The design of love interests in the Final Fantasy series. (long post)
How contrasting key colors play a role.
Do you guys remember the game icegirl and fireboy?
If yes, have you ever asked yourself why the creator chose to give the girl the element of ice and the boy the element of fire?
This gendered association of
goes way deeper than you may think at first. This has a history of thousands of years and stems from ancient mythology, which of course impacts us to this day.
Women are widely associated with the color red or pink in fashion, culture and even psychology but this was not always the case. For a long time, red and pink were considered to be male colors. Putting that into historical context, you will know why. It is the same with Mars in astrology. A planet of masculinity associated with guns, anger, hatred, blood, war, fights, the phallus. What is the color of Mars? It is red. Every planet and sign in astrology has an associated gender. The moon is associated with the mother figure, the woman. The sun, ruler over the zodiac sign leo, is a male sign and planet.
Historically, ancient roman high ranking generals used to wear red capes. It wasn't a clear red but more of a more brownish tone of red. The modern depiction of what a roman soldier looks like is true to some extent. Not everyone wore such a cape though.
I will not go into more detail regarding this shift that took place in the 20th century, because it is not the main point of this blog entry, but if you want to read more about it, please look it up!
Gender reveal parties are a great example of how this gendered association impacts us to this day. If you go shopping for baby clothing or clothing for toddles and children, you cannot escape finding predominantly pink clothing for girls and I barely know any boys and men willing to wear pink or rose colored clothing.
How does this impact character design?
Specifically in the Final Fantasy Franchise.
While red and blue are not opposites in color theory and art theory, they're treated as conceptual and physical opposites.
The protagonist and his love interest throughout the Final Fantasy series have a contrasting color scheme or a contrasting base color, like red and blue or white and black. It does not have to be strictly red but could also be orange or pink.
A recent example of this are Clive and Jill from Final Fantasy XVI.
Jill's color palette consists of gray, white and blue.
This is fitting for her personality and her abilities in the game. She comes from up north, has the Eikon of Shiva (Ice) and her personality seems more in tune with what characteristics you would associate her colors with. Mature, still and quiet, for example. If you think of a person that you yourself would describe as fiery, you most likely would not think of Jill.
She wears a white tunic with a silver-blue leather west, skirts of various shades of blue and has long silver hair with a right bang.
The opposition between the two goes as far as bangs on the opposite side.
With her design in mind, compare her to Clive. She is the protagonists closest companion, his childhood friend and his love interest.
Clive wears black and red. Black in color psychology is associated with authority and respect. In media, you can often find characters wearing black that have the leading role, like the protagonist. Squall and Noctis are an example of this. They are in a leading position and people rely on them and respect them and their abilities.
Not only do the colors show the relationship between the characters but also what is an emotional heavy point for them in the story.
-> The Geneva Emotion Wheel
Look at the Geneva Emotion Wheel. This color wheel was created with the purpose of measuring one's reaction to objects, events, and situations.
Red here is associated with anger and hate. Blue is associated with shame and regret.
If you played FF16, you will know that Clive carries a hatred for himself since he was young. His mother hated him, she deemed him a failure and barely paid any attention to him. He hates himself because he thought that he killed Joshua and is angry at himself the entire game until the party finds out that Joshua is alive and gets to reunite with Clive and Jill.
Jill carries a deep feeling of guilt and regret. She was forced to kill people, innocent people for 13 years when she was taken prisoner and the guilt she is carrying with her is shown perfectly in her arc to take revenge on Imran.
(Interesting to note that Joshua and Jote are true opposites, since Jote is wearing a green cloak and Joshua is wearing red. Look at what their colors are associated with and how that manifests in the story. Jote is compassionate, she admires and loves Joshua.)
Something similar is also the case for FFXV/FFVersusXIII. Lunafreya/Stella has blonde hair and is dressed in complete white throughout the game. Noctis is wearing black and has black hair. They don't have any color but are dressed in opposite shades, which makes them look interesting together.
If I remember correctly, one time during development, Noctis was supposed to have red eyes. From what I remember reading about FF Versus 13, Noctis was supposed to be the bad guy and while he was romantically involved with Stella, they would fight each other as well.
