Maria Ochoa

Maestro

After drawing Skaana I decided to make a sheet for Maestro. I didn't write any notes on his page because I forgot. But some of the basics are he's a bard who lives in the Rito village thousands of years ago, he met Skaana when he was injured, and they fell in love during that time he was recovering. All the stories about him, Skaana and Fermata were forgotten or misconstrued. The zorca of the present day are completely unaware that any of them existed.

He is what you'd call Cironus' ult...

Rito wing practice

After drawing the hand holding piece I wanted to try more hand practice but with rito wings. I saw some animation sheets for various bird characters (like Boris the goose from Balto) and wondered how difficult it would be. Maybe its because of the blocky shape of the wings and less detail needed (finger nails, knuckles, etc) I found it fun to do! Though if I did more stylized hands Im sure Id have an easier time as well 🤔

A small portrait of a family

This was marker practice and seeing how I could play with light on black surfaces! Featuring Sardon, Cironus, Kaska and little Kaso. This was inspired by a photo of Frosty traveling with their family, their white color standing out against all the black dorsals!

Skaana revised

I wanted to tackle her design since the previous drawings didn't vibe with me. And Im satisfied with the results! I want to do sheets of Maestro and Fermata to match this, also because I like drawing the three

also because Im stalling on writing my story about them in a coherent form >> <<

Meet the Artist!

My last prompt for werewolf's challenge unless I get more brain zoomies! The prompt was doing a self portrait and I wanted to do a meet the artist chart. I used to love doing these back ye old days of deviant art but now Im way more self conscious of showing myself online in any form, especially the older I get. Plus there's that whole comparison thing where other charts look way more interesting. After I was done with this I was like "oh man I should have added this or that!"

I doodled...

Dwick and Lydia

This was another piece for the prompt "amorous" from werewolfsister's march challenge! I was looking at various poses and the biggest (haha) challenge is literally fitting Dwick into it without his gut shoving Lydia out of the image XD

I want to color this one but I dont want to ruin the original sketch so Im gonna eventually print out a copy and color that instead

More lewd art (it's not)

My friend Shan suggested drawing hand holding because Ive been in a shippy mood but I didn't want to draw kissing. I used references from Kibbitzer and screenshots from movies and anime. I struggled with a couple but overall I'm extremely happy how these turned out!

Human!Sardon doodles

Sardon came shortly after I did the Yona outfits. Credit to werewolfsister who gave him a human design its chef's kiss 💖 When I first designed a human Cironus I wanted to base my zorca on pacific islander cultures. I also need more brown skinned characters in my life!

Human!Yona outfit ideas

after my yona/cironus piece I've been messing with ideas on how to design clothing that is reminiscent of her zora self. I keep going back to vests and cravats and honestly I like it!

Tulin Practice

was switching things up by drawing canon characters from Tears of the Kingdom, featuring my favorite boy of all; Tulin! Again, this no bleed through sketchbook is wild. But its so fun to fill up a whole page with color! Not sure if I'll do this with every piece but been having fun putting down a little color chart in an empty space to show the colors I used. Definitely helps me remember which markers to choose if I wanna draw certain subjects again 👍

Human AU - Cironus and Yona fluff

My marker quest continues! I started things with the top left picture and Ive been over the moon with how it came out. Also laugh because there was a joke that came out of my inability to read properly when someone on tumblr sent me an ask to draw Cironus as some dude, and I misread it as 2025-03-19 21:28:22 +0000 UTC View Post

Animal studies...and bread!

Like the title says! Was doing various studies so I could use my markers on this new paper and I gotta say this is really awesome. It's smooth and it feels so nice to color on. I want to keep coloring haha! I gotta learn patience because ink needs some time to dry and as you can see on one page I made a small mess oops!

The last two pictures are sketches from my previous sketchbook and I wanted to add them here because I like how they came out. For fun, my partner and I decided to read ...

Another sketchbook done!

I finished my current sketchbook (left) and ready to start the next (right) Im particularly excited for this one because it's the ohuhu bleed proof marker sketchbook so I want to push myself to do more colored pieces! I can color on both sides of the paper MAXIMUM PAPER USAGE!

Looking forward to sharing this sketchbook journey with you all! :D

Stickers in no particular order (stickers for the left sketchbook can be 2025-03-17 21:20:58 +0000 UTC View Post

Comic - Discussing heartbreak

Another March Madness prompt: Redraw a scene from a movie/play featuring your OCs! So here is Cironus and Yona with dialog from a scene of one of my fav movies called The Holiday.

Some of the dialog didn't fit into the LoZ universe so changed a few things around. Because of this I ended up making my own reason why you don't see Yona at all in Zora's Domain before TotK. Cironus is talking about one of his many doomed relationships (Whaleen came to mind when working on this) and while the...

🎵Whaleen, Whaleen, Whaleen WHALEEEEEEN 🎵

Another prompt! "Make an OC" though I feel this is kind of cheating. This was a character I wrote notes about but never designed. Well HERE SHE IS!

Whaleen started as a joke. I wrote up ideas about Cironus' doomed love life and his string of exes and that included a large humpback whale zora. She was a singer so the two got along but then they had differences in what they wanted to do with their music so they eventually split. They're a reverse rivals to lovers! She may still have a thi...

Fat Fin & Lurona - Snuggles not struggles

Another prompt from Werewolfsister's March Madness list: Amorous!

I wanted to do something intimate but I have a hard time drawing kissing scenes so I decided to try other gestures that ended up making me turn red as I drew them haha! These poses were taken from Kibbitzer's gallery of poses, check them out!

