Quest Failed: Chapter Two - Dev Log #63

Hiya!

I'm back again with the latest dev log and today we have a blast from the past, looking back on some of the earliest concepts for everyone's favourite (????) ninja and how she came to be!

These kinds of dev logs looking back on sketches and such won't be too common in the future, depending on how well they're received by you guys--but I feel like they could be pretty interesting and give a look at how some characters were born into the world! I know by doing this I run the risk of showing concepts that some of you may feel personally looked better than the end result, but typically I'll try to justify why I went forward with certain design elements again others and explain my line of thought!

So--let's take a look back at Ren--one of the earliest characters I started working on the concept for with Chapter Two! Looking at her oldest files I have for her, they're dated around the beginning of October, just before Quest Failed: Chapter One's launch. So even before I had Chapter One out the door I was already thinking ahead and trying to get a head start on the concepts laid out for Chapter Two!

The core of the idea was: I wanted a spunky hyperactive ninja girl, not unlike Yuffie from Final Fantasy 7. I think I've mentioned her influence before, since I'm not ashamed to admit how heavily she inspired me, haha--along with the fact that she was internally supposed to be one of the Queen's royal knights along with Cynthia. Essentially being one of the elite soldiers at the Queen's side--sort of drawing parallels to the Heavenly Knights from Monster Girl Quest. But the more I developed her, the more I realised she slotted into the (Super Ultra) Royal Spy role far better--while remaining an 'honorary' Royal Knight, much to Cynthia's ire. Plus this way I sort of forge my own path with things rather than using MGQ as a blueprint too heavily, as it was important to me that Quest Failed steadily gained its own identity.

Moving to her visual concept--some of the main points I brought up were:

- She should have short, almost tomboyish hair, as long hair really wouldn't fit someone so 'unlady-like' (drawing from the Yuffie school of design again. Only thing she was lacking at this point was a metal plated headband)

- She NEEDED a scarf, because what self-respecting ninja doesn't have a heroic scarf whipping in the wind behind them?

- Her eyes should be bright and energetic, with a cheeky grin to represent her base expression

Actually thinking on it, in a sense, Cynthia's design was almost made to be the opposite of Ren--elegant and refined long hair, serious and mature demeanor that clashes with Ren's own childish nature--it's something of a standard comedy pairing, but it was too fun not to have!   

And then from here, I presented a myriad of visual reference material to the artist to help us shape up her general outfit and give an idea as to what would fit her best. This typically involved netted tops, cords that fastened her otherwise loose fitting clothes against her and other such ninja-y (it's a word ok) elements. Which let the artist draft up some of the designs you see above!

Now, as you may or may not be aware--the original artist for Ren's design and Ren's old sprite, Jenki, is not the artist who created Ren's up to date sprite present in the demo and alpha builds. This was by a different artist who took Jenki's end design and then refined it and helped it fit within the game's style more.

As while Jenki is capable of amazing work, and I'm eternally grateful for the designs he gave me for Ren, Cynthia and Bella--he did struggle to adhere to the established Quest Failed style, and as a result the sprites suffered a little in terms of quality due to him rigidly attempting to follow things. Along with struggling a little to adapt to the demanding output required of visual novel art--we both amicably decided it would be best to part ways and I wished him the best in his future endeavors. So there is no ill-will between me and the previous artist! It was simply just the best choice for both of us and the success of the project.

But, moving back on to the designs themselves, you can see what the artist came up with in terms of outfits for Ren. They all typically fit the look I was aiming for, with some a little more revealing than others with different balances of cloth and armour. So they weren't wildly different by any means--simply just offering different flavours on what I was looking for.

You can probably see here that I was torn between both 1 and 2--ultimately taking elements from both of them and merging them together, as I adored the net top of 1, but thought the spats and bottom half of 2 (minus the sandals of 1! Wooden clacking sandals were very important to me) suited her character far more! I did contemplate having the face mask, too--but considered Ren's rather brash and loud-mouthed personality and how she probably wouldn't want to cover her mouth. Stealth be damned, she wants the whole world to hear her!

At this stage, her hair and eyes hadn't quite been worked out to the style you know and love today--but I opted to blend the wide, energetic eyes of B, due to them matching the QF aesthetic the most, and the short cut hair of A, and I didn't want her hair to have anything too fancy in the way of frills, and was aiming to accessories with her hair instead.

And so--with the outfit pairing decided, we moved forward, working out the details just a little more, such as whether or not to have detailed illustrations across the fabric, and whether or not she should have netted stockings or longer socks for that oh so illusive zettai ryouiki.

Given she has a certain affinity with water tied to her mystical ninja arts, we did muse over the idea of how much she should represent that across her outfit--but ultimately I decided it was better to be a little more subtle and just settle for the lilypad hairclip--though I did like the creative ideas in making it a part of her armour with the shoulder/knee pads!

And with her tomboy nature, I felt short socks suited her far better than longer ones--as she wouldn't want to restrict her legs too much or detract attention from those shiny spats~ At this point, the twin katanas as her weapons of choice had been finalised, too. I did consider what other weapons a ninja of her stature might use--but felt big flashy katanas for someone so obsessed with being heroic and in the spotlight, almost like a super hero, would be the most fitting. Even if wielding two at once was a little impractical, it's the rule of cool, darn it!

With her outfit finally coming together and her hair decided in between design sheets--it was finally time to put her colours together!

And with this bright rainbow of colours, you can see that the proposed drafts the artist sent to me were certainly, uh, a little...'exotic', haha. She certainly wouldn't be hiding in the shadows with those schemes. Though to be fair, I believe the artist attributed some of the colours looking off here to incorrect settings on his monitor--so it wasn't too bad.

Since Ren is both a super spy AND someone who's bright and outgoing--I felt her colours should try to strike a balance between these two aspects of her character. So to not feel too dreary, but at the same time not be too glaring. You can probably spot what scheme formed the beginnings of her end design here--that being the end one, though I felt it would be better invert the colours and let the darker grey take up the dominant side of the palette, while the more striking salmon colour was used a little more sparingly across the trimmings, to end up with something that wasn't too hard on the eyes while keeping a good splash of colour on her outfit! I think it ended up pretty good in the end personally and that the other palettes were going a little too far in the outgoing/brash direction. And the final touch was then making her scarf match with the more salmon coloured flares for a coherent feeling.

And with those details finally ironed out, we ended up with the final result of her old sprite from the trailers and first alpha builds!

Whoooosh~ A lil' goofy looking in retrospect in terms of the facial features--but I was really proud of what we put together and it served as the basis for the Ren we all know and love today~

Which, on the subject of her final design--you can see a few little changes were made here and there, while not drastically changing up her design but still polishing things up:

- Her scarf now splits into two tails. Twice the whoosh, twice the chuuni!

- Her hair is a little more 'bobcut' and rounded, giving it a more appealing look while at the same time maintaining her tomboy image.

And then from there, a bunch of other little tweaks here and there to her body and detailings along the outfit to help it feel all the more polished.

Aaaaand that about wraps up Ren's conception, from beginning to end! It was quite the bumpy road with some issues here and there between swapping artists, but I think everything turned out okay in the end!

And gosh, I certainly didn't expect to be writing this much for a post I thought was going to be relatively straightforward, haha. I guess I really can ramble when I'm in the mood for it.

Hopefully you enjoyed this little peek behind the scenes and I hope it was informative--if not at least vaguely interesting to browse through!

Let me know what you think--and if there's any other behind-the-scenes kinds of things you'd like to get overviews on or know the process for--as I'm always looking for new things to ramble about and could talk about the development process for Chapter Two for days! (Seriously!)

Until next time~