Frost In The Air

"Frost In The Air" sketch

Mortal Kombaaat!  *Pumps fist into the air!*  If you were a gamer in the 90s, you probably know all about Mortal Kombat.  Infamous at the time for its heavy blood and violence, Mortal Kombat was one of the most popular arcade games ever.  Frost made her debut in Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance (chronologically it was MK5).  The design she has in this sketch is a variation of her alternate costume in the game.  I signed on to do this picture as part of the  Mortal Kombat Tribute Round 2.  The pose I had in mind at first was to have Frost appear to be skating towards the viewer with her hands outstretched behind her shooting out ice blasts.  However, I soon found that pose to be too tricky to execute, so I rigged up a model in DAZ Studio and used that to help me with a pose.  

Hands and feet are the bane of many artists and that remains true with me.  Getting the angle of the feet and her right hand correct were the toughest parts of this sketch.  The feet I eventually managed to cheat a bit on, but the right hand required numerous restarts and tweaks to finally reach a position that I felt was passable. 

Frost's alternate costume is very similar to this, but not exactly as it's drawn here.  Because I decided to run with the idea of her costume being constructed entirely of ice, that meant I had to leave out the sash that was on the front.  If everything about her costume was frozen, it would've looked really odd to have a piece of it frozen solid floating between her legs.  The background is my interpretation of a close up on the Lin Kuei temple.  I thought about placing mountains behind her originally, but decided the temple would be both simpler to draw and more relevant to the character.  I aim to add colors to this one very soon.