Boy, do I have a treat for you. At least I think it's a treat. Because it's hilarious, and a true sneak peak into my past, and besides, anything Dragonball related is always a treat in my book. :P
I hope you enjoy my second installment of #drawitagain as much as I enjoyed making it.
This is the post accompanying my #drawitagain challenge number two! Come check it out here and participate my lovelies! ;D
Storytime~
When I was like 12 or so, probably younger, I discovered Dragonball & Dragonball Z. And hooooooo~ what a door that opened! It was the time when I suddenly became aware that quite a few of my favourite cartoons I'd been watching since I was very little, actually came from Japan and were called Anime.
I don't remember exactly how, but around that time, Manga and Anime boomed big time in Austria. It was everywhere all of a sudden and I first got introduced to that magical world when I discoverd the Dragonball Mangas.
Me and my best friend at the time became obsessed.
Dragonball is the Manga I started my pretty substantial collection with. My friend and I used to buy one volume alternately and swap them to read.
When I stopped collecting, around the age of 17-ish I'd guess, I owned a bit over 600 Manga volumes. I know, because I counted them all in an effort to catalogue them. All in German of course.
I enjoyed Anime too, but I always tended to like the Manga versions better (when they existed) because more often than not, the art was so much better.
(I'm still extremely cranky at what they did to Naruto. I mean COME ON. It's like they didn't even try with the Anime.)
Not quite so with Dragonball & Dragonball Z.
I always loved both the Manga and the Anime. Filler episodes and all.
We had a full-blown fan obsession, complete with a huge crush on Future Trunks on my part and drawing fanart, making up characters representing ourselves (self inserts, I'm told it's called) and writing fanfiction set in the universe.
Dragonball is the only Manga universe I got so into that I actually made up Original Characters and wrote fanfiction together with my bestie, inserting them among all our favourite characters.
We made up whole adventures and fights and love interests (come on, we were 12 year old girls. Obviously we were gonna amp up the romance a bit) - the whole shabang.
Sadly I don't remember many details about these stories, except Piccolo & Trunks featured rather prominently (wriggles eyebrows), and I can't for the life of me find that unfinished fanfiction I wrote.
But what does remain, and what I remember very well and very fondly are the Dragonball alter egos my friend and I created for ourselves.
Meet Neori & Neopheli
Weirdly, I don't have any drawings of them from before 2002, though I suspect some of the ones labeled 2002 are really from a bit earlier.
Neori is my character, which is why she features a bit more heavily. She's the one in the first 3 drawings here. Neopheli is her slightly smaller, and darker coloured sister, which you can admire on the right in that last one. Oh, and their blood is purple. Obviously.
If I may say so, they're kind of brilliant in my opinon. Considering they sprang from the hormone addled brains of two 12 year old girls they are surprisingly solid and I still thing could totally fit into the universe no problem.
But to top it all off they're also astonishingly original.
There is no creature or character even closely resembling these badass women hailing from a very watery planet, yet I could very well imagine them running around with all the other weirdos one encounters in DBZ.
I love how I managed to squeeze my eternal obsession with Mermaids into the Design while still staying pretty within the bounds of what would be possible and doable in the DB universe.
You can see why I still have a soft spot for these guys and probably always will.
From what I remember, they're pretty powerful warriors from a species hailing from Neptune, they are excellent fighters above and below water and can breathe fine in both environments too.
Nevermind that Neptune doesn't actually have any water on it. Pffft~ Details, shmetails.
They have these special powers, which I don't remember much about unfortunately, but I think it focuses in the crystally type thing on their foreheads. The ornamental cuffs with the stones they wear on wrists, tail, and in the earlier versions on the ankles as well, serve as power amplifiers.
They can channel this power through their tridents as well, which as you may have noticed, also have one of these stone things embedded in it. Neori favours a gold trident whereas her sister prefers the silver version.
They prefer using their tridents in fights but excell at weaponless close combat as well, and their tails are extremely flexible and features heavily in their "all out" fighting style, to the surprise and detriment of many a foe. They prefer to keep their tail pretty inert during fights where not all out force is necessary because it leads to their adversaries ignoring it and underestimating them.
Check out some re-draws from 2003 and 2015:
In the 2015 version here, I cut Neoris hair because I had short hair at the time myself, so of course, Neori decided to cut her luscious locks as well.
I think the story I made up was that she cut them in combat at some point, an adversary having grabbed her by the hair and she decided to keep them short from that point onward so that would never happen again.
Unfortunately I don't remember much more of these awesome warriors.
Except Neori had the hots for Piccolo at some point. LOL
And now, I think it's time to show you the current edition of these two ;D Brace yourselves.
I present to you: Neori & Neopheli 2018 edition:
You may notice that Neopheli is a bit rough there.. yeeeeaahh I drew them separately and was gonna post this on the 12th and ran out of time (patience)
As always the post took much longer to write than anticipated and then I ended up deciding to make the contest post seperate from this, because I realised the story around these guys would have pushed the post length into the stratosphere, so I really could have polished her more but eh.
shit happens.
Instead have a glorious Neori as a single image:
So badass. I love the way the skin colour turned out. I have to draw more of these guys, they're kinda epic.
Let me know if that's something you'd be interested in seeing ;D
Here's the sketch version:
I wanted to include it because personally I love rough drawings and these have a nice energy to them.
hmmm hahaha I really like these guys. Tho the names are probably weird in English. We dreamed them up at a time when neither of us actually spoke English yet, they sound fine in German. Honestly, I wouldn't even know how to pronounce Neopheli. lololol
I'm thinking too…
some additional lore?
If I were to spin the story further, just fo shits and giggles, I'd say that an exploration group of them a couple of thousand years ago stranded on earth. They survived for quite a while and are the reason for all the legends of mermaids and Poseidon etc the humans came up with. That would neatly explain the tridents XD
Neori and Neopheli would then be decendants of these stranded guys, and come out of hiding because they found out about the Dragonballs and want to use them to get back to their Planet of origin which they now only know through the records of their ancestors.
I don't think we thought that far at the time, we just wanted some kickass characters to play with, but I think it would be a cool story.
Please let me know if you'd like to see more of these guys! Maybe in action next time? That'd be quite a challenge, I don't think I've ever drawn a proper fighting scene O__O
hope you enjoyed this instalment of #drawitagain!
If you have some old dusty characters lying around somewhere, I'd be thrilled if you participated in the contest, show us how much your skills evolved and tell us their story.
I'll be looking forward to lots of awesome entries~! ♡
toodles, and till the next time!
Love,
Jill
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