Backstage Pass #6 (Patreon)

Backstage pass, now with a fancy new banner and slightly new format! On this week's edition, I'll be talking about...

The design evolution for Rune in OBT! You'd better strap in, this is a longer one. 

So I don't think it's a big secret that Rune has gone through the most character design iterations out of any of the cast of OBT. And really, what it boils down to is that I'm just... Not confident in drawing Vulpix, as a pokemon, and especially Alolan Vulpix. So why did I make this her species? Why not something else?

Well the first answer is that I love Vulpix and Ninetales, and have for years. These two pokemon were both favorites of mine growing up, so drawing and playing as a Vulpix character in-game were very appealing! The second answer is that Vulpix was one of the easiest options for me to play as in early game of PMD: EOS, mainly thanks to having Feint Attack as an egg move for the Drowzee fight in the third dungeon of the game. Doing a nuzlocke for Sky is a bit luck-based until after the third dungeon- before that point, there is no way to grind in the game. For a similar reason I made Shinx the partner due to early access to Bite. So really, it just made in-game sense and seemed fun. Which if you know me, is all the motivation I need to do something.

Now we can get into the nitty gritty of the details surrounding Rune's design choices, from early comic to current day. Starting off with Rune's first design as an Alolan Vulpix! Which was really just her old design reskinned to be white instead of red and brown.

Which was then redesigned into a slightly more unique design that deviated a little more, but not by much.

It's not entirely common knowledge that OBT is a reboot of a series by the same name that ran from late 2014 to mid 2017. When rebooting the comic, I initially had full intentions of Rune staying mostly the same from her previous iteration, and her being Alolan was a quick alteration that I thought would be neat for spicing up her design and setting the comic apart from the original. No thought really went into her design outside of being something I was already comfortable with. She kept her eye color, placing of some markings, body shape, etc. This design could probably be considered her "beta" design, she never actually showed up in the comic like this in favor of some last minute changes I made before her appearance.

Early comic Rune looked something more along these lines- and was much more pink than her previous iterations. The initial reasoning for this pinkness was due to the fairly pink lighting sunset had provided in the comic. And truth be told, I was quite happy with this design for a while! There were a lot of elements that I thought were cool, such as her ear shape, neck fur, and contrasting white hair. I also made the last minute decision of only giving her one tail to start with- I thought the gimmick of gaining more tails would be fun later on as she faces trials to gain them all. But considering she was completely pink, a relatively new pokemon introduced at the time, and lacked the signature multiple tails, I received frequent comments from people confused as to what her species was supposed to be. 

And really, I can't blame them, her design became so far removed from the concept of an Alolan Vulpix that she was near unrecognizable, especially with a style that looked so different from the canon art style used in the games. It wasn't that her design was bad, but I reinterpreted the same character in different ways to the point where I was missing my original goal entirely. Even introducing her second tail into the comic earlier than I had planned did not remedy confusion. So I decided to reel things back a little and start using a new, more cartoony style for the comic, while really toning down the pink. This brings about what I like to think of as "the era of brown". I even went as far as replacing her first chapter design with this new iteration later on when I redid the first chapter of OBT.

And this is where I sat with her design for a while, and it still remains in the first two chapters of the comic because anything else I'd have to completely re-do the comic again for, which I certainly didn't want to do just on a basis of not having enough else that I'd like to change. Though the style change felt like it helped, it didn't really address my core problems with Rune's design, which really was what I struggled with from the beginning- I was reinterpreting her design as Rune the character, and not as a Vulpix, and I had been since the reboot began. This brought about a conundrum for me. How was I supposed to shed this old design with the baggage of an older work and older design without making this character unrecognizable? How could I employ my more recently gained abilities for character design?

The answer is, I kind of couldn't.

And I was stuck on this for a while. While I've barely ever been a stickler for continuity in my comic, something as big as a character design overhaul was not something I felt like I could flip like a switch. But then I had an epiphany- I could just write it into the story.

The aura subplot had already been planned since early on in the comic (but not the beginning, as most things weren't planned when I originally did the first chapter). With this I had a very convenient excuse for changing Rune's appearance very drastically and suddenly- she was regaining her essence as a pokemon, both in-story and in the meta of making the comic! It also gave a more physical significance to regaining her aura, which really made it a win-win. Hooray! Now all that was next was to actually design her rehydrated appearance.

And what. An. Ordeal.

While I had much more free reign than ever before to play around with and change her design, I still had to make sure she was Rune at the end of the day. This all began with a very simple doodle.

And I loved it! She looked more like a Vulpix than ever. Someone may even guess her species on their first try. But when screening it with some beta readers, the response was unanimous. It was a cute design, but it didn't fit Rune, and was too drastic of a change. I still have this design in my back pocket for maybe a future character, but it wasn't going to be what I needed. I then enlisted the help of my partner Pika to help with her design. I commissioned a piece from her, and just said to make her look more like she had an Alolan Vulpix base, and to even disregard her current design. And she certainly delivered!

This was exactly the type of direction I needed, and having someone help me get out of my own head with her design was an absolute turning point for this process. From here, I got moving on a lot of designs. And I mean a lot.

Hair styles were among the first things that I played around with, trying to incorporate the curliness of Alolan Vulpix with Rune's preexisting hairstyle. Spoilers: I did not end up keeping the style I decided on in the end here.

And so, the experimentation continued...

And with new eye shapes to match her personality, continued further...

And with some palette ideas, continued even further...

This phase went on for months at a time, I cannot stress just how many times I put her design through the wringer. These selections are really only a portion of a large volume of files where I poked and prodded and experimented with her design! One of these days I would like to compile all of her design experiments together, but that'll have to be a project for the future. All of this led up to a final round of designs before settling one one (and changing last minute anyway):

And with that, that was my full journey to get to where I currently am with Rune's design! Her design has much more significance to me now rather than being just "Rune, but drawn differently". She has a more fierce face, lots of points and edges as opposed to the roundness of typical Alolan Vulpix, and a fun heart motif. It feels like her design gets to be almost contradictory to me, feeling soft with an underlying intensity.

I think that there's always room for improvement, but her design is no longer something that bothers me when I'm working on any given page of the comic. I've found that I genuinely enjoy drawing her again (where for a while I absolutely dreaded it), which is the main takeaway for me with anything regarding the comic! Things like body shape and anatomy are big points I want to hit on in the future, and maybe eventually pushing Rune (as well as the rest of the cast's) designs slightly more towards the canonical style rather than my own. But these are just points to experiment with in the future rather than anything set in stone, and I look forward to playing around with this design!

And of course, this is just the journey for Rune's design. Her personality, dialogue, and development over time is a whole different story, and something I'd like to cover in future Backstage Passes. I also hope to delve into the rest of the cast at some point, since even though they aren't as labor-intensive, also have their own quirks I explored! 

And before leaving off on this edition, I'd like to leave you guys with a little compilation I did of Rune's design evolution over time. These are mostly just highlights of what I showed here of major changes, but maybe sometime in the future I'll compile all of the experimentation I did as fun behind-the-scenes stuff!

Thanks for reading!