High King Cholera (Patreon)

Being one of the oldest characters and my namesake, I have always struggled with getting King Cholera's design right. I am not very good at designing armor (yet) and the colors are definitely not what I want. Originally the armor was all white gold, but I felt like it took away focus from what I consider the centerpiece of his design; his translucent white heart and the broken rib cage he pulls it from. I don't like the dark grey either though, so I am going to have to figure something out. 

Like the heart and the open armor to expose his ribs, there have been a lot of consistency in his design throughout the years. He was always based off of Catacomb Saints, more specifically St. Maximus and  St Pancratius. Mori also always had multiple sets of arms that would move like an apparition that left trails that blurred into different phases. One set is skeletal, the second in clawed gauntlets and the third would be his blue-tinged hands. I'm going to have to practice painting this kind of effect so it looks closer to how I imagine it in my head.

Cholera, sometimes called, "Blue Death" turns the skin a blue-grey from loss of fluids. Of course I am exaggerating that to make it more visually striking. It will be the most obvious on his face to give him that corpse-like appearance and contrast the golden halo of spikes behind his helmet. The white heart has nothing to do with the cholera in case you were wondering, as he was sick long before he becomes the High King. 

Spoiler alert: He dies at the very beginning of the story. 😅

Left-hand side is the initial thumbnail, and then I used the 3D models in Clip Studio Paint to replicate that pose. I did the expression without any reference other than my own drawings of Mori, but I did take inspiration from Sargent's "Ellen Terry as Lady Macbeth" because I always loved that painting and her wide-eyed stare. 

There is still so much of his design I'm unsure on, and I probably won't show the final version until I can paint the entire 'scene' and everything that leads up to it properly. It's all in my head, I can visualize everything from how he moves to what he says, but translating that to art is going to take a lot of practice. I can't wait to get there.