CBRunway Round 3 Entry

When the accident happened I dropped out of this contest, but the moderator left it open in case I could make the deadline. Tonight I managed to get about 45 minutes to draw, and I made the deadline with 3 minutes to spare!

The art isn't that great due to the time factor, but I'm confident in the concept. This round we had to redesign Lady Death for an all ages/mainstream audience, so I went with this:



This was quite a challenge for me, because I had never read Lady Death ever, and I had only seen the character's skimpy outfits and knew nothing about her. So I had to use some of that 45 minutes to do a bit of research. Given the outfit and the thought of changing her for a broader audience, I had to make some changes to her origin and story.

Conceptually I started thinking about Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Charmed for points of reference on how to make Lady Death more mainstream. But of course not everything could change to keep it true to the character.

In this updated version, Hope is the daughter of an angel (her mother) and a demon (fallen angel - Matthias), both disguised as humans prior to the conception of Hope. Hope lives with her mother into her teens until her mother dies. She then goes to live with her father, who has deceived the church, but the people see through him.

As the people hunt him down he disappears, but they corner his daughter, who casts a spell her father taught her, and it conjurs a demon. The demon tricks Hope into giving up her soul in exchange for saving her life. (Here's where the story changes some).

Hope overthrows the demon lord that tricked her, but Lucifer is aware of her existence. Such a union between angel and demon that was between her parents is forbidden, but it also makes Hope an anomaly. She is powerful beyond imagination. She is the key to the war between Heaven and Hell. Lucifer wishes to exploit that, so he charges her to become the angel of death and destroy all human life to regain her eternal soul.

Hope is on a quest to overthrow Lucifer, and so she targets the scum of the earth, evil doers, sorcerors, and those that are deep into witchcraft, or possessed to keep up appearances for Lucifer. But she is secretly killing off demons to get to the head honcho to take him out.

In her civilian life, Hope is a college student who has befriended a clan of students who happen to know a lot about religious practices, so she enlists their help in her war on Hell.

As for the costume, I wanted to stay true to the concept with the leather jacket and skulls, but still make it more realistic and believable. I made it kind of a rocker chick/bad girl outfit with the jacket and boots, and the skull choker and belt buckle. And the shirt I made a deep red with a heart skull to further compliment the motif. Of course she wears normal clothes during her classes and such.

So that's my take on it, and with a little more development I think it could actually be a really cool new take on the character that Mr. Pulido might want to consider! :)

B-Out