So they not only oppose each other visually, but in their roles in the story as well.
What I just realized after editing this post is how both Noctis and Stella have side bangs framing their face, especially the cheeks, neck and chin. Their hair. Stellas hair right at the hairline goes to the left and noctis' bangs go to the right.
Important: Visual oppositions between characters are done on purpose for you as the viewer to identify and figure out what the relationship between these two characters is.
Look at Squall and Seifer from Final Fantasy VIII.
Their designs are chefs kiss and simply character design peak.
They are not romantically involved but what you can often times find is that the protagonist is in a design opposition to the antagonist.
You have this exact thing in FF16 as well. Clive is red. Ultima is purple-blue.
Simply from these two pictures alone, you are able to tell what kind of relationship these two guys have. THAT is what character design is all about. The characters design has to capture the entire story. It has to show the world, the personality, the history - simply everything with a medium that is quite limited. Have you ever noticed how Seifer is modeled after 90's manga school bullies? The high trousers? The combed back hair? If you are aware of little details like these, you will know that Seifer is not in a good relationship with Squall.
These oppositions are held specifically for characters that are of significance to each other and you can see this with FFVII.
How FFVII is a great example of what I mean.
Both Aerith and Tifa have red throughout their design because their key color is red. Tifa has red eyes and red shoes, red arm armor. Aerith has her red leather jacket. This is why discussions about what character is copying the other when it comes to costumes in a gacha game is nonsensical because they both have a similar color palette originating from the same color and from there go different ways.
Pink is a tint of red. You get pink by mixing red and white together. Purple is a secondary color that you get by mixing blue and red.
Both Aerith and Tifa as the color red are opposing Zack and Cloud, the protagonists of the FFVII universe and their love interests. Zack and Cloud are blue. Their celestial associations drive this even further. Zack and Aerith have a celestial theme of representing the earth (Aerith and her connection to the planet) and the sky. Zack as someone who finds the sky fascinating and dreams of having wings. The scene of him being lifted into the sky is another example that helps build up this specific association with the color blue.
Aeriths character design is an interesting topic in itself because of how much history is packet in it. The green eyes, her curly hair symbolizing the lifestream swirls, the crass red leather jacket on top of a floral pink dress symbolizing the duality of midgar. The way her hair is designed is already an indicator of her special connection to the planet.
Look at the geneva emotion wheel once again and apply the associated emotions to the characters. Why? Because there are many reasons why the characters are wearing this specific color. It is a signifier of personality, status in the story and is also supposed to show their relationship to other characters.
Tifa is red. She carries a deep hatred for Shinra and her anger is even specifically talked about in the game. She is angry and wanted to take Revenge because Shinra is responsible for killing everyone in her hometown and burning it to the ground.
Aerith has a deep hatred for Hojo because he experimented on her mother and treated Aeriths mother and Aerith herself as nothing but biomaterial to use for experiments. Both women have anger and hatred targeted towards the same thing.
Just like the girls have this emotion in common, so do Zack and Cloud.
Cloud is deeply ashamed of himself. He determinately told Tifa he would make it into SOLDIER 1st Class just to end up being an infantryman. Disappointment is directly tied to this. He is disappointed in himself and beats himself up over things easily. Listen to the battle dialogue in the first remake game. He has lines like "and you call yourself a SOLDIER?" (yes, I looked it up specifically for this blog entry) and is fearful of being useless to his family. Look at the movie. He felt like he couldn't save Denzel, he felt like he couldn't save himself and that led him to running away.
Zack is disillusioned and disappointed with Shinra. I didn't like how he was ignorant to everything in Crisis Core but the more the game progresses, the more Zack grows as a character, I began to like him. It was his dream to become a hero, and he did this through the means of joining Shinra. As a teenager, he lacks the awareness of shinras actions. This is where the disappointment comes from once he realizes what Shinra does secretly.
As I have already mentioned above, each character has an assigned base color and characters that are of significance to each other have an opposition with the purpose of showing their relationship.
