The Final Prize is Soup: Character Design (1)
Our protagonist - Qian Hailu
With Spooktober around halfway over (that means only around 2 weeks till the release of our survival horror yuri visual novel, The Final Prize is Soup), let’s talk a little bit about character designs!
You who are unqualified to drink Meng Po's soup, you have been chosen for the game of life. Three worlds, three rounds. Win all three and you may avert your fated death. Lose any and your bones are forfeit for tomorrow's lunch broth.
Good luck. Our ghosts have prepared their takeout containers, all plastic, non-microwaveable.
First, let me introduce our protagonist: Qian Hailu (千海露)
A young woman in her mid-20s. A slightly abrasive extrovert and our protagonist whose journey through a series of death games in the afterlife we follow.
character setting
A working adult, mid-20s, someone who has already been in a relationship before. Just like for Lachesis or Atropos, I decided to go with a cast that’s already out of school.
This is a game about dead people trying not to die. Hailu is still young; she’s only lived the start of a fulfilling life, but she’s also not so young that she hasn’t lived at all.
As an introvert, it’s actually a little hard for me to relate to Hailu, but I think that also makes this game interesting to write. The story is being cowritten by a familiar face, Pumpkin Spike, so you’ll get to see some different sides of Hailu depending on which route you go on!
visual design
As Hailu is the POV character, she won’t have a sprite on screen (like Alice and Mana from the last two years), but you’ll certainly be able to see her in our various CGs.
Throughout the game, she’s wearing her casual clothes: jeans, t-shirt, a comfortable autumn jacket.
Although her name has to do with water, the blue-green eyes came along as I fiddled with various eye colors, and they just happened to stick.
I wanted to go with relatively realistic hair colors for the human cast of The Final Prize is Soup, so I played around with hair colors as well and ended up sticking with good old black hair.
(The second choice was a light dyed brown color!)
The key points about Hailu’s design:
bangs & ponytail! (a little bit of a rogue-ish vibe…)
white sneakers! (a modern person who doesn’t really get messy)
wristband! (since she’s not an ojou, she doesn’t get the smartwatch)
The point about the bangs and ponytail is probably the biggest one.
You can see, above, some older sketches of her design before I cleaned it up for the character reference sheet. Although the initial design went with bangs swept the other way and a low ponytail, the general gist of her hairstyle managed to stay the same from start to now.
Low ponytail => high ponytail => make her look a little softer?
Is it perhaps the yuri ponytail protagonist era? (ft. Suzukaze from Consummation as well)
That’s a secret!
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What sort of person is Qian Hailu? Will she survive through these death games?
Please look forward to the release of The Final Prize is Soup at the end of the month to find out! (o´▽`o)
shino