Zuri's Nap (+bonus Pharaoh Zuri)

Zuri Haleman is an original character of mine created nearly ten years ago, designed as a bartender and owner of the club where Regina and Kanasta's band, Rhapsody, regularly performs. But she's since taken on more work, and is now Rhapsody's manager! Needless to say, she works hard, and needs all the rest she can get!!

Upon introducing her, I got a lot of people hype when I confirmed that she has massive size 13 feet. I knew I had to do something grand to show them off for the first time. Here we see her lying across an invisible couch, putting on quite a show with those soles of hers as she takes a nap in the band's dressing room. As I worked, I got the idea to make this into a sequence of images, which would have gone as follows:

• 1. Zuri, after a long night of bartending, takes to the couch in the dressing room and falls asleep instead of taking herself back home. As she falls into slumber, she begins to dream...
• 2. In her dreams, Zuri is an Egyptian queen, a beautiful Pharaoh who lives to be pampered. Her feet are elevated and stripped of their sandals, as her "loyal subjects" turn their feathers to her soles. She adores the sensation, and urges them to continue. More, and more...
• 3. But as the feathers do little more than bring out the queen's pampered greed, Zuri's dream shifts into a nightmare, and her subjects decide to dish out the tickling more... aggressively. Two twin servants (originally conceived as both purple-haired and blonde Regina Venus) bind and gag the Pharaoh, claiming her feet for themselves, using their fingers, feathers, and their own tongues to tickle their royal captive well beyond her limits.

This was unfortunately abandoned not long after I started on it. I was always fond of the scenario and the concept behind it, but as it was one of my earliest forays into Paint Tool SAI, my inexperience brought it to a halt. I've learned a lot since then, such as how to better blend my colors together when shading, to such a degree that SAI has become my digital medium of choice. But the original method of blending I attempted took far too long, and it was burning me out. So I started on the sketch for the second part of this series to keep the creative juices flowing. I wasn't satisfied with the way it was looking, so the entire series ended up being abandoned entirely.

But, admittedly, it's a concept I'd love to return to someday...