This is more of a design experiment… color sketch-thingy than a serious painting, hence the simplified shading and such.
The artist version of “playing dress-up with dolls” is… sticking characters in alternate costumes. In this case, I took Deeum and put her in what amounts to a recolor (and slight tweak) of the armor that Flynn Scifo wears in Tales of Vesperia and, on the right, in the Blue/Zora Tunic (Ocarina of Time color scheme).
The former, while much fancier, isn’t meant to replace the Zora Tunic as Deeum’s ultimate armor (because Deeum cosplaying as Link is just too damn funny), but I guess I could pass it off as upgraded Star Dragon Council-issued gear because she gets promoted a few times. I tweaked the original armor design, primarily with a recolor to put it in line with Deeum’s usual color scheme (dark muted blues and black), replaced the bodhi blastia crystal on the chest with a gold star, and pretty much winged the sword design. Now that I think about it, that sword ended up resembling the Key of Lorelai from Tales of the Abyss. Hah!
The Zora Tunic is because the original player is a Zelda fan and it seemed more appropriate to use the blue tunic. If I had used the red one, it would use the red/light purple color scheme from A Link to the Past.
I have this (not so) awful habit of swiping existing costumes and recoloring/altering them to my liking. Obviously designing from scratch is better, but in these cases it’s more like I think it’s a fun experiment in seeing what would happen if I had X wear Y’s clothes.