You are surprised and killed by a manticore! It quickly shreds your flesh and devours you! But not this manticore, fortunately; he's friendly. :)

This is a picture of Søren, a manticore character I doodled around and came up with nearly three years ago and who's sat around as lineart in my folder ever since! I was joking with Susi that if I ever did get around to doing anything with him, he'd end up albino as a result of going without colour for so long; as it happens, he didn't turn out albinistic, but looked quite good leucistic, so I kept him like that. I don't know what the little floating crystal thing is that he has; it was just something I doodled with him randomly, so I coloured it up as well. (Note to self: don't try hand-drawing lens flare effects next time, it just looks bad. :P)

This picture represents a step up in my understanding of how to use GIMP as well; notably selecting regions by colour and gradient-filling using the blend tool, neither of which I knew how to use before this pic. Also significant is that, unlike the vast majority of my character sketches, Søren's not floating in the White Void of Doom where I haven't managed/been bothered to draw a background. (Okay, he's still floating in a void, but everyone's gotta start somewhere, right? :P)

Søren is © me 2007 and the finished picture is © me 2010.

D.F.