Our NaNoRenO project this year is an otome about saving your family’s pastel café from bankruptcy- but who are you? You play as Varsha, a college-aged person who comes home to the café in its twilight hours.
The character design was done by myself (Arimia) and Violora (our NaNoRenO art director). The two of us came up with lots of ideas and went back and forth on what to go with. We first started with the feminine-esque design.
Feminine Design
We started with the hair style since Violora had a few ideas for it. We decided to go with a long hair style with buns for the fem design.
After this we started experimenting with different outfits!
At first we were thinking a highly pastel design, namely pink/blue. A lot of Violora’s sketches have this aesthetic to them.
We wanted to do the holographic look for a while but moved on to a darker palette.
With this change to a darker palette we also went with darker colors for the hair.
We decided to go forth with a darker palette but went back to the puffy jacket idea from before.
Masculine Design
The hardest part about the masculine-esque design was figuring out what kind of hair to use for them! We went back and forth with several different ideas for hair.
We had started with a wavy hair style on the right but moved away from it.
We ended up with something similar to what I pitched, but with more of the hair pulled back into a braid.
Finally, we reached the finished versions of our main character!
