Dress Up Box

I wanted to play around a bit with the design of the main characters clothes, not scrapping the dress, just creating more. I decided to look back at women's dress fashion from the past seventy or so years because hopefully this will give me some inspiration for more costumes. This is going to be quite a long post, but it's just pictures so there won't be a lot of reading, enjoy!

These are my favourite looks from the images i found and luckily a lot of them should be fairly easy to work with and incorporate into the game, i especially like the giant aprons and flares. The only drawback with a few of the dresses is that they are quite tight, and in a game with constant running and action it would be hard to manoeuvre in such a constricting dress, however there should be enough other dresses to choose from and i should be able to avoid this problem.

The Ex

The final character i am reviving for this assignment is a character i drew whilst listening to music one afternoon when i should have been doing homework a couple of years ago. It was an extravagant design and so normally wouldn't fit into a story too easily but i think i have finally found a use for him as the protagonist's ex.

 

Original Design

The design obviously needed to be tweaked a bit as the design was a little over the top and so i got rid of the leaves, blossoms and gender symbols. The character is supposed to be a narcissist who has turned himself into a god like creature with immense power. He also transformed himself into what he thought a god should look like, and is now unrecognisable.

However, i needed more than one design in case i liked the others more and so i experimented a bit, but in the end i still liked the original design more as it looked more godly and arrogant. Here are the few designs i did:

The story behind this character is pretty interesting as it deals with the character trait and mental illness of narcissism.  This guy is a textbook narcissist, caring only for himself, faining interest in relationships, seeing women as trophies, manipulating people who care for him and believing that he is more important than others. He grew to be this way after him and his sisters were neglected by their mother, who was also a narcissist. His father left when he was only a child as he couldn't cope with James' mother. Whereas his sisters banded together and managed to rely on each other, James became more withdrawn and could only rely on himself, believing he was the only one who could love himself.

In his teens he become more extroverted as he received a lot of attention from girls and his confidence grew further. This only added to his arrogance though and he fell deeper into his illness. He got a job as a scientist and attempted to discover the key to immortality and immense power. During this time he dated a series of women, most notably a sultry looking woman, Stella who he would later enlist to help him destroy the world and also the protagonist of the story, Serenity, both of whom fell madly in love with him.After successfully discovering the recipe for the god like powers he sought so much he dumped Serenity and set out to destroy the current world in favour of a new one created in his own image.

Although seemingly happy and content with himself, he suffers from depression like a lot of narcissists. A part of him does want to love these women back and he craves a real, meaningful relationship but his failed attempts only send him deeper into depression and his narcissistic state.

James is proving to be one of the most complex but interesting characters in the story so far, although he deserves all the hate you can throw at him for the things he has done to his friends and girlfriends, he is suffering inside with a condition he doesn't realise he has and a depression that he cannot conquer. It will be interesting to see how this character develops as the assignment goes on.

Beauty is a Curse - The Story of Narcissus

The antagonist in my story, James, is obviously arrogant and self centred as he dumped his girlfriend in an effort to become a god after discovering the recipe for immense power. The level of arrogance and self love from this guy are off the scale and as it turns out, this sort of condition has a name - narcissism.

Wikipedia's definition of Narcissism is quite insightful as it shows the different types of narcissism - the healthy kind, the unlikable character trait and the mental illness. The mental illness is probably the most interesting as the person with the illness cannot help themselves as a lot of the time they don't realise they are a narcissist. They don't think there is anything to cure sometimes as their thought process is so self centred that they believe they are perfect.

Apparently depression is also common in narcissists, those who do know there is something different about them can sometimes desperately want meaningful friendships and relationships but are constantly frustrated at their failed attempts as they just cannot love someone else. There is no cure for narcissism, but mood modifying medication and therapy can help to some extent although these will never fully cure the person.

People can become narcissistic in two ways, both of which occur through childhood and involve the parents. Either the child is over praised, spoilt and undisciplined or the child is starved of attention or neglected and so they think they can only rely on themselves. No one is born a narcissist.

The word narcissism comes from a Greek story about young man named Narcissus. Narcissus is beautiful, loved and admired by those around him and himself. The goddess of divine retribution, Nemesis, decided that Narcissus was living too selfishly and arrogantly and decided to teach him a lesson. She lured the young hunter to a pool of reflective water, as soon as he gazed at his own reflection he couldn't took his eyes off of it. He literally fell in love with his own beauty and when he attempted to reach for the reflection, he slipped into the pool and drowned. This act of vengeance was to show others that being this arrogant is a danger and a sin.

