In my opinion, the man behind the mask is very sad.

This is for 's contest exploring the idea of Master Chief: the Man Behind the Mask.

I think he's got more than one mask. There's the physical mask that is keeping us from seeing his face, and there is the stony soldier mask that gets him through the day. In essence, poor John is alone. And I can imagine how lonely it is to suddenly lose all your friends and family in one fell swoop like he did. In "The Flood" he remarked to himself about how save Cortana, after Reach there wasn't a soul left alive who knew his name was John.

And he was looking at his own reflection a second ago, but his eye has wandered now. Every SPARTAN had armor like his... I wonder how many faces he is actually looking at in this moment.

So its my MC design from my comic in a real moody portrait. I've been meaning to make something like this for a long time, and I still owe Kitty a gift pic from before, but I thought I'd channel my many motivations into one well-lighted portrait.

The background came out much better than my last serious CG. As always, download for really close up version