greetings indeed!

welcome back to the train wreck also known as "calvins ongoing genshin impact obsession"!! so... as some of you may or may not know i have quite the array of OCs that i created for that fandom... none of which actually got a final illustration until now, other than my boii eric, so i finally have the excuse to rant about one of my fandom-kiddos to ya QwQ

okay dokay! now... eric was born in mondstadt... similar to bennett, he never knew his parents, as he was found abandoned near dragonspine by the fatui. eric did indeed have a stuffed toy that had his nametag on it, but the fatui who found him didn't see that and named him "kiril" instead.

kiril was then sent to the fatui orphanage, owned by our wonderful mister arlecchino, where he was raised to serve the tsaritsa and accomplish missions throughout teyvat. after the training was done and he was able to be put into action, he was given a cryo delusion and sent to sumeru, to basically just be the errand boy of il dottore.

in sumeru some shit went kinda wrong in the lab, and eric was the one who fixed the situation... something that not only left him with a nasty array of burn-scars on his legs, face and back, but also with a hydro vision!

yeah... that's basically the concept i had in mind...

now, when it came to designing his appearance i wanted him to see like a motivated adventurous lad, who seems to have too much ego for his own good. he is confident, likes to brag about things, is fluent in both passive-aggressive and sarcasm, but is always there to help his comrades and friends out and actually has a heart of gold.
the type of person who would laugh at you for doing something stupid, accompanied by some nasty comment, who would also sneak into someone's house at night and threaten them at gunpoint, if they ever talked bad about you.

colour and clothing wise, my main inspiration were obviuosly the npcs we see of the sumeru academia, cyno and, most importantly, the fatui skirmisher hydro and cryo gunners.

goal was, to give him that good old fatui style, whilst also adapting to the hot surroundings of the region.

weapon wise i initially thought about making him a catalyst, but then ended up making him have a gun. essentially the same as a bow-user, except with a different appearance or so, ya know? just to be more in line with the basic fatui mobs we see everywhere.

so!

after having gathered all the ideas for his character in those ref sheets and my sketchbook/notebook/etc. i wanted to go ahead and draw him some splash-art >w< i mean... is it really a genshin-oc if you didn't create fake-screenshots with them?

now... not too much to say about that one... i essentially thought that he would be able to use his skill to switch between hydro and cryo (tartaglia style, ya know?) with his cryo-phase being obviously limited time and draining his HP. hydro ability would heal, whilst his cryo ability would attack nearby enemies. his hydro burst would deal areal hydro damage and heal the team, whilst his cryo burst would deal cryo damage and create a shield.

still not too sure about that skillset, but he's essentially supposed to be similar to the skirmishers, creating elemental "shields" for themselves and being able to attack opponents and heal teammates.

so when it came to the artwork, i decided to go with something that would convey that duality of his... yeee........

and... uh... dunno what to say else, so here's also a fake banner i made ^-^""

ha! you thought that was it?!

well... it pretty much is...

either way, after finishing that part of the piece, i thought that... well... whilst it did look cool, it didn't quite look as cool as it could, you know? so i went ahead and redraw the whole thing in a style that resembles the anime-esc appearance of the game better!

and man... i forgot how hard this stuff is T-T
it's been literal years since i drew a piece in this kind of style and damn it shows. not necessarily in the end result, but mainly in my insecurity and speed during the process.

in the end i am very grateful that i did end up doing this, because.... JUST LOOK AT MY BOII QWQ

it also was incredibly fun to do something so insanely similar, yet completely different to my usual style... i probably will draw all my genshin impact ocs in that style from now on, not gonna lie >w<

anyways! hope you enjoyed the pieces. if you made genshin characters yourself, pls pls pls tell me more about them and/or show me their design, if they have one :0
i love seeing other peoples creations regarding this game and always find it so insanely inspiring to see what others come up with >w<