Yu Huang Shangdi - The Jade Emperor

In Chinese folk religion, the Jade Emperor is the first god, the highest above all, and one of the Three Pure Ones whose divinity knows no bounds. The "Heavenly Grandfather" ruled over the pantheon of gods, but he himself was not responsible for creation. In one story, however, he created humans out of clay, and the rain deformed his creation, leading to sickness and evil. He is featured heavily in the story "Journey to the West."

There were several things I wanted to represent with this. First of all, the egg-shaped casing around him is a reference to the Chinese myth that everything was born from a cosmic egg, which gave birth to Pangu, the creator. Also, I thought it would look cool if he had crescents floating around his body. The huge head atop his neck is supposed to be three "heads" at once. First, it was supposed to be in the shape of a Chinese dragon's head, with large eyes and long whiskers. The "whiskers" are the long mustache of the second face, which is just a pattern on the flat head. Third, the face is flattened and squared off, with strands dangling from it. This is supposed to look like a traditional emperor's crown atop the stack of tall heads along his neck. I don't know. I feel like none of this came across very well, and trying to explain it just makes it more awkward. The crown idea was another thing I wanted to show - I wanted the idea to be that all Chinese dress and art sprang from the Jade Emperor. Hence the robe-like extensions of his body, the dragon-like neck and head, and the sail-like fins along his arms.

I'm actually really ok with the technical execution of this, but the problem is that it's not very creative. This is just ripping off a whole bunch of different things, particularly my own past drawings and the huge dragon god things from Zelda: Skyward Sword. I feel like I need to do something else with it. What do you guys think?