Click on the thumbnails for the fullsize graphic

The original "blank" obtained from the Magic Knight Rayearth Coloring Album website.

What I did with it.

NOTES: I saw pictures that people colored themselves on some websites and I want to give it a try myself, even though I wanted to have something new to display in the Fuu Shrine. I always love to have anything in the shrine that could show how cool and how cute Fuu is. Ostensibly, the reason is to have something for Fuu-sama's birthday in December, but that's just an excuse (as if I need one) ^^; Mainly I just want to see how good or bad of a job I can do, and how close I can make it the way I wanted it to be.

The most fun part was coloring Fuu's hair, and the most unfun part is the cape :P the shadows on it took too much effort for too little results. The whole thing took QUITE a bit of work actually (if you take a look at it you probably think "gee, that's a piece of cake" but it's more work than it looks). This is my first time at shading and highlighting, and it proved to be challenging but satifying at the end when I get to look at the nifty results. Of course I would feel that it's nifty because I'm the one who did it.

Some stuff were missing from the original (not the fault of the scanner; that's the way the coloring book page was) like some feathers behind the left armpit of Windam and most important of all the right knee. I had to take some liberties on the right knee because if I draw it in the exact position as indicated in the Rayearth Nakayoshi anime album, the knee would end up looking like a short stubby foot!

While doing this graphic I did learn a few more things about Photoshop... I finally got around to learning how to use masks, so lazy is I. That wonderful "sea of cloud" effect was done that way (do you really think a real photograph could come out that way?), and I did some free transformations to make Fuu and Windam look closer to the clouds then they otherwise would. All in all it came out pretty much the way I planned it, and I'm happy with it even if it looks a bit rough (I skipped a bit of work when the Rayearth Dimension website reopened. I want to also present this graphic as sort of a pre-opening present. Cool, something that serves four purposes); Fuu-sama does look quite cute in it! I wish I can blow this up into a really BIG poster to put up in my room...

The Shrinekeeper
11-22-2000

Anybody that wants to use my work (I don't know what to call it- would it be "fan stuff", or "fan THING"? It's not "fan art" is it?) can go ahead and do so as long as you don't cut or resize the picture, except when making a thumbnail. I used .gif because it preserves the picture well enough without using .pcx or .bmp (that would make the picture file huge). Just be aware that the picture starts to look bad if you turn it into a .jpg file.

comments (if you can do a better job, please do and send it right in, I promise to give full credit for your toils :) goes to --nanikore@rocketmail.com-- ...all flames will be utterly obliterated using the Priest of Fuu's Super Special Attack.