Aspiring writer

Hello! I'm an uncomprehensible and formless creature that has been caged in a human body for her sins. You may refer to me as Void and by she/her and they/them pronouns.

Non-exhaustive fandom list:

Inazuma Eleven

Inazuma Eleven GO

Pokemon Main Videogame Series

Pokemon Legends Arceus (dk if it's part of the main series or not, so I'm counting it separately)

Paper Mario Series

Mario & Luigi Series

Warrior Cats: TPB and TNP. I also like SkyClan.

Avatar The Last Airbender and The Legend of Korra.

Other fandoms will be added if my mind decides to collaborate.

I do not take part in fandom discourse of any kind. People should be free to write and draw and whatnot whatever they want in their corners of the internet.

Bigotry, be it for people's gender, sexuality, race, ethnity, religion, looks, disabilities or neurodivergences, and any other form of bigotry I may have missed, will result in an immediate block.

The default design for an hypothetical game would be the one of the upper left, with brown hair and eyes. But I'm taking inspiration from Legends ZA, in that there would be a big degree of customization. I made a few extra designs with hair and eye color changes as examples because they were the easiest to make, but you can also change hairstyles, clothes, skin color, add or remove freckles, change eyebrow and lashes size and design, etc…

Now, let's talk about design choices, because while the art is simple, there are several layers of characterization in Floriana's design.

–––––

Design Notes

First of all, she wears sports clothes. On a surface level, this may indicate she exercises often. This is true, since she is a traveling Trainer, spends a lot of time walking/running from place to place, and takes on martial arts during the story. But if one takes a deeper look, her clothes hint at facets of her personality.

Again, she wears sports clothes, which indicate she prioritizes comfort over appereance. Looking pretty is low on her list, and doesn't bother beyond looking presentable. She doesn't understand or really care about fashion, forgoes makeup most of the time, and often ends up wearing the same clothes over and over accidentally, since she doesn't pay attention to it long as the clothes are clean. This is backed up by her hairstyle: a simple ponytail that's very quick and easy to make, and very practical.

But let's talk about the particular sports clothes she wears: shorts and a jacket. Is she hot or is she cold? This represents one of her biggest hidden depths, that she may not be aware of herself: her indecisiveness. She overthinks everything, even how the weather is going to make her feel. But at the same time she's impulsive, making the first choice that is presented to her, without thinking stuff through until she's in hot waters. In practice, this means she makes stupid decisions in the heat of the moment that she later regrets or cost her in some way that would've been prevented if she thought about the consequences.

One of these choices is trading a Pokemon she loves for one that's supposed to be more useful, but immediately regretting it and demanding a trade back. This damaged her Pokemon's trust in her for a long time, and one of them ended up disobeying her at a crucial moment. Another of these choices is rushing into a romance with someone she isn't sure she likes, and ending up in an unhealthy relationship. Another of these choices is getting into battle with great number of Team Rocket members without backup, that almost gets her killed.

Her overthinking, on the other hand, appears in smaller but no less self-sabotaging situations. She gives the first order that comes to mind in battle, and immediately changes it when another one comes to mind, something that costs her lots of battles. She impulsively says something, then thinks it's not enough information, so she says more, then thinks she's overshared, but can't take her words back.

And to finish this little analysis of my own art, let's talk about her gloves. An item that makes sure your hands don't touch anything directly. A physical but subtle representation for being "out of touch", if you will.

Floriana is cheerful, enthusiastic and has hope in spades, in a region with huge presence of Pokemon trafficking, disappereances, corruption and abuse of power (Kanto in the Pokemon anime is a dumpster fire). She believes that she can be the strongest Trainer in the world if she tries hard enough, instead of finding it an impossible but pleasant fantasy like most regular Trainers. She believes that friendship is the most important thing about training Pokemon, and thinks any obstacle can be overcome if one tries hard enough. None of this gives the impression of someone who knows how cruel and unfair the world can be. I did consider gloves as a representation of Floriana's ignorance or the lies she tells herself, but as her story grew in my mind, I realized something very important.

Floriana is not — and realistically wouldn't be — as naive as other characters think she is. And fingerless gloves were the perfect representation of that. She is idealistic, doesn't know everything about competitive battles, but isn't naive.

She is flawed, she makes mistakes, she doesn't live up to her own ideals, she loses sight of them, or doesn't know how to put them into practice. But the ultimate message of the story is that she's idealistic, and she is right. There is always a silver lining that makes you believe in humanity again, if you know where to look. Hence, why her gloves are fingerless.

–––––

Estimate time I've spent on this: a little more than eleven hours and half over the weekend.

Elaine's skin on my phone looks very different than on my computer, and it's weird. I could have sworn the green-haired version had a different shade on her hair.

The color difference between her shorts and jacket fought me so much, oh my god. I spent at least half an hour picking and trying out different shades. There are seven shades of dark gray and over fifteen of dark blue stored on my color picker.

I ended up having to adjust and redraw Elaine's body multiple times, so maybe her proportions look weird. Once the outline was done, I copy pasted it until I had enough of them to have all the hair-eye color combinations I wanted to try out.