Artist Life - Shojo Beat Girl - WIP

Lindsay subscribes to Shojo Beat magazine. They're back to running another "Draw our Beat Girl" contest. While I wasn't planning to enter, (I have a portfolio I'm trying to put together. Random anime girl wasn't something I needed more of.) the more I thought about designing an iconic character for Shojo Beat, the more amped-up I became. I figured I'd treat it like any other art job. Lindsay showed me their list of criteria:
-Must contain SB logo
-Color
-Full body
-Faces reader
-Rockin' a cool outfit
-Accessories are a +++
-Representin'
     -Manga
     -Anime
     -Video games
     -Fashion
     -Japanese pop culture
-May contain the other SB chibi characters

Anyway, it gave me some solid boundaries to work within, and took me back to the days when I was doing personal character commissions for pplz on teh web.

After finishing up the sketch for the MS takes Japan picture, but before hitting the sack at around 12AM, I made a couple of squiggly character sketches for my Beat Girl design. It was nothing special, but my brain was turning over the idea. I called it a night.

I woke up at 4:45 AM and miraculously had a pose and outfit design fixed in my brain. Aside from fighting the flu, my brain must have been stewing on it all night. I wish it always did this. I can't remember dreams, but somehow during maintenance mode, a character design got lodged in my skull. I immediately got out of bed and started doing rough figure sketches.

At 8:30AM the rough design was done. All before the first cup of coffee...

...

8:35AM Now I've had my coffee. :)

It's 5PM. The pencil sketch is done. Who knows why it took so long. I dropped some simple color on it to make it more screen friendly. Anything need fixing? Let me know. :)