"We're only gonna get a brief window of opportunity to make this work, do you think you can hit him before he gets under cover?"

"At that distance? Sir, I could give him two .50 calibre eyebrow-piercings before you could say 'liquidated brain matter'"

~Murk and his dark sense of humour

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This is my occasional character Mercutio (Aka "Murk"). Murk is a Freedom Fighter Sharpshooter I created for *SteinWill's Guerilla storyline.

Based on the velociraptor, he's a cool-kid right to the heart, a popular if somewhat hot-headed party-animal. However, his friendly social personality hides a instinctual fighting spirit that only surfaces once he gets behind the scope of his high-powered 12.5mm anti-material rifle.

Standing quite a bit taller than most of his comrades, he has a heavy build and solid muscle structure, which although somewhat unbecoming of the small sneaky types often found in sniper units, allows him to comfortably fire the heaviest anti-vehicle sniper rifles in quick succession even from a standing position.


Anyhow, I decided I'd revamp his design just a little to straighten out a few things that I wasn't happy with. Firstly I wanted to change his colouration a little bit. Murk has a fairly limited ability to change the shade of his skin-colour to better fit his environment and I wanted to make it a bit more of a realistic hue.

Headgear was a bit of a problem, he used to have a helmet, but I changed it out to a hood sorta thing, since as a sniper, one of the most important things to camoflage is the outline of your head and shoulders. I had thought of trying to draw a ghillie suit, but really, those things are impossible, and not exactly the most likely choice for a partially funded private militia.

Background was also an absolute pain in the arse. I hate doing backgrounds, absolutely hate them. In the end I decided to go with and abstract one like I often o when I can't think of anything. I started on a shipping port background, but it wasn't really going anywhere and I figured it would over-clutter the picture.

This time around I decided I'd do some more work on muscle structure, since it's one of those things that while rather hard to get right, looks very effective when done properly. I'm quite happy with the result and I'm pretty keen to draw some more pictures where I can do lots of heavy muscles again in future.

Righty-o. Long description has gotten long again so I'll stop talking. Despite the slap-together background, I'm happy with this, hope y'all like it!

All comments and criticisms welcome. Unlike a street magician, I'm more than happy to give away my tricks to anyone who asks.