Nemesis and Narcissus

It was also believed that after the boy drowned, a flower soon blossomed beside the pool, this was named the Narcissus flower, commonly referred to today as a daffodil. This flower is also an example of how beauty comes with consequences- although daffodils are very pretty, they are also poisonous. Long exposure to daffodils can cause skin sores and consumption of the bulb or flower can lead to extreme vomiting and stomach problems. It would seem that beauty came at a price for both Narcissus and the Narcissus Flower. The lesson the Greeks were trying to teach people is that it is alright to be very beautiful but to let your beauty consume you to such an extent that you are obsessed with yourself is the wrong way to live.

The Narcissus Flower - AKA The Daffodil

The Botanist

The Botanist would be another boss in the game, relying on her control over plants to thwart you. Your ex's leverage over her is that in his new world she would be able to grow all the plants she wanted, and the plants she currently owns would be spared throughout the destruction of the current world. As an extra incentive to join him, he granted her the ability to absorb nourishment from her plants, which resulted in her youth being given back to her. I really like this character, especially how protective she is over her plants, having never had a family of her own you can see why she would be this way - they are the only thing alive that needs her, they are like her babies. I also think she looks pretty cool in a creepy yet endearing way. Here is how i took the original design to her current design...

The first two designs were originally two completely separate characters, but while the first character had an interesting story but a poor design, the second character had a better design with hardly any story and after realising their looks were too similar to use both i combined the two. The original story was a necromancer who was rejected by society and whose only friends were her plants who she learnt to control and was very protective over.

Design wise the character design hasn't changed much at all, i think it was one of the only designs that was already strong enough to compete with my current character sketches. This might be why this is one of my favourite characters from this assignment so far.

The Scientists

This character was a favourite of mine for a long while but due to his odd design he was very hard to incorporate into any sort of brief or story - until now. The new story behind these characters sees them as scientists working on some sort of recipe for becoming as powerful as a God along with the main antagonist of the story. After successfully discovering this recipe, they are betrayed by their colleague who follows the recipe and strikes up a plan to re-create the world in his own image with his new found powers.

In life the two scientists were polar opposites, one being too brash, the other too cautious but both being scientific geniuses. This is why their old colleague approached them again and persuaded them to protect him and help destroy the current world with the promise that in the new world there would be plenty of new things to experiment with. After they accepted they were both combined into one being with two heads in the hope that their genius would be combined, however this backfired and their negative aspects were exaggerated instead. Here is the design process:

This orignal design was good in my opinion but it was way too simple and not particularly threatening looking. The neck in particular bothers me as it doesn't look strong enough to support the weight of the two heads and has a very basic design.

 The designs above were some of my favourites, mainly the far right design and the centre left one. I liked them both for different reasons, the one in the labcoat looks more like a scientist and has that sort of weedy nerdy look to it. It would pack a powerful punch though with the oversized gloves and weaponry would be hidden inside the labcoat, read to attack through the gap in the coat. However, after showing these two designs to my tutors and friends, they all prefered the far right one, which is fine with me! The labcoat is still there yet it has become unbuttoned and flails wildly as the clumsy duo attempt to attack you. After experimenting on each other, they have turned themselves into a sort of living experiment with gears and cogs, guns, a rotating waist and powerful suckerpunch gloves on chains.

The Abandoned - Main Character

With my final idea finally decided it is time to start editing my old characters and making them fit the into the story. The main character in my idea is, for me, a bit of an odd choice as originally I had this character as a boss.

In my head she was a girl desperate for attention from the man she was in love with, so much so that she let him experiment on her which transformed her into a doll-like cold hearted mutation. Angry at herself for loving this guy, angry at him for doing this to her and angry at anyone who disturbed her.

However, i think this character can be used more effectively if she is the main character instead. This gives a longer amount of time to develop a story about her and her ex and how hell bent she is on getting revenge on him. After tweaking the story a bit to him leaving her over power, she now has a good motive to be angry at him- especially when she has been mutated by the corruption her ex has exposed the world to.

The Original Design

This rag doll look was quickly abandoned and instead, the china doll look was incorporated, however, her long slender arms were still included in the below design. Even though some people like this design more than the one below, i don't think the character would have worked as well in a game. Rag dolls just aren't threatening enough whereas there is something creepy about china dolls, and we like creepy.

