B and W Vs. Color

This is an entry to ’s contest: B/W vs. Color. Since “vs.” is in the title of the contest, that sounds like a fight to me, so I wanted my entry to reflect that. So I decided to have the characters fighting. And for some reason, dueling mermaids came to mind. Guess I’m a little predictable. Besides, Tajii-chan loves my mermaids, as do many of my watchers!

The color mermaid is based off my Opal mermaid from my Birthstone Mermaid series, but she was given a few different features. First off, the color mermaid does not have the fins on the front and back of her tail, and her hair is rainbow colored rather than blonde. I was tempted to model her after Tajii-Chan herself, but by doing so, she’d look too much like Opal, so I gave her rainbow hair, which was inspired by 's rainbow fairy. I considered leaving the end of her tail white like I did with Opal, but I colored it instead, making it much paler than her tail. Her waist fin is still white. Her seashell top is actually made from the Rainbow Shell from the Chrono series. Her weapon is in fact made from these same shells. After all, in the Chrono series, weapons and armor made from Rainbow Shells (and various shiny materials) is the strongest you can find (given few exceptions). The color mermaid would be perfectly camouflaged in Rainbow Road.

The black and white mermaid is based on those old black and white television shows, hence the gray skin. Her sword is tilted at an angle away from the camera, hence it looks different in terms of shape compared to the other one. She slightly resembles Onyx, except she has longer hair and gray skin. I also changed her cuffs and seashell bikini white. I did not want to give her snow white skin, since no one in the old TV shows is that pale. She also has gray eyes.

And look, there's even a background! I stacked three images on top of each other, fitting an underwater fighting arena like you would find on Smash Bros. I guess I'm on my way to using stock photos like so many of you.

I have a lot to learn though, and I'm hoping in the future I could take some classes in photomanipulations.

The color mermaid has my vote because I love coloring my work, and things look better in color.

Thanks for the following stock.
"Arena:"
Sand:
Water: Google search result (don't know who took the picture, but it wasn't me).
Mermaids: (couldn't help myself)
Time spent on this: ~5 hours