Same Character

Or, How It Started How It’s Going, 24 Years of Drawing Sephiroth

The first image is apparently the very first Sephiroth fanart I ever drew (or at least, it’s the first in my sketchbook from that time). The last image is a work in progress. (Not that this is every Seph I’ve ever drawn.)

And I guess I’m counting 2020 as being over given my math up there. ^o^; I’d change it here too if I could edit my tweet about it.

Things I realized putting this collage together:

I apparently became a Sephiroth fan before playing through all of Final Fantasy VII, because the first image was done at some point between September and mid-December 1997, and I know I wouldn’t have beaten the game so quickly. I’ve been trying to remember what drew me to him. I think it was mostly the mystery and the hair. I find it slightly ironic that I chose to draw the walking-through-flames scene as I’m actually afraid of fire, because when I was like 5 or 6 I was curious about matches and accidentally set the couch ablaze playing with them, and ran away outside to hide in the yard while saying nothing to anyone who was inside the house. (I don’t remember any of this, it’s what I’ve been told.)
I have drawn Sephiroth in his canon outfit as-is precisely once in all these years. But the number goes up somewhat if you count “birthday suit” as one of his canon outfits. (Correction: If I count instances where I was copying official art or other people’s art, I’ve drawn Seph in his canon outfit as-is at least four times.)
Seph on a sousaphone is still one of my favorites.
I had forgotten about this silly little one-shot I’d done for an online contest. Or rather, I had forgotten that Seph was in it. It was so cringy in retrospect that I had actually sealed the pages shut with tape.
I’ve used Sephiroth for printmaking twice, once for woodblock printing in undergrad and once for etching in grad school. I wanted to add the woodcut to this collage but didn’t want to spend the time digging through boxes for it. I know where the block and the prints are but they’re in pretty deep so I’d have to displace a lot of stuff to get to them.
I’m far more likely to actually finish a piece if it’s part of a gag.
I kinda wanna see more Baseball Sephiroth even though I’m not particularly a sports fan. Must be the pinstripes and tight pants and Sephiroth doing normal activities while not being psychotic.