My entry for and her Demon Atemu Contest Had to draw her character, Demon Atemu…and this is the result! Which was an awesome result because it won 2nd Place in the overall contest, and first place in the Traditional category!

I really had fun with this one…as in really had a blast. His official design is cool enough already, and then being allowed to play with costume designs and all…sooo fun. I spent hours on this piece, to give you and indication of how much I got out of it. So even if it doesn’t win squat, I still had a blast and found it well worth it

With that said, on to information about the art!

This is actually one of my later ideas and poses for him. My first initial ideas were totally different, but quickly became…un-drawable due to his extra limbs and positioning and such. Like a wing would block out half his body and the like. With this one, you can see pretty much everything though, so that’s good.

Head wasn’t so hard, oddly. Usually I hate drawing any sort of Yugi hair (the spiky out-of-proportion-ness! Aaaagh!) but I nailed this first try. Added extra details and changed whatever didn’t apply to Atemu (the ref) but DID to Demon Atemu (like horns, the long ears, etc). The expression was a little hard, mostly his mouth (fangs…not so easy to fit in there….ended up going with a smirk-ish look instead of showing more teeth, but hey…) I also enjoyed drawing the demon eye on his crown…thing. Originally I shaded it in pencil, but I think it shaded fairly well in pen too when I inked it, so it’s all good.

Body came out okay as well. Used my life drawing classes for that. Whoo, I can apply schoolwork to anime contest drawing! Yaaaay… I had fun with the crosshatching for the scar too. The limbs are alright, I especially enjoy the feet…love drawing claw feet with the unusual-jointed legs. I would have liked the crazy joints to be more visible, but the balance of the pose wouldn’t allow for it…ah well. Fun anyway. Also love how I duplicated the scar on a part of the skirt…thing.

Tail! Tail was so fun! I love the sweeping motion…plus I LOVE tailrings, so I just had to throw one in there if I could manage it at all. Which I did. The tailring is based off of the waist/skirt outfit Demon Atemu generally wears in most of the pics by so I just toyed with the design and duplicated it elsewhere. Then I added a mini one near the scythe tail (which I love…scythe tails are awesome ) and connected them with a chain (because chains are cool and he had to have one).

And of course..the WINGS. On the ‘guidelines’ section of the contest, it was stated that “His [Demon Atemu’s] wings can be demonic, angelic, or that black angelic kind.” Whereupon my mind went “black angel wings…ooooh…fun and challenging, yay!” So I chose that…obviously. The wings alone took me about…3 to 4 hours. Because first I set up a careful semi-bone structure, then I drew in each individual feather, added the quills, and finally inked it all, adding the black texture and color. I’m very proud of the penwork for this, because I had to figure out a way to show the wings were black, so I actually went to a scrap piece of paper and drew another set of (less detailed) wings to practice on and came up with this style. Took forever to ink it, but it looks great. There are even random thumb-spikes, though they’re not so easy to tell apart from the feathers…but they ARE there. I also love the many wing-rings he has…including two with chains attached, which lead down to an ankh and a demon eye pendant. Not very practical for flying but hey, they look cool. Perhaps Demon Atemu’s getting all dressed up.

Anyway, came out pretty good overall. I mostly used [link] as my reference for this piece, until about five days ago when I discovered that she had also put up a reference sheet ([link]) which made all my careful studying for nothing….or well I guess not, but it sure would have made things easier, Unfortunately the pose I drew looks too similar now to the ‘berserker’ mode…but that certainly wasn’t intentional, so I can’t do much about that.

Anyway, overall this was SO fun, and I’m glad I got the chance to enter. Now we wait to see the results!

EDIT
Changed the face a little bit after numerous people commented on it. The eyes are now a little darker and thicker (he's got kohl now), and I changed the position of his mouth. Thanks for the critiques, guys.