Velvet’s Thermian Argument

Following up Ozzie’s redesign of Magilou, this is the character from

Tales of Berseria

that I picked to redesign for the same week: Velvet! I started out by giving her actual pants. Then I moved the leg armor she has from her right leg to the left, in order to balance out the armor on her right arm, to which I added more parts. I decided to keep the leg belts because she seemed like an edgy character from the backstory I read up on the game wiki.

I spent a lot of time trying to figure out what to do about her red shirt. There were probably like 6 different iterations, and I didn’t really like any of them. The final design before this final one was actually:

Because despite the awful execution, I could see what the artist was trying to do: frame her body with large shapes (the coat, the monster arm, and the hair), and fill the inner body with small shapes. I did like the torn edges to her shirt, but didn’t know what to do with the collar. 

Then after the last stream I spent working on her, we got an ask from @solaela explaining that her outfit was put together from prisoner belongings when she escapes from jail early in the game. That gave me the idea that, what if she found an old breastplate that was confiscated, or on a guard that had to be knocked out, or whatever? It wouldn’t fit her perfectly, and it might be old and dirty, but even if Velvet doesn’t care about modesty, she should probably care about staying alive. So I gave her a breastplate and broke it up into smaller shapes.

While the Thermian Argument is a poor excuse for bad design, I do think knowing about the character helps to makes for better designs.

-Icy