Character Introduction: The protagonist

 Character Introduction

The protagonist 

   

 

 

Just look at this handsome young man! It's him the majority of the story will be following.The protagonist was not the first character that was created for the game, that was actually Solar, but his design went through several changes before I settled on this one.In the concept art, he looks a lot more mature. That's because originally I was going to have all the characters be college aged, but decided against it going forward because while I usually enjoy stories with more mature characters, I felt like the story would have more of an impact in them if they were just a bit younger, and they could also act sillier without everything feeling childish and out of place.

 

 

 

From the beginning, I wanted the main character to be this kid who hasn't really come to terms with the loss of his friend. You'll notice his expression only changed in the last version. That's because, while it serves the story for the protagonist to have a bored outlook on life, a bored main character usually makes for a bored player. If he looks at everything with indifference, so will the one reading his thoughts, so I had to compromise.The way I found to get that message across was to give him some really shaggy hair and messy clothes. The kind that you wake up, throws on and with a passing "whatever" before going out. We all had those days.

       

As far as his clothes go, every character wears some kind of coat, because of the climate in the island, which honestly is just an excuse to have them wearing additional layers so I can work on the clothes design with more freedom. I was never really good at minimalism, and they all needed to be wearing their uniforms, so the layers add to their individuality. For the main character, I gave him a detective-inspired long coat, since he's the one that'll be doing the deduction for most of the game, it felt only appropriate.

I also toyed with different colors for the coat and additional details. While the beige looks really good, I had spent so much time working with the green variation that I got way too attached to it, so I ended up going with that version. 

 

 

Also of note, is this version, made by the artist that was helping out in early development, Pezkoh. I love how clean his linework is, but ultimately I had to overhaul the design of every character, and I couldn't hope to end up with a version this clean myself, so I used one of my early designs as a starting point, but kept a couple of details like the belt, and coat fasteners.

And that's it for the protagonist-- oh, you might be wondering what's his name.

Well... that part is a secret!