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Squall vs. Sephiroth

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Description

This drawing is based off of the opening cutscene of Dissidia, in which Squall and Sephiroth are seen fighting each other.

I invite you to see this in full size. Any feedback, whether general or specific, is appreciated.

I used and improved on many of the techniques I had used for a Ryu vs. Wolverine artwork I uploaded in fall 2011 (a couple of months before this). My workflow is still pretty slow, but my understanding of Photoshop and of how colors work together is much better now.

I always start a drawing with lots of concepts in mind. As I sketch and progress through the drawing, I often stray away from them and they end up being more or less apparent in the finished artwork, but they’re always very useful guidelines that I like to work from. Here are some of the main ideas I had before I started drawing this.

About the fight scene…

In many Final Fantasy game cutscenes, even the biggest, longest, heaviest of weapons can be swung around by their wielders as effortlessly as toys. Of course it’s fantasy, so I have nothing against it really, but I’ve always preferred those instances when some actual weight and body dynamics and stuff are accounted for.
And so while this scene is obviously not lifelike, I still wanted some actual fight mechanics and strategies to come into play – in Squall’s case, pressing forward to try and get as close as possible because of having a shorter range, chasing his opponent to where the footing is bad or into an obstacle (the pool of water) and grabbing his opponent’s weapon to try and immobilize it; in Sephiroth’s case, a solidly anchored stance, bent knees and a central body line curving in and out to show he’s initiating a spinning motion to either dodge or swing his weapon round to cut or throw his opponent off balance.

(On a side note, there are a few Japanese swordsmanship techniques that actually involve holding the katana’s hilt like this with just the dominant hand and leveraging the blade directly with the other, either to stab or to push the blade against an opponent’s body and then cut in a pulling action as you would with a saw. In Sephiroth’s case, I thought such use of the blade to be more realistic and more likely effective because of the weight and balance issues of any sword or weapon of great length.)

About the clothes…

I started off with the idea of making Squall’s outfit a mix between the one he actually wears in Kingdom Hearts 1 and that of a Western movie cowboy; and Sephiroth’s into something like the Grim Reaper would wear. From there, I just looked at a lot of pictures for inspiration for Squall’s outfit and belts and gradually added details.
As for Sephiroth, I first sketched him out wearing tattered black rags with long lines of stitches, but I didn’t like how it made him look like a tramp. So I eventually settled for just a trench coat with slightly torn edges and more subtle details. I chose not to include his bulky shoulder pads that I’ve personally never liked because of how funny a contrast they create with his bare unprotected chest.

About other details…

Squall’s gunblade was probably the trickiest thing to draw in the whole picture. Sure I used the official gunblade artwork to serve as a guide but the angle I drew it at just made it that much more challenging. It was quite hard to visualize proper placement of the hand, arm and body in relation to the weapon because of how the blade isn’t in line with the grip like it would be with any conventional sword.

A lot of the details and small things (snowflakes, flying ravens, feathers, grass, water, bones, the gunblade’s wooden grip, etc.) were here mostly for me to experiment with and practice different coloring techniques and effects.
Image size
2154x3025px 1.32 MB
© 2011 - 2024 Gewelt
Comments38
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Uhhh...I want to say, that it looks kinda like Squall is going to slit his own throat with his gunblade. It took me a while to realize that it was a trick of perspective.

That being said? This makes me want to play FF8 again. Thank you for the sudden nostalgia pain. :P