Meet Zella! She's a beautifully constructed OC designed by one of my art homies consisting of the memories of two girls, who ultimately got fused together in an Frankensteinesque experiment. According to nechronyx, she's a timid and gentle zombie where she spends her time connecting with nature and drifting through each day peacefully. She has no physical limiter that aids in her super strength but never goes out of her way to fight if it can be helped. She is often conflicted with the resurfacing traumas of her two pasts, both parts of her in a constant struggle for control.

I saw a lot of potential in her character background and wanted to visually capture what kind of character Zella is through a single illustration, along with the possible world she might find herself in after awakening from her experiment. I aimed for something cinematic, initially imagining her killing her captors, potentially scientists or hostile soldiers, out of confusion and survival instinct, tapping into her violent half to survive. Eventually, she would awaken in ruins, greeted by a blue butterfly and the surrounding nature.

I found this to be an opportunity to prioritize values and practice a grayscale workflow, which I surprisingly ended up feeling satisfied from. I also tried being more mindful of the composition's overall palete this time around, generally making green and cool hues a staple tone. After semi-rendering in greyscale, I would use soft lighting and overlay blending layers, along with tone curving to achieve this. The macabre design of Zella challenged me to narrow my use of saturation while providing a strong light source that depicts a setting of foliage and ruins. I'm not sure if I would consistently rely on grayscale again, but it's definitely proven more useful in grimmer or desaturated paintings like this, which I'll keep in mind for future works. Anyways, good job for reading this far :)