[Rokudai] - Maya Chiao Concepts

This is actually really great consept of what Mai would look like if she was born in modern day world. While you are  now turning this whole thing into an original fiction story, I actually think that most of the name changes you made were nessesary, since some characters have very unusual or completely made up names that no real life parent would give to their child unless they were fans of ATLA. While Mai actually has plausible name for modern day setting I actually feel that Maya suits the modern version better.

I like the way you did her hair, with the red streaks in the bangs and that you gave her long hair, since canon Mai obviously cares a lot about her looks with the complex hairstyle and the simple but elegant and practical clothes. I can also imagine Mai actually having piercings if they actually suited canon and she would probably wear such small and relatively simple hoops and plain normal earrings, rather than huge dangly earrings that get caught in everything. Mai is pretty gothic in canon, so I don't really see any way her modern counterpart wouldn't be a goth.

I like her chocker, since it's pretty fancy looking, but could be worn everyday. It also suits the style you gave her really well. The bird skull necklace is also really great looking and I love all those rings she has they really complete the goth look. I also love that she uses a pencil as a chopstick to hold her hair in place.

The shirt and top combination she wears looks really great and the undershirts sleeves being so glove like make it look really gothic, and I totally love how you didn't go the cliche route and give her lots of fisnet to wear, since all goths can't like that and it's so often used as a shorthand for a gothic character that I'm kind of sick of it by now.

I love the grey shirt with print on it, the text and the bird look really gothic and it suits her style. I also love her striped pants, the colors and stripes just look so gothic and I actually think that just about any store selling gothic clothes sells pants similar to that. Which is pretty realistic, since often it feels like characters wear clothes that you couldn't ever find in a store, so the normalness makes the clothes and characters seem more plausible.

I also like that Mai/Maya doesn't wear the heavy gothic makeup where most of her face is hidden under the makeup. Which is also pretty realistic, since Mai seemed to hate the Kyoshi warrior makeup in canon, but Ty Lees comment made it obvious that she still usually wears makeup, so eyeshadow and mascara plus some neutral makeup makes total sense for Mai as a character.

You also captured her personality really well and while I actually don't know much of anything about your story I can totally imagine Maya as the quiet but nice girl who has a few friends she's close to, which is pretty much her canon personality. I also love that you didn't try to make her have those hairbuns, since they tend to look really childish in real life and would actually suit better lolita style, which I can't ever imagine any version of Mai willingly wearing. I also like that you didn't give Maya a bobcut, which is also pretty common for modern au Mai, since it just doesn't match a character that actually wears really elaborate hairstyle as her everyday look.

I can't actually find anything negative about Mayas design, she looks completely plausible as a modern day young woman and resembles Mai enough that you can still tell that was your source of inspiration.