BloodMoon 1980

When I was coming up with Ysabel's visual concept one of the first things I thought of were all those Italian horror films I stupidly rented as a teenager because they had great box art. After sitting through two or three jungle cannibal movies and zombie flicks I realized that my hoarded lunch money would've been better spent on cigarettes (and this is back when renting a movie cost more than a pack of smokes) or comic books. But there were a few bright spots - exotic actresses like Laura Gemser and Me Me Lai - and, since they were both memorable to a 13 year-old me, they and the movies they were in lent some inspiration to Ysabel Arroyo.

In fact, I recently started organizing all the random one-off notes for Ysabel stories into a coherent timeline/outline and realized that the old exploitation movies of the 70's and 80's had more of an influence on her than I thought. Beyond her initial "captivity" story set in 1977 there are biker gangs, drug dealers, South American prisons and jungles, human trafficking, angry cannibalistic tribes... I just took those elements and mixed them up, turned them around, and set them in different directions. But, yeah, her adventures flow like a Grindhouse trailer reel. Now she just needs Danny Trejo in her corner...

Also: I know I've said that Ysabel avoids demihumans, inhumans, or whatever-you-want-to-call-them, but I found it interesting that in all those story ideas I've had over the years only one has her going up against a murderous non-human as the main focus, not just a side thing. All the other "monsters" she deals with are human.

UPDATE: This is a 36 hour, 9000+ iteration version with some rendering tricks played to improve the hat and Ysabel's hair. Also, I reduced the coppery tones between this version and the last because Ysabel is somewhat copper-toned herself and I thought it muted some of the detail in her skin and eyes. In case anyone is wondering, yes, the hat is pretty much a Clint Eastwood-style Western thing, but reshaded to resemble Indiana Jones' fedora. It's from SAV's Famous Hat Collection.