Another Old Design that I will work from

 The second design of the character was much better in my opinion, the sort of character i had imagined in my head when drawing her. She looks more human, more capable and would be easier to include in a game. Here are a few development sketches.

The New Design

Serenity's story is will be quite relatable for a lot of people, she grew up in a fairly typical home with two parents who were in love and a younger brother. Her parents both died when she was a young adult and she had to help support herself and her brother for a few years. Her luck with relationships is what i think is most relatable, she puts all her heart into a relationship, when she loves someone, she really loves them. She has had her heart broken too many times, trusting her partners too easily and because of the these rejections and the death of her parents, she craves love and can come across as fairly needy sometimes. Her last break up however has pushed her over the edge and she has sworn revenge on her ex for everything he and her previous boyfriends have done to her.

The new design of this character isn't really very different to the old design, just a few little tweaks and replacing an arm for a crude sword-like limb. I like the new design more but i may still change a few things around, but for now, this is the main character.

A Dish Best Served Cold

I have come up with an idea for this assignment already, it is my first idea but people seem to really like it so I'm really happy with it, after doing assignment where you can't show your personality it is finally great to be able to go wild and show people what is really going on in your head and to then hear people like it it just awesome.

As this idea is still in development i don't have a fully detailed idea to give you, but it will focus on revenge. For inspiration and insight into the kind of revenge women in particular take part in I searched the Internet and found some pretty awesome results.

Although you have to watch this on youtube I highly recommend watching this advert by F&F. Funny, smart and full or carefully planned revenge. I like how in control and calm the brunette is whilst doing everything too, proving how tactical and well planned revenge can be just as, or more rewarding than just smashing something. This gives the impression that women prefer this sort of revenge- however, there are some examples of revenge by women that contrast this in the form of...

Kill Bill. This film and its sequel by Tarantino tell the story of a woman hell bent on revenge after being shot down by her own team of assassins and losing her baby. One by one, the main character hunts them down and gives them a taste of their own medicine. This film and its sequel gives really reinforces the saying 'Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned'. This films shows revenge as being violent and messy, contrasting greatly to the advert above. Although, the main character does know her old team mate's weaknesses and uses them to her advantage which could be counted as being fairly cunning. This film was made by Tarantino though who is male and this could explain why the revenge is more blood thirsty as men seem to prefer that sort of revenge.

I also found this website about women and revenge: http://www.revengelady.com/top_ten_stories.html - this one is interesting as some of the stories are well thought out and rather amusing like distributing all her ex's fling's clothes to local orphanages, others focus on the destruction of something that the person who wronged them loved. This gives a mixed bag of feedback but it appears that everyone seeks revenge in different ways - both planned revenge that may take months to fully flourish and instant destructive revenge. I will also ask a few of my friends to hear if they have ever attempted to get revenge on cheating partners or people who have wronged them.

Update: After asking my friends about some revenge stories i managed to get some interesting ones, although not a very large amount as i seem to be friends with people who just don't hold a grudge.

One story was about a cheating boyfriend who got his drum kit dented and broken, another story involved 'accidentally' smearing black paint on the back of a bully during an art class and another included a girl who suddenly became very clumsy and broke her cheating boyfriends phone, Ipad and Ipod all in the same day.

Although some of these stories are quite interesting, two of them focus on destruction, whereas only one was done sneakily. This gives me the same results as before, that women seek revenge in a number of ways, this will come in handy when designing the story of my game.

Digging Up the Past...

Our new assignment got me thinking about character designs, and my favourite designs from the past, before university. These character designs have been waiting in a creative limbo for the past few years and I'm not really sure why - some of them are my favourite pre-university pictures. Although some look like cave drawings compared to my new work, I still like them all and with a few adjustments, they would fit right in with my new stuff. So here are my resurrected characters, hope you like them:

Wow, sorry to overload you with sketches there, but I hope you stuck with me. As you can see, i like a lot of my old characters and to a certain extent had already planned a game using them - an old school adventure with a load of bosses and one ultimate boss - following in the footsteps of Crash Bandicoot, Kingdom Hearts, Pokémon and Croc. These games were all influential to me whilst growing up so it's only natural that I'm quite nostalgic about them and because there are few current games like this now it inspires me to bring this style of gameplay back and get away from the thousands of shooter games out there. Anyway, my plan is to edit and improve these designs and hopefully use them in this project. I have a lot to choose from but I think I will stick to two or three characters and carry on this idea in my own time or in my final year.