wew this one took one hell of a long time, but i think it's probably my best work so far. really proud of the result(proud enough to bother with a fancy animated preview image ), especially given just a month or so ago i was really struggling with drawing metallic objects. i think i've gotten the hang of that now, to say the least.

there are a few issues in this piece that i know about. for example, her right hand has no armor on it, but her left hand does. the reason for this is that i forgot when drawing the sketch, and only noticed after shading the right hand... but at that point, i had struggled so much with the shading of the armor on the right hand, i couldn't really bear to go through it again. apparently there are traditions of historical soldiers (the greek hoplites) that only wore armor on one hand, because the other hand was for holding a shield. it's a stretch to use that to justify my laziness here, especially given that i didn't take the time to draw a shield... but whatever, i'll go with it. the perspective is also wrong on the gauntlet cuff on her right hand, but that one... is better left as it is (read: i tried and couldn't get it right ).

another issue is that i still don't know how to keep color count down in anti-aliased works, but it is what it is; 35 isn't that many.

anyway, happy swordtember everybody