Initial sketch: Pacer in diary, inked with a Shichihata 0.1
Colouring: Photoshop 6.0. Roughly 35 layers
Tweaking: Photoshop 6.0. Went through about five different versions and random saves.
Pet-peeves: His nose/mouth/chin pissed me off eternally until I finally got it looking alright. Position of hand/blade is a bit iffy too, but by that stage I was more interested in finally finishing it.
Fav part: The Sharingan eye.. and blood~ xD

[edit] subtle tweaking on part of Cazandra's comment. 's brobably not much better though. I'll have to work on it some more tomorrow.

[edit 2] Tried to fix his nose thanks to Telophase's comments. Hopefully he looks better now~

[edit 3] Holy shibby fantabulousness, it won! Booya~ I got to shake Marc Silvestri's hand . Teh cool.

Hell, I said I'd upload this after the Supanova con to keep it as a surprise, but I'm an impatient bugger. And the con is a good three weeks away, and... Arggggg~! This took a long time. I started it at around 8pm on Wednesday, stayed up 'till 2am colouring it. Worked on it for pretty much the whole of Thursday, and have spent intermittent parts of the weekend tweaking it. And it's finally finished! (hopefully) Rarrr~! After, what, 20+ hours of continual work. The background was a photo I ended up completely re-painting because it was so small and the quality was craptastic. The bamboo silhouettes are a bunch of guassian blurs, really. It's been sized down quite a bit from the original as well, which was about 2500x3250. I even drew his eyelashes

Anyway. This is the picture I plan to do a luverly A3 print of after the Easter public holidays and send in for the Supanova fanart competition. It's Anbu!Sasuke in all his blood-spattered glory. Because, you know, drawing those masks is a pain in the ass. Not really, but I only thought of that detail afterwards. I was going to do some other pictures, but to be honest I don't have the time to slave over more than one for 20+ hours. And unlike Animania, I don't think I can sell prints. Despite the agonising and sleep-depriving hours I spent on this, I really do like it very much. It isn't perfect, and the proportions of his face irk me ever so slightly. But... but it's finally finished! *_* And it doesn't look half-assed! And.. I might actually win something. Maybe. Although now I'm confused as to whether I should enter it in the Anime/Manga section, or teh Comic/Other. It's like manga realism, or something. Ugh... anyway.

As for why it's Anbu!Sasuke. I really don't know. I was doodling him in my diary and had the idea for drawing him from the back with his curse-seal showing (He finally appeared in the manga with his level 2 Curse Seal!! But, damn it, he buggered off without letting us see what he looked like >.> ...), but I couldn't draw him with a shirt on to have it show properly (not that I would complain overtly at that prospect). But then it looked kind of absurd because it was kind of out-of-character, and then I got the Anbu idea. Sasuke would have pretty sloppy team-work though, so I can't imagine him being a particularly good Anbu member. But yeah... Anbu is like ninja romanticism. It just looks really cool.

You can tell it's the easter chocolate and sleep-deprivation talking when I rant on for three paragraphs and, despite my best efforts, have not spelt 'the' properly once.