taifau cafe design language (Patreon)

On the server someone mentioned how they were surprised at how much goes behind each design of my characters, so it gave me the idea of explaining further how I go about designing them!

Consistency is something I personally don't really practice, however I like to include some nonspoken rules when creating new settings and the people that live in it

For Taifau Cafe clothing is a particularly important aspect! I use certain motifs in order to group characters together and make their roles within the world more easily identifiable, even if it's something you don't really notice until pointed out (and, to be fair, the fact that I haven't shown too much makes these aspects hard to notice lol <: ) )

Back in 2019 (lol < : ,)) I made some little graph to explain some of these ideas to a friend, so here it is updated:




They're color coded because I thought it'd be easier to divide this into segments instead of writing until it kinda works out lol, so let's start with:

Blue: Explorers/treasure hunters

The one thing any character that falls into this category that has in common is the short jacket, it serves as sort of universal "uniform" to easily understand their role. Styling, colors and everything else can vary, as long as it doesn't cover the midriff you're good to go! You might've noticed that during the little Krea poll I did a few months ago she also happened to have one, that's the reason why! While a bunch of her outfits might seem randomly picked just because it looks cute there is a reason behind (most lol) of them being the way they are



Red: Captains/leaders

Most of the cast in Taifau Cafe tends to be teamed up with other characters, it's rare for someone to be completely solo, so an easy way to identify who is the leader of the group you just gotta spot who's wearing the hat! Of course they're not wearing it at all times, unless it is part of the uniform, such as in Deli's case, or for expedition purposes. 

Unfortunately I don't have any recent examples to show for this, but here's an old ass drawing from 2018, where Ram clearly is the one in the leading position while Mu is taking orders.



Pretty simple point so moving on to the next one!

Green: Robots

There's two types of these in this world, the newer ones that tend to have a very toy-ish and rubbery look to them, named Tavabots, while the old ones resemble humans much more are referred to as Tavanoids.

Tavabots are much more flexible and don't really follow a set structure like the former, they can be shaped after many things and are entirely customizable. The one thing that they all have in common are the googly eyes, monochrome palette and ball joints, as long as they have these features they can be as silly as anyone would want them to be.

Tavanoids on the other hand are more rigid, there's only a few models of them and all follow the same structure: very human like in appearance, ear replacements, and white outer frames that sort of resembles a skeleton, mainly the torso shaped like a ribcage. Because of these features people in this world thought they were uncanny  so they were replaced by the cuter and dumber ones.

 And finally the green section: Normal people

If a character doesn't fit into any of the previous groups then that means they're just regular people lol, nothing too remarkable going with them, as examples Don is just Krea's employee, while Prea is just a kid, they don't have "important" roles to fulfill just yet. Perhaps in the future their outfits will change to reflect their change in role, but as of now they just are lol

While this is mostly just related to Taifau Cafe, there are some other ideas that are also shared with Chokoland, such as the characters' eyes, humans tend to have pitch black eyes while animals or hybrids between the two tend to have brighter eyes, whether they be just naturally lighter colors or clear irises if the pupil is a dark color. Animal eyes also tend to be bright in dark scenarios! To bring in the point that they have better night vision than regular people.



Little details like these are fun to come up with, and I think are a nice subtle ways to build a world, it's important to understand how these people act and dress to better convey the idea that it is a breathing living place. It's also helpful at the time of making new characters, I know if this new design in question will be a captain I gotta keep in mind that they will be wearing a hat at some point! So I try to make sure the design works well with that.

I think these details can also be used to create some intrigue or catch people off guard, for example, if there is an antagonistic group of sorts and none is shown with a hat, is their leader not revealed just yet? Or does said leader just doesn't want to wear the hat? lol. Or if there's a human with bright colored eyes, is there something up with them? Or are they just the exception to the rule? I think it's neat interesting stuff to talk about.

And that's it for this post! Hopefully it was an interesting read, and maybe you were able to take something out of it!