It is not limited to romantic interests. It can be antagonist and protagonist as well, as seen with Seifer and Squall. You can see this with Sephiroth and Aerith. The corrupted lifestream is red and black, the lifestream is green and white.
Cloud and Tifa have an opposing color scheme, but parallels sprinkled throughout their designs.
The most prominent opposing design characteristics are of course their hair and their eye color. Blonde spikey and black straight hair, blue and red eyes.
The parallels are their side swept bangs to the right, the single left earring (a typical Nomura staple), the suspenders and having more armor on the left side of the body. I specifically mean the pauldron on Clouds shoulder and Tifas armor for her elbow.
Cloud and Tifa have an elemental opposition as well. Tifa has ice materia and Cloud has fire materia equipped at the start of the game (I noticed this back when I drew Shiva Tifa for the costume festival) just like Clive and Jill do.
Tifa is another female figure with lunar symbolism and ice.
Tying this to ancient mythology, from the top of my head I can name multiple instances where the moon is ruled by a female deity like Selene, Diana, Chang'e and Tsukuyomi.
FFVII goes even further with Tifas lunar symbolism by naming her mother Thea, a giantess from greek mythology. Thea is the mother of the moon goddess Selene and Thea is also the daughter of Gaia.
As you can maybe already tell, giving the female characters the association of ice and the moon is quite popular.
(Icy from Winx Club and Sailor Moon are further examples from other media. Sorceress Edea has ice abilities as well.)
This design choice for love interests is also true for FF13.
I know it is never outright stated that Fang and Vanille are romantically involved, but I think everyone who played the Final Fantasy XIII games can tell that these two have a deeper relationship than mere 'best friends'. Final Fantasy is a heteronormative franchise and the first confirmed queer couple were Dion and his lover from FF16. That is a huge step but look at how long it took for Square Enix to include a queer couple. FF13 nonetheless as a game released in the late 2000s.
Fang was originally supposed to be a man and I have read that there were little changes to the script involving her. Which means that the dynamic stayed the same. The romantic subtext of their relationship would have been even more accepted among people who played the game rather than writing off the relationship between women as sisterly.
As you can see, they also are opposing each other visually. Their designs alone are so interesting to look at. The fur, the beads and jewels. Fangs design is definitely inspired by ancient greco-roman fashion. The sandals, the toga held together by her belt. This woman is soooo cool oh goodness!!!!
This design choice is not limited to Fang and Vanille but applies to Serah and Snow as well. Their key colors are blue and pink.
I don't think I need to write this out in more detail anymore because it has become obvious by the point you are reading this and putting things together in your mind.
Further examples from Dissidia Opera Omnia Designs:
Important to note is that this does not completely apply to Tidus and Yuna. Their key color is blue because Nomura wanted to create a maritime link. Yuna nonetheless has pink details like the ends of her sleeves, the flower petals on her skirt or the red cherry blossom accessory on her obi.
These two do contrast each other in their names. Tidus and Yuna are derived from the okinawan words for sun and night. Once again, the female character is associated with the night and what comes up during the night? The moon! Their names are so cleverly chosen because they perfectly represent their personality. Tidus is lively. Yuna is quiet and speaks in a calm tone.
To sum this blong entry up, the design of the protagonist and their love interest in the Final Fantasy Franchise are often visually opposing each other in their key color or color palette.
Squall in promotional posters for Final Fantasy VIII is shown with a red background while Rinoa is shown with a blue background. Her clothing is blue, the background for her promotional poster is blue. Griever itself has red horns, red fur and red wings and we all know that Squall loves Griever.
This design choice ties nicely into how many antagonists of the games have a purple color. Like Edea from FFVIII or Caius from FFXIII. Edeas dress is black with a light purple gradient. She wears her colorful purple cap and has yellow-purple make-up. For those interested, I wrote a lenghty character design analysis of Sorceress Edea in which I also wrote about the popular design choices for villains and the inspiration from Art Nouveau (peacocks, 1920s fashion and more).
So. Next time a final fantasy game gets released, try to pay attention to what the characters are wearing. What color is their clothing? What relationship do they have compared to other characters?
Because looking at that alone can tell you a lot of information before even playing the game.
(Translated with the help of DeepL.)
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