Chapter Text
Otabek Altin, Short Program - "O Fortuna"
"...the heavy metal version of "O Fortuna" by Trans-Siberian Orchestra was molded to Otabek's sensibilities perfectly. From the first note Beka cut a menacing figure, launching into strong, secure crossovers to gain speed into the connecting steps that led up to his first jumping pass. He vaulted up into the quadruple Salchow with height that had increased over the course of the season, completing the rotations in the air before opening out for the landing and allowing the position to be held until he came to a stop at the far end of the rink at a pause in the music.
Clenching his palms-up hands into fists he began to stalk forward in time to the rhythm, face a mask of strength and eyes glinting like steel."
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Hi. Yes, I am alive. I really, really thought I'd have had a lot more drawings done well before now, but I think 2020 caught up with me, and after that, so did life as a whole. I recently broke out of a 5½ year art block, and this was the first thing that came out. What I had visualized for the costume originally wasn't that far off save for the materials used; ultimately rather than large silver sequin paillettes overlapping in what would probably have looked much more like dragon scales than armor, as I drew this I ended up visualizing it as metallic stretch fabric for the pants, boot covers and gloves, the same fabric covering structured pieces for the shoulder armor and gauntlets, and black spandex overlayed with an openwork mesh that simulated chainmail, with faux leather accents. I did retcon the description in the fic slightly to reflect the change, but in the end I think this is much more accurate to what I thought I was seeing in my head originally. In that sense, I think maybe letting this cook for as long as it did was a good thing. Now the only problem is I feel like it's better than all the other drawings I did previously, but ah well. It is what it is.
The best part though, is that I have always had a crystal clear vision of this moment in Beka's program, where he stopped at the short end of the rink and clenched his fists, and this came out exactly like I wanted it to, right down to his face which I had far less trouble with than I expected.
I do still plan to draw more costumes, but since drawing them all at once in the first go was possibly part of what burned me out/artblocked me, I will just be doing them as I am inspired to this time, and posting them one chapter at a time. Unfortunately my writerbrain is still completely dormant, so this is all I have to offer for now.
Unfortunately the quality of this and the other drawings I've done has suffered because of where I am uploading them from; if you'd like to see better resolution versions of all of them they are posted over on my Bluesky account huntressfirefall.bsky.social, under the hashtag #huntressfirefall.