>>11360660
It's actually not too bad, instead of drawing every scale you can imply scales by occluding some shade or putting light on where scales would be if they were drawn. ... Or use a texture brush.
The real timesink is that she's going to be the first multi-tile character (originally it was going to be the wolf) which means a lot of custom code.

I still think simpler-but-animated sprites are better but I've sunk myself too deep into this hole now.