Updated Wave Breaker (Featuring Shadow's Hatchets)
In my timed drawing of Aqua from the Inkscape era, I mention that it was the first time I've drawn Aqua's sword, The Wave Breaker. I went on to mention that I redesigned the sword in December, and I found the sketch for her redesigned sword. I finished the redesign on the same day that I finished designing Shadow's hatchets, so I decided to feature both of them here.
By December 2019, I was using Clip Studio Paint on my second laptop. I had two or three study halls a week due to my schedule at the time, so when I wasn't doing homework, studying, or reading for a class, I was sketching on my laptop and finding my niche with Clip Studio. The program had a learning curve, especially with how bare-bones official tutorials were and how scarce third-party tutorials were, so was learning on my own through trial-and-error. It was frustrating when I struggled to get things right, but after enough practice and research, I found a rhythm that worked for me.
I always intended for Shadow to wield hatchets, but all I had to go off of were rough sketches in the notebooks and sketchbooks I carried around. This was my first time drawing them digitally AND in color, so I wanted them to look their best. I wanted her hatchets to appear as if they were salvaged and restored; giving them a new coat of paint, adding metal coils by the grips, and topping them off with gemstones to make them look good as new. Both hatchets look identical, so I only had to draw one of them in order for the idea to stick. Her hatchets debuted with her official color palette in March of 2020.
The Wave Breaker is different from Shadow's hatchets because I wanted the sword to be custom-made for Aqua. She received it as a gift from someone close to her, and it's tailored specifically to her fighting style. The design for it is based on Rose's sword from Steven Universe, with it having a similar hilt but a different blade shape and a pattern unique to her. Unlike Shadow's hatchets, it took until next September for the redesigned Wave Breaker to debut, as I didn't know how to make Aqua look intimidating with it or draw her using it mid-fight at the time. Both weapons received touch-ups the next time they were drawn and may need additional touch-ups when drawn in the future, but I'm happy with how they look and I hope that these weapon designs will stick for the modern incarnations of the characters they were made for.