[Concept] Snow Daze - Brello Gaiden (Patreon)

NSFW WARNING: This post contains depictions of nudity, as well as a brief discussion on hypnosis, a fetish which many might find uncomfortable.

A few years ago…

I was hired to provide work on Snow Daze, a hypnosis fetish visual novel that is definitely not going to be everyone's cup of tea. It was my first real exposure to hypnokink, and I've learned more since. My work on this game probably helped create a semi-decent chunk of my follower base.

Looking back, there are a lot of things I'd have done differently. I was less experienced at the time, after all. This game was also largely responsible for my burnout at the end of 2017, because I overworked between all of my art responsibilities. Even so, it was still pretty fun at times too. 

I've learned more about hypnosis since then, and I've also grown to be much more open-minded about weird fetishes like that, and I still like to revisit its ideas from time to time. Like my ideas for a silly fan sequel in which I cram the brellomascot into the universe. So here is a brief storyboard for what the beginning of such a story might look like:

Just as I've intruded upon this universe, so too has the mascot character, having suddenly shown up out of the blue, completely unprovoked! It's silly & ridiculous, and I like that. 

It should be clear how tongue-in-cheek I'm being, especially if you're familiar with the actual game. This creates a feeling that's a bit more lighthearted & fun, I think. Which works nicely for the brellomascot, who might be more self-aware than characters usually are.

Kind of like a dumb, sexy Deadpool.

Disclaimer: I'm not actively working towards this idea. It's just a silly thing I've got going on somewhere in the back of my mind. It's an idea I play with every now and then. So if it's not your cup of tea, you've nothing to worry about. This won't be taking over my work.

Colour Design

When I worked on Snow Daze, I was responsible for colouring the characters & most of the cutscenes where actions occurred. Lewd actions.

One of the most notable things about Snow Daze's art direction is its use of colour. The BGs (or backgrounds) are a monochromatic blue, which creates the general feeling of coldness. The greatest source of warmth comes from the characters themselves, with their vibrant & contrasting colours, allowing them to pop out from the BG.

Each of these characters was build around a specific colour, and all of their outfits followed this, to make it easy to distinguish who was who. Sarah was always the hardest, though, as she was designed with TWO colours in mind.

But yeah, it makes sense to continue this trend. Yellow hasn't been used in the original, so I am most inclined to try that. That should also make the mascot stand out against all of the other girls too, but you'll notice that I depicted the mascot's hair & eyes a dark purple in this instance, to match the other characters in the game.

Character Design

The characters go through some sort of transformation over the course of the game, and their outfits change to reflect that. Although they sometimes follow a certain theme based on the character, the trend is usually consistent.

 Normal > Sexy Normal > Sexy Elegant > Slutty > Fetish 

In the first illustration of a Snow Daze brellomascot (several months ago), I drew her with a colour scheme of yellow & blue, so I wanted to continue that. Although doing so is limiting and draws comparison to Sarah, who also wore a blue sweater. Also like Sarah, it is tricky to design with two colours in mind.

Having said that, Jane featured occasional blue, so it might be okay...

Anyway, here are some of my ideas:

The brellomascot tends to dress pretty simply, with large readable shapes. I am a fan of the sleek "Sexy Normal" design. It's a rather ordinary outfit, but the shapes make it appealing. Still, I am uncertain about the blue, so perhaps I should try using brown instead? This might create a more unified aesthetic, but I don't know if it would be as appealing...

Colour Theory Time

Okay, so let's look at these two colour combinations.

Brown is a neutral colour, close to grey, so it resides at the center of the colour wheel.

Blue, however, is across yellow on the wheel, making them complementary. 

Complementary colours reside on opposite points of the colour wheel, so they can easily vibrate against one another, creating an interesting visual sensation. This is probably why the colours of Christmas are usually green & red.

Anyway, I don't really know how I feel about either option. There are things that I like about each options (between blue & brown). How do you feel about it?

Concluding...

Now, I don't really know the exact path I want to take with this idea, although I've had a few fun (and crazy), secret ideas that I shouldn't spoil. But my ideas rather few & isolated, like a few endings and paths. As far as the basic narrative experience goes, I've nothing in mind.

Unlike the main game, the mascot would be the sole antagonist of this story, so there's just a single character to subjugate. With that, I think the relationships should be more dynamic than in the original, with a few more branching paths... Since the game is otherwise smaller in scope by virtue of having only one character to hypnotize, y'know? I think it also allows us to play with a lot more ideas & fetishes than the original did too. Gotta get those 25 endings like in Nier: Auto-Tomato.

Anyway that's enough for now. Thank you for your support, and I hope you appreciated this strangely early instance of Concept Art.

Don't forget to eat & sleep!