I was inspired by magical girl transformation sequences, where they get to be naked and floating...like a planet

Princess mercury always has to protect her dumb little brother & his dumb space cat (she loves them anyway)

My plan for the challenge is to use the colours/motifs and transformation/attack sequence poses from the respective planets' Sailor Scouts. I get hung up most on anatomy in my art, so using a dynamic reference pose will take away that anxiety and give a nod to the senshi themselves!

The two western Zodiac signs under Mercury as featured as constellations in the background and she gets a powerful royal sleeveless plugsuit because in my head Ami Mizuno and Rei Ayanami use the same shade to dye their hair in space. ♥

Tumblr post with process gif! ~

This is definitely the largest piece of pixel art I've done. My canvas size was 32x64, although the final product was a bit smaller. I'm used to working with 8x16 where I have to take advantage of everything that I've got to work with, so I felt a little strange not using everything here.

For her design, I was inspired by the Roman god of the same name, so I wanted to give her the (not so) tiny wings on her head and feet. I also wanted to reflect the element mercury with her bright, shiny hair and dress.

Actual size: 32x56
Palette: Atari 2600

Sorry this is late! (I've been away this past week so I had to put this together super quickly today)

My Mercury princess is inspired by the surface of the planet

I'm quite late for the party, but here's my take on Mercury! :)

Mercury is a small yet fierce firecracker, who dashes through the space, leaving behind a shiny sodium trail wherever she goes (hence the long "tail").

I have multiple submissions for this one because I wasn't happy with the original Venus and then decided to redraw her.

When I first started drawing this week, I desperately wanted Venus to be sort of "bubble gum pop" and I wanted to play with drawing curly hair. What I didn't keep in mind was how important it is to me that the characters I create in this streak look good together as a set. Mercury was sort of tarot card inspired so to keep that going, I've scrapped original Venus (still posted here) and redrawn her.

This was me channeling an oil pastel drawing I once made of Jean Grey/Phoenix, so this is tarot + X-Men inspired.

Actual size: 32x54
Palette: Atari 2600

Took inspiration from the goddess of the same name, representing womanliness and beauty (as well as love) so decided to do this princess having some me-time. I also kinda drew from the venus adverts for womens razors ok

So close yet so late! Very Sailor Venus + goddess Aphrodite vibes in this one, giving the whole planet her Love & Beauty Shock! ♥

I spent a lot of time on this one but never really got her into a place where I was inspired by her. I was trying to channel the swirling patterns on the planet, the colors from photos, and the idea of Jupiter being the god of the sky and thunder.

I like the lightning, the lighting around her body, the color, and the swirls, but there was just something about this that felt sort of bland to me. She doesn't feel unique or special. If I had more time, I would have redrawn her from scratch.

Actual size: 32x64
Palette: Atari 2600

Definitely feeling good about this one! I picked a dynamic pose with the intention of putting rings around her, and everything just sort of flowed from there. When I started the series I had planned on putting stars in the background, adding one each time, but after 4, this sort of became too much. For this one, I've given her a background of moons, since Saturn has a whopping 62 of them!

Actual size: 32x64
Palette: Atari 2600

• I started with the hopes to self teach myself how to draw digitally. I wasn't getting the outcome that I was hoping for but what I do have is the rough sketch. I promised myself I'd turn something in regardless of how discouraged I'd feel. I love astrology, myths, and folklores so when this came up I saw it as an opportunity to flex some cobwebbed creative parts of my brain. I'm used to Greco-roman myths of Venus and wanted to see what other cultures had to say about these planets and gods. Inanna is a Mesopotamian version of Venus. She rules love, wisdom, fertility, lust, and war. She is depicted as a beautiful woman with a lion under each foot representing the morning star and the evening star. I used the two lions in the sketch as transformational light as Inanna becomes her superhero alter-ego. I hope to work on it some more in the near future.

(Oops, I've been forgetting to post these here as I finish!)

In this one I wanted to focus on trying to transition her brown feet to a green torso, making her body look like a plant stalk, while giving her bright, green hair as her "leaves"

So far, this is my absolute favorite one of the series. My favorite part is her dangling arm and how you can actually distinguish it from the rest of her green body and green hair

Actual size: 32x64
Palette: Atari 2600

(Oops, I've been forgetting to post these here as I finish!)

Things I'm channeling here:

Mars the God of War: Two daggers, battle stance, and a horned helmet
Mars the planet: Red color palette, sandy desert hair, floating rocks forming the body

I'm really proud of this one, although the details of the piece get a bit muddled with some of the color and shading choices. The drawing actually looks best against a white background, but for consistency with the rest of the series, she's on a black background here.

Actual size: 32x64
Palette: Atari 2600

I was at a loss at first not having a Sailor Scout to base my concept off of when the Neopets Earth Faerie came to mind. I began looking up Tinkerbell reference images, knowing I didn't want just a cute woodland fae to exemplify Earth. I quickly discovered Tink's sister Periwinkle and how adorable they are together. With a little help from watching too much Steven Universe, I had my Earth idea!

The two faerie lovers of Land and Sea! Together they fuse to form Mother Earth, but separately they are two darling queer pixie babes that help flowers and plants grow and keep the ocean floor mysterious. ♥

The electric fighter princess ⚡! Sailor Jupiter has always been my favourite scout next to Sailor Moon. As a kid I had a thing for tough girls in green (Buttercup)! I wanted Sailor Jupiter to be a sexy fighter, but not insofar as a Street Fighter female character kind of sexy. She's powerful, tall, loves being a woman and kicking butt, but would rather cloak her royalty than let anyone treat her differently for being a princess. Electrifying :)

Better late than never! Really tried to push myself with this one — used an actual person for pose reference and tried again to get detailed and thoughtful with my character design. Had a lot of fun referencing Fire Emblem armor (heheh, fire) and Rei's Hino's gorgeous eyes and attacks! Hopefully I can get 2x caught up this week with Jupiter and Saturn. I got a liiiittle ahead of myself putting Saturn in the background here, but we can pretend Jupiter has big big rings!~