#stan art

I know that technically all the zoras in BOTW/TOTK are classified as ocean zoras (in comparison to the usually antagonistic river zoras) but most if not all of them—aside from Yona and her attendants of course—seem to have grown up in Hyrule and as a result have lived very semiaquatic lives, accustomed to spending their time both in water and on land in relatively equal measure. With Varius though, she isn’t native to Hyrule and instead grew up in a domain in the sea, so she’s not just an ocean zora but a zora actually from the ocean! And seeing how it was extra fitting for Varius, I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to do this prompt!

I just know that out of all the Chain, Wind would by far be the one that’s the most fascinated by her since she’s from the ocean, given his love for sailing it. Considering the nature of the Great Sea in Wind’s era basically being unable to support life, so much so that even the zoras couldn’t live in it and had to evolve into the ritos, I can just imagine him asking her tons of questions about what the oceans are like in her era and her getting to talk to her heart’s content about all the nerdy things she knows about it! Sufficed to say, the dynamic I imagine Wind and Varius would have is adorable and I’ve been wanting to share it for a while, and now I finally can! (Also it’s important to me that y’all know my friend Butters told me she imagines Wind calls her “Ms. Rainbow” because of her color-changing ability and if that’s not the cutest thing ever, I don’t know what is)

I do have ideas for her dynamic with the others in the Chain as well, which I would like to draw too if I find the time for it!

As for my thoughts on the art itself, this one proved to be a little bit of a challenge for me at various points! I struggled for a good while on the poses and general anatomy, especially when I had first started working on the sketch, because by that time I had only been drawing Varius for a few months and I didn’t have much practice with drawing zoras. The clothing gave me issues as well, and it took me a while longer still to figure out what to put in the speech bubbles. Wind's hair was also weirdly tricky because by the time I'd gotten around to working on that part of the sketch, I'd been drawing nothing but zoras for the past few months and was very out of practice with drawing humans. And backgrounds as always proved to be the worst. Something that was actually pretty interesting was the speech bubbles because I wanted to have the dialogue be pictorial rather than written, so figuring out how to portray what I wanted them to be talking about was actually a fun challenge, compared to the other challenging parts I had to deal with! Overall though, I’m pretty satisfied with how this piece turned out in the end, especially since there were points at which I was wondering if I’d ever get it done! And as always, I hope you guys like it too!!

I just realized the other character I’ve taken a screenshot of in their practice clothes and drawn them in their jersey was another libero. Not quite sure how something so specific like that happened