Puella Magi Madoka Magica - Her Fate is Sealed

Tools used:
Paint Tool SAI
Adobe Photoshop CS 5

DeviantArt page:
http://adeshark.deviantart.com/art/Her-Fate-is-Sealed-336287322

My first finished artwork of Miki Sayaka of Puella Magi Madoka Magica.
I did say "finished" because this is not the first attempt in making one. The previous ones ended up being beyond my capabilities to finish....or I just lost motivation.

I still can't believe I only have on artwork of her, despite being my favorite character in the whole show. Then again, I haven't produced many Madoka Magica artworks in general. That definitely needs to be fixed!

Well, so anyways let's move on to the artwork, shall we?
It all started when I asked myself, why didn't I have any artwork of Sayaka, which prompted me to start working on one right away. It started as a simple portrait of her, only up to her upper chest area, so no arms or hands are visible at that point. I wanted to make some kind of POV art, something that would make that would make the viewer feel they're meeting her in person.

The first mood I thought up was a "dating" scene. When I said dating, it's more on the line of eating lunch together in a restaurant and other lighter activities. I made her in her Mitakihara Middle School uniform at first, sitting in the same food court as seen in the episode 1, where she had lunch with Madoka and Hitomi:

After painting the overall roughly I started to feel that something is lacking. It's too plain and this dating scene could easily applied to the other characters as well. I need to change it, I need to make something that is specifically for her! So I changed the outfit to her Puella Magi costume as my first step.

It turned out, the costume is harder than her school uniform. Much harder. Gold trimmings, frills on the chest area and the latex-like material prove to be challenging to do. Now that I've changed her looks, I had to change her pose as well. I need to find a pose that screams "SAYAKA!" and so I came up with this pose.

Why this pose? To me personally, out of the girls in PMMM, Sayaka is the closest thing you get for a "bro" character. Someone that you can depend on to watch your back, someone that looks out for you. Of course I'm talking personality wise, not power level wise here. Heck, in the Nitroplus novel, she's basically Madoka's childhood Prince Charming.

With the pose out of the way, it's time to find a suitable background.At first I resorted to a plain white background to give that glowing, in-the-light, kind of feel, but I felt that's just cheap and won't do at all. So I decided to find another. Looking at her in her costume, pose and first person view, there's only one setting I find suitable. The settings from episode 4, where Sayaka first transformed and rescued Madoka from the witch. Of course, the pose itself is not in the scene.

However, I made this artwork not solely to show Sayaka's Prince Charming side, it's also there to portray her inevitable doom. How do I do that? If you look closely, the composition of the picture resembles a Japanese funeral photo. You know, that photo with black 2 ribbons on top, like this:

Why funeral photo? If you've watched Madoka Magica, you'd know that being a Puella Magi is never a good thing and usually ends with their untimely demise. Even Madoka herself was aware of this when she first saw her best friend transformed into one.

All in all, this artwork is meant to convey a feeling of both happiness of having a friend that would put her life on the line for you, and sadness of knowing you could loose her at any time.

That's it for this artwork. I'll be doing a similar breakdown whenever I made another piece of work.
Thank you for reading and hope you enjoyed it!