Boss from MGS3 WIPs (Patreon)

A coworker friend who is a huge Hideo Kojima fan commissioned me to draw Boss from Metal Gear Solid 3. This lady is not in my comfort zone, so it's taken me a whole week to even figure out the pose. Still, I like her outfit and I think I can make her turn out decent!

Here are some of the initial poses I drafted. My coworker requested that I include her signature gun, but every time I draw it it lowkey looks like a dick so I'm gonna have to figure out how to make it not look like that.

I also tried drafting a more artsy pose, with her sitting among some flowers:

But once I put the flowers behind one of the standing poses I think I liked the standing pose better.

Fleshing out the standing sketch was tough mainly because her hairstyle isn't entirely clear from the cutscenes. I wanted to add flyaway hairs to make the hair more pretty, but it wasn't meshing with her severe hairlines and style. So I'm trying something new with the flyaway hairs, turning them into more decorative filigree - if it turns out well, I can make it a new thing.

Other than that, I think her bodysuit turned out great. I don't think my version looks as severe or matronly as the original, but I'm hoping I can get away with "stylistic choices". Now I just have to figure out dick gun...

With the gun and more details sketched out:

Final lineart, with every (agonizing) detail 😆
I mocked up parts of the background as well. I think I'm going to have two different circles of different sizes - one for Twitter, one for Instagram.

Added colors and shading (pretty much referencing the concept art) and came up with two different versions, one with lighter lineart and one with darker. I'm gonna let my client pick which version he likes more, but I'm open to input if you have some too.

I think the lighter version clashes with the background less, but the darker version pops more. What do you think?

The client preferred the lighter lineart (even after I showed him a hybrid of the two versions), so with a bit of touchup here's the final result! 

I also made a background that matched my IG layouts more.