Zorca Lore - Children

More orca facts ahoy! Orca males aren't present in the lives of their children but they're excellent babysitters for their siblings and cousins. This extra help ensures that babies make it to adulthood and that his mom, sisters and aunts are healthy to have more kids in the future. Fellows like Sardon and Castov (belonging to Werewolfsister!) are very good at this job

I also learned that baby orca are born with little mustaches on their faces when born. They lose them fairly quickly but...

Genre Study: THE THING

Another prompt from Werewolfsister's March Madness challenge: Pick a genre you're not used to writing/drawing for. I picked horror and chose The Thing to work on

This was super creepy and I had to take breaks to look away haha but all in all, Im glad with how it turned out. Basically just winged it on certain parts of the body since it is an amalgamation of flesh YUCK

Clan Oshus and Clan Jabun

Here we have the last two clans of the zorca! It was mentioned in a previous post that all of the zorca clans are based on actual orca types.

There is a sub species? of orca called B-types who live in arctic waters and they're brown/yellow with that nifty looking stripe along their backs! And Jabun are based on another group called D-type orca! According to researchers they are extremely isolated which makes it difficult to gather information on them but they have found out they are on...

Bubbly space pirates, Lords of licorice, koopa kids and perler pokemon OH MY

What a mish mash! All of these (minus Morton Jr.) are part of Werewolfsister's march madness challenge!

First up is Gelato, who belongs to the lovely and talented Smacky! This is based on a personality switch prompt, so I drew Gelato in a girly pose that I'd normally draw my OC, Nomi in

Second is a prompt "Focus a work on a food" and werewolf was doing redesigns of Candyland characters based on...

*to hungry eyes* I've got krogan eeeeyes...

🎵 I feel the magic between you and I 🎵

Wanted to do more eye practice after the zorca eye studies, this time with a couple of my krogan characters. It's been a while since I drew krogan related things and its a mixed bag for me because it's tied to both pleasant and unpleasant memories! So when I do draw them it feels like the planets aligned just so :D

This was fun to do (I say that a lot dont I?) like, with krogan it was less about the eyes themselves and more about part o...

Coming soon to a theater near you!

My friend werewolfsister started a March Madness drawing challenge and shared the prompts. One of the first that caught my eye was to draw a fake movie poster/write a fake movie review. So Dwickery and I decided to collab on this. I draw the poster, he's gonna write the review.

This is obviously based on the poster of E.T. which had me cackling the entire time drawing this. I look forward to the movie review C:<

EDIT: Dwickery posted 2025-03-07 06:21:21 +0000 UTC View Post

Mini ref sheets

This began with Geist who I was using as a test for some new acrylic markers I bought. After that, talk about making character sheets came up with my friend Smacky, so Agra and Nomi followed suit. These were done very quick but I enjoyed drawing them so I hope to do some more elaborate pages in the future!

Clan Marin

Up next is Clan Marin! Marin and Levias are the two largest zorca types out of all the four. No one knows why, but they are very popular with Clan Oshus and Jabun during courtship but maybe its because they want their children to be big and strong! 💪

Cironus and his family come from this clan. The other zorca are nomadic but Marin is the one whose migration route travels through Hyrule's waters.

Eyes are the window of the soul or something like that

I saw an artist doing eye studies and I wanted to try using my characters to see if I could make them look distinct from one another! Botw/TotK canon, the zora have slit eyes. I don't draw too many close ups of my zorca to go into detail but after seeing images of real orca eyes I still kinda wanna experiment >> <<

Zorca Clans: Levias

Ive been working on making clan names for the four zorca types, and thanks to the help of friends I am naming them after various whale/fish deities from the Zelda franchise!

Clan Levias (Skyward Sword)
Clan Marin (Link's Awakening) okay Marin wasn't a fish BUT she sang the Ballad of the Wind Fish so you can guess who comes from this clan :D
Clan Oshus (Phantom Hourglass)
Clan Jabun (Wind Waker)

I'll upload the other clans once I get their pages done 👍

Zorca: Ocean levels

Ive been wanting to draw stuff up for my zorca that feels like a field guide. I have so many ideas but the motivation to draw doesn't come as eagerly, but little at a time is still good!

Here we have the various depths of the ocean and how far the zorca can dive in order to hunt for food. The deepest record for an orca dive was slightly over 1000 meters which lands it right in the Midnight Zone where sunlight can't reach!

Orca studies

Im always tweaking things from my character stories and I both love and fret about it at the same time. I love the growth, love learning new techniques or ways to draw anatomy, etc. But I get hung up on having to "wait" to share stories until I get things "just right"

Im working on not letting that prevent me from posting, but in the meantime have this page Im really happy with. I was making notes on orca so I can remember details for my own zorca. I saw an image of an orca and wanted t...

Shippy stuff and character studies

I saw a ship prompt online and wanted to draw out one of the questions for myself and used Rufus and Diana as the subject. It was great drawing them again! My friend talking about their ff7 playthough got me in the mood to doodle them so here are these warm ups of Diana as well. The polygon models are fun to do once you get the hang of it!

Drawing Rufus is still difficult. For me it's the eyes! If I can get the eyes right then everything else is smooth sailing haha

Polygon pals

Last year I did an edit of a in-game polygon model of what Diana would look like in the OG FF7. Lately, a friend has been sharing their playthrough of Rebirth so I made them a polygon edit of their character, Vio

These are spliced together using other models but I do like how both came out. And glad I managed to save my Diana one from the big laptop purge of last year 😭