements into his clothing (if it's noticeable)

Here's a little bit of "slice-of-life"😉 :

The first doodle is the one I already posted a few days ago. It's based on Azel's route when Akatsuki and Emma travel to Tanzanite together.

He's younger in the last two doodles since Emma and Gil are children. I guess here he's a teen? I gave him a different hairstyle. Somehow it ended up looking like Aether's from Genshin Impact. But Aether is a traveler, so that fits haha

I added right here Akatsuki looking at the Ikeprince's actual map right here :

As for the papers scattered around him, I guess I wanted to create his travel permits, but I don't really know how they're supposed to look like.

Right under are some accessories:

The left rose charm is Mr. Akatsuki's katana tassel. You can see it hanging from the katana in the previous drawings.

He runs his shop in Rhodolite, and since Emma, who’s Rhodolitian, is basically like a daughter to him, I imagined that one day she gifted him a rose-shaped jewel. He turned it into a tassel for his katana. And now that I think about it, we often see him use his katana when it’s to protect Emma… A katana tassel that reminds him who he’s defending 😌 (man, I'm poetic af)

The bag on top is the bag he uses when he's delivering the books to his clients. It's not like the travel bags he has, this one is when he does business. It's a bit small I guess but it looks nice? I think?

I also added him when he frowns, since it seems to me that while he doesn't talk much, he speaks a lot with his face. He appears to be frowning a few times.

I suck at anatomy but I added some dynamic poses with him using his katana :

I wanted to add a drawing of him running after Gilbert with his katana as well, but I wanted to post this asap and I ran out of place too hahaha

There, I'm done yapping. I really hope you guys like the version I made. If I forgot anything don't hesitate to mention it.

And again, thank you all for the help ❤