Sera BrutonHow’s it goin’, gamers?! It’s Sera, back at it again with some fresh new concept art content! 🎉🎉🎉
In this blog post, I’m going to be writing about some of the starter Phantoms and what inspired their designs! You can read more about what exactly these starter Phantoms are in Claire’s previous post and maybe a bit more about individuals in the future, but here I’m going to be discussing specifically their appearances: what we were going for, and how we got there!
Phantom Design?🤔
For starters specifically, we pushed very hard for Phantoms to be cute, likeable, and immediately recognizable. So! Things that tend to make creatures likeable and baby are using a lot of rounded shapes, biggish eyes, and by making them small! To make things immediately recognizable, we strove for unique silhouettes (dang, I almost spelled it right the first time), and differing colors from one another.
For future, non-starter Phantoms, we’ll also have more non-baby creatures, and I’ll get to flex a little more on some creepy/cool stuff 💪😈.
Joy Starter 😁
The first Phantom we revealed (and the first one with a finalized design)! Remember this promo image I did?
There they are! The design is simple, but we felt it would make a likeable and cute starter for people to bond with. Their design pretty much hasn’t changed from the original giant sheet of phantom concepts that I sketched up (maybe to be revealed in the future, it has a lot of possible spoilers).
The Joy starter was mostly based on the pretty well-known character from Alice in Wonderland, the Cheshire Cat! The Cheshire Cat had always been my favorite character in the story, and I thought that devious energy would synergize well with happiness and make it a bit more interesting. Fun Fact: did you know that Lewis Carrol possibly got the inspiration for the Cheshire Cat from a creepy stone carving of a grinning cat? Neat!
That, and BIG GREMLIN ENERGY is always at the top of my priorities list. We added knees during the transition from the very first design to the final one specifically to maximize bastard energy 😈
Sadness Starter 😢
The sadness starter went through… a few iterations before we got to a final design. And even now, colors might change! Who knows 🤷
I had a few very different ideas for this starter, but the one we ended up with is very much based on axolotls! If you didn’t know, axolotls are amphibians, more specifically neotenic salamanders. Neoteny means that the animals undergo sexual maturation without undergoing metamorphosis!
Axolotls make excellent laboratory subjects due to their regenerative abilities, and are widespread in the pet trade due to how easily they breed in captivity! They are also only native to Lake Xochmilco and Lake Chalco in Mexico, and are currently on the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s threatened species list 😔. Unfortunately, conservation efforts are somewhat difficult, due to pollution of their natural environments and the introduction of predatory fish which feed on young axolotls.
Ending Notes!
So yeah! Sorry to end on that somewhat somber note 😟 There are still 5 other starters to go through, and most of those have a little more ~folklore~ than these ones did! I hope you enjoyed this regardless, and thank you very much for reading! 👋
Sera OUT
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