The following is a concept piece for the game, focusing on Farah as she looks upon the crashed spaceship on the morning of the Peace Festival. At a stretch you might say it's an idea for the game's menu?
I included an updated logo, where the background glyph is just white, since the purple and green logo from before just struck me as far too busy colour-wise.
Just to visually distinguish this as a fantasy/sci-fi setting, I decided to include two moons in the sky to distinguish it from Earth. Also this loosely connects to the titular "twin orbs". Perhaps the moons should have been the same size to make this work thematically better, but I decided to go with more physics-based realism (I can't help myself) since, in terms of stable orbits, having one of the moons of the moon being smaller is far more realistic.
Farah, wearing leather and metal lamellar armour, made of metal and leather segments corded together. Lamellar armour was historically popular with middle-eastern peoples (as well as many other parts of the world) and is a good (and cheaper) construction principle for making leather armour than making something like a solid leather cuirass.
Here is Farah but with full-steel lamellar armour. This is originally what I was going to go for but I changed it last-minute to what you see above to fit in more with the original colour configuration. Admittedly, it's nonsensical to have steel shoulder armour, but then weaker, leather armour for the torso where vital organs are. If we go for the original colour scheme, perhaps we could just say that she DOES have steel on her torso, but that it's just covered in something like a leather surcoat.
Finally, a full-metal variant but with red fabric underneath and with blue highlights (sash belt and cording). This is what I'd go for to also keep in line with my ideas about the colour theming of the game, although it looks the most different to the original.
I tried to mostly adhere to Farah's original design and colours, whilst still updating it and making it fit in with my design ideas. Her sword was based on the Chinese Jian sword, since that's what DirtyC's original design most reminded me of to begin with. Of course, I made sure to include a slit for her thighs to be exposed, that's one of my favourite parts of the original. To match the exposure of her legs, I also removed the sleeves, which I think helps to visually balance-out the design.
Historical lamellar armour informed the choice of the type of armour Farah would have by default, however this specific modern leather lamellar armour was the main design reference for the art.
The crashed M.I.S.S Tomato, based on the 3D model I made before. Again, I'll reiterate that I think it could do with a new name. To emphasise the fact that the ship is really damaged, I made the fire inside the ship visible from the outside, including smoke too.
Sketching out the image. I changed the orientation of the moons as a compositional technique so they "point" to Farah, and hopefully keep the eye looking in a loop from the title to the moon to Farah to the ship etc..
Using the 3D model as refernce.
Sketching Farah out.
I'm pleased with the piece, but I have to admit the effort put into it may have been better spent designing other elements that can more readily be used in the game. Still, at least I got some environment painting practice.
Hero body base, Silhouettes, and "Zombie" crewman sketch
Some sketches at various stages or progression of the heroin's "body base" with one that I've made adapted into Farah. Kay and Lei Lei would not be as muscular as Farah, since they are different classes.
I like the idea that Farah is strong and built (but not in a masculine way), Lei Lei is soft and curvy and thicc, and Kay is lean and toned. What do you guys think?
VERY basic mock-up colouring just to get an idea for what this might look like when done properly. Will definitely need to be refined.
The body definitely still needs work.
I think I would like there to be a side position for walking/running, and then a resting/idle position that is closer to a 3/4 view. Doing that for each character and the costumes (as well as the various stages of costume destruction) would be a lot more work, but I think it would look better, and introduce more options for sex scenes.
Concept for the blue wolf "zombie" crew member of the crashed Alliance ship. Considered giving him a canine dick with a knot, but I'm (k)not sure I should. Thoughts anyone? See the pic below:
No way this guy won't have dog tags in the end, they look cool IMO. Also, I purposefully made him more muscular, taller looking, and traditionally masculine.
Below, I did some silhouettes of the three heroines of the game, to focus on shape, and to try and characterise and distinguish them visually that way.
Farah was the obviously going to be square, being the tank, but Lei Lei and Kay were a bit trickier.
Visually, Kay didn't really have a silhouette other than the base body shape, given her skin tight body suit, but triangular shapes usually go well with the martial artist/rogue/ninja character class she most closely resembles, so I tried to do that, but it ended up making her feel a bit bulky. Here, I've mostly just gone with the form fitting suit, but instead added military inspired details, such as the grips on her boots, the survival vest of real fighter pilots, and a pistol thigh holster. I did vaguely try to make the silhouette of her head somewhat triangular, taking onto account her pointy ears, pointy-ish-ish snout and then accordingly using her tied-back hair to try and make it fit. I think I might try to do more in future to make her silhouette more angular (such as the angular shoulder pads I have included) but this is what I'm going with for now.
The pilot from the Halo: Infinite trailer had a cool but grounded sci-fi pilot survival vest design. I like the padded "n" shaped bit around his neck.
An actual fighter pilot outfit, just as a design reference to work off of for Kay's design. Alas, not sexy enough.
For Lei Lei, I basically just went with round/circular shapes just because it is distinct from the other two, however, I think it does suit her well. She's not physically threatening compared to the others, and her personality seems a lot softer and kinder than Farah's more honour-bound mentality, and Kay's more scrappy, punch-first-ask-questions-later personality. I gave her hair (obviously not that visible her) that's tied up in a nice round bun.
The biggest change was Lei Lei's hat of course, which was originally triangular "witch's hat", but that I've now made round. This was partially inspired by the distinctly east-Asian design elements DirtyC incorporated, namely her footwear that seems to be based on Japanese geta. I therefore decided to take inspiration from the Asian conical hat, and hats like the jingasa, combined with wanting to make the silhouette show circular form to revamp this aspect of Lei Lei. Finally, I added to circular detailing to make her short robes look a little more interesting.
An Asian conical hat.
Kinda pointed arabian style boots for Farah? Also I think the base body boobs might be too big, or rather, it sticks out too far from the body? You may be able to see that I actually reduced them for the clothed silhouettes.
More to come, I just thought I'd share what I have since it's been a while.
This is very much a side-project for me, and comments help to keep me interested, so please let me know your thoughts on this, I would very much like to take them into consideration!
