This series started as a Mermay project for 2020, but very quickly became the character art for the Siren Squad, a D&D actualplay show on the Ladies of DnD Twitch stream.
"The Ultra Marines are a fierce military force protecting the Cerulean Sea and surrounding areas. Of the Marines the most elite forces are the Siren Squad - a group of highly trained ladies who take on the most dangerous missions. The Sirens are a group of rainbow mermaids who take on more fun, G-rated adventures in a PowerPuff Girls and Totally Spies style."
Logo and Titlecard for the show, created in illustrator
My goal for this series is to push the limits on a very simple style and limited color palette. As much as I could, I wanted each mermaid to have a unique personality, body type, and ethnicity.
While each mermaid is very different from a character stand-point, the structure is all exactly the same. Each illustration only uses a very narrow range of analogous colors from my master palette, with no filters or layer modes. Every color is placed next to each other to give the appearance of shading and highlight, which, with some colors, was complicated. I only used 3 brushes for this series, further limiting the illustrations but focusing the textures. And of course, they all have corrosponding color names.
Color Palette for both series
Along with the Sirens, I also created a series of 20 "Ocean Familiars" for them to be used on stream. The Audience can cash in channel points to make a familiar join the session, and by making 20 of them we can roll a d20 to randomly decide on which familiar joins.
The familiars are created with the same color palette, brushes, and restrictions as the Sirens are. My favorite part of this particular series is how many people seem to resonate with one critter or another, and end up with a "tag yourself" situation. Personally, I usually feel the most like Dexter.
