Its finally done and the result was worth the wait… for the most part.

This picture has been the bane of my existence for the past 3 some odd weeks and has taken me about 40+ working hours to finish (about half of which were just spent tweaking details). It also took me such a long time because my hand/wrist problems have been acting up worse than usual lately which definitely affects my progress. Sorry you guys.

Okay enough of my ranting and on to the picture.

ROW ROW FIGHT DA POWA!!! Gawd, such an awesome series and I recommend it to anyone and everyone. It has a little bit of everything and the characters are wonderful.

At some point during the series I was struck with how similar Viral was to Vincent from FF7 and everything snowballed from there. I started finding all of the similarities possible between each of the corresponding characters and came up with a much longer list than I originally expected, meaning that I HAD to draw something for it just like I did with the Naruto/KH crossover (I see a common theme, do you?).

Viral/Vincent: immortal, experiment, ragged unkempt hair, ostracized sometimes, neutral, deformed claw-like hand, part monster/animal, both names start with V?
Simon/AC!Cloud: unlikely hero, emo moments, red band on forearm as a reminder, supernatural power and energy source (Spiral vs Mako), black leather outfit and cool goggles
Kamina/Zack: dead best friend of the main character, brother figure, role model, enthusiastic, encouraging, strong, heroic
Nia/Aerith: hero romantic interest, cute, girly, idealistic, sacrifices herself for the defeat of the enemy, strong "damsel in distress" type character
Yoko/Tifa: skilled fighter, bright, rebel, realistic, tough girl
Kittan/Cid: gruff/uncouth, temporarily leader, good pilot
Rossiu/Tseng: stern, formal, calm, leader figure (I know he doesn't fit because he isn't part of AVALANCHE but the character fits him perfectly)
Boota/Cait Sith: talking animal, side kick that ends up becoming important later, comic relief?

If you see anything else I missed or I misstated something please tell me immediately so I can fix it. And yes, I mixed the original game and Advent Children together, but that was the best way for me (and I like Clouds AC outfit better anyway). It saddens me that you cant see all of the detail I put into this since it took me so long. I blended a purplish shade into all of the colors... by hand. It's a really good subtle technique but unfortunately unless you are looking for it you cant even tell. TT_TT

On to the questioning: Do you think the colors are too bright or distracting? Do the proportions look okay? (Rossiu and Yoko gave me absolute hell with their posses) Is the background distracting? Here is a version with a plain white background: [link] which do you perfer?