DISTRESSED DAMSELS: Enjoy the WORK STAGES chronicling my descent into commissioned crossover madness (part 1)! (Patreon)

So! 

The piece that follows isn't technically a commission per se, but rather a gift illo for a friend of time and long-time (small-P) patron. He wanted a sketch of Dirty Pair's Kei and Yu—nay, Rose & Lily in a distressed-damsel crossover with a specific iteration of a familiar character from a very different franchise.

As one might expect I knocked out the figures of Rose & Lily easy-peasy, but soon ran into trouble with the suit-clad male figure bedamseling them:

I just could not get the fella's arms and hands to work; so, out of both desperation and the hopes of learning something new to try out in CSP, I inserted a 3D figure for reference:

Wonky as that figure was, that did give me the impetus to get something vaguely acceptable on paper for the male character's g-d arms:

...though the g-d suit draping on his arms was a mess, as was my attempt at a resemblance for his face. Can you guess who the hell that was supposed to be? (Answer at the end of this post, never fear.)

I turned the sketch layer into "pseudo-blue pencil" before I started (digitally) inking the piece, as seen in our final image for this post:

I did not like the inked face of the male figure one bit, so I sent the file over to my iPad to break out the Design Pencil brush for a different stab at his face; yes, oddly enough, that tool works quite differently on the tablet version of CSP, as opposed to the ol' Cintiq.

However, as our next Work Stages post in a week or so will show, another face in this illo would pose even greater difficulties during the subsequent inking and toning stages. (Ughh.)

And to clarify, that main figure was supposed to be Sean Connery as James Bond; alas, resemblances have never been my strong suit. (I've considered taking a caricature course, in fact, even though I don't care a whit about caricatures as such—but I am interested in the exaggeration-susceptible parameters that differentiate one face from another.)

Note that my Original Recipe versions of Kei and Y*ri, gene-modded and smartsuited and cyber-enhanced as they are, could possibly give Vintage James Bond a run for his money, but poor, misfortune-prone Rose & Lily would have no shot whatsoever against ol' 007. (More on this matter later, as I did a few quick sketch sets exploring the concept afterward.)

NEXT TIME ON THIS HERE PATREON: No idea, TBH, as to what might be coming up in our next M/W/F slot. Let's find out together, shall we?