Another week, another picture, another wall of text probably no one's reading. I realized the only things I'd drawn all summer were characters of the "cute" archetype, so I decided to draw the usual gal I use to practice curvaceous characters. No, I don't know what this pose is supposed to be, either. Just needed something a little more dynamic, so she's landing after jumping off something somewhat low, I suppose.
This is Erin, with a long-haired and a short-haired version. As is evident here, she's one of my bustier characters, but is also one of the shortest amongst the adult characters. Her element is water, and ice by association, but can only focus on one at a time. When she makes use of water, she has long flowing hair, and when she makes use of ice, she has short hair. The reason for this... well... that male character I was trying to draw and quickly lost interest in? She's him. As a result of these characters being created in my high school years, and myself reading the complete Ranma 1/2 series back then, I thought it'd be a great idea to make this character be able to change genders too. Now I have to figure out how to spin that into an actual story. Crap.
The protagonist of this story of mine starts as the 20-year-old Arin, who was originally named Arrei before I changed it because no one could pronounce his name. Sounds familiar, for some reason... huh. He receives the power of the Undines, spirits of water, allowing him to manifest a magical greatsword and suit of armor to do battle. A major point of the story revolves around unlocking greater power from these spirits, which usually involves a crucial moment that allows them to tap into their spirits' depths. For Arin, this occurs when he attempts to strengthen his spiritual link with the Undines and letting their power flow through his body akin to water flowing through the land. Well, his body proves to be a little too compatible and takes on not only the Undines' power, but their physical attributes as well. This has predictably manic results when it occurs, but he learns to control the transformation and becomes able to do so at will, after which it stops bothering him and he even does so to mess with people from time to time.
After fully unlocking the Undines' strength, his male persona continues to wield his greatsword and is capable of utilizing both water and ice to use special attacks and cast magic, while his female form uses one at a time and wields a halberd for greater reach in the water element and dual arm blades for single-target damage in the ice element. Arin fills the usual main character all-around niche, having fairly good physical and magical abilities, while also having good physical and magical defenses, but has slower movement and evasion options due to his weapon and heavy armor. Erin possesses the same defenses, greater attack strength and much higher speed due to her closer connection to the Undines, but that same connection also causes all magical abilities to be channeled towards attacks instead, making her only able to do physical damage. That makes her a very specialized sort of character who is capable of dishing out heavy damage, but becomes much less useful against heavy armored foes who are weaker to magic.