So this here is a redesign of Sariel from the first Touhou game, Highly Responsive to Prayers. I have a soft spot for that game due to the aesthetics of the bosses, I think they were far more inventive than most of Zun's current work tbh. And with having respect for that final boss, I really wanted to remake it akin to what I did for the game jam Nue boss but also make it somewhat faithful within reason.

So I did just that. I went through various stages to try and recapture the design. I really like what I did with the wings, though they're still a bit messy, they certainly have that mythical touch to them, spread out wide but closing around her as they get to the closer pair. And I managed to do alot with the hair there, probably a little too cloud like but it looks damn cool. Face has this sort of "metal face" or "stone" like look to it that I quite like too, and the background strikes immediately. Even the flame hands have a feeling of perspective here too.

My main issue is my accursed tendency at the moment not to clean up stuff like some rough areas of the art. But I think I'll leave it as is, I am personally quite happy with it.

So this was the original, to compare. You can see it's got a bit of roughness but also an amazing amount of charm and a unique feel I say. Probably why I like it so much. So I reused the colours from it but tried to combine it with SumiE aesthetics in pixel art to see how far I got.

Holy shit, this really took ages to get to as it is.

First was this really shit sketch, which I did just to get a feel for the pose and scale.

Next I started ironing out the design more, refining the anatomy a bit more and making the first attempt at the wings and the flame hands. The wings weren't exactly what I was after though because they ate through too much of the Ring at the back and lost the appeal the original had.

And also the face was too "chaotic and messy" for Sariel.

However I tried to adjust both stubbornly. Wasn't happy with the results especially after that, so I went through a solid rework of the face entirely. And I also refined the Ring, making it Japanese text instead of Latin because of the SumiE context. Not sure if that was ideal.

I reworked the wings entirely, and the head, and while it was rough it was starting to look alot more like what I wanted. Perhaps a tad too stoic though. And so finally it reached the final piece shaped up. I really enjoyed it. Though if I were to change anything, I'd probably try to incorporate the "Evil Eye" element somewhere and perhaps also refine things a bit more. And change the Kanji into Latin again. And improve the flame hands a bit more.

Anyway, enjoy.