"the sky has no limits"

Alright, 

for Kureha, the kanji for kureha is translated to "crimson leaves" or "autumn foliage”. the first character in her name represents the color deep red or crimson, this kanji represents a shade of red used for something that is close to blood, red is universally tied to passion and intense emotion and anger I think this ties in well with Kureha’s personality and trauma. 

Kureha comes across as bubbly innocent and cheerful but the deep red of his name hints her repressed trauma and inner demon 

red color references her hatred, fear of men and violence that was inflicted on her. the color red embodies the fiery destructive forces of her personal struggles. the color reflects Kureha's vibrant, bright demeanor in the real world and her inner trauma and the bleeding wounded state of her dream self 

as for sou,

his given name means “blue”, blue is a usually seen as a masculine color which often symbolizes calmness, coolness, tranquility, depth, melancholy and hidden emotions but also quiet sorrow, coldness and detachment.

Sou is presented as cool, stoic, composed and aloof student despite presenting himself as masculine he is a deeply damaged individual who grapples with profound loneliness,trauma and longing.

Character design method #1: creating a design from a single idea

Haze’s character design notes

November 11, 2024

Hello, I’m Haze! This time I’ll introduce a few relatively simple character design methods you can try. There are various approaches, so this is just my method. I’d be happy if you find it a helpful reference.

Chibi character design drafts for review

From the chibi to a 6.5 heads design draft

I’m going to show you the workflow for creating a design on a chibi character and turning it into a design with your desired proportions, like the illustration above! 

As you design, you can use the steps below.

Step 1: thinking and surveying

1. Idea

2. Decide on elements

3. Find references

Step 2: creating a sketch

4. Restructure what you studied

-> Consider shape and structure

-> Consider color scheme

-> Consider materials

5. Consider whether your sketch is consistent with your desired elements

6. Draw back and side views

Step 3: Cleanup

7. Clean up the sketch

-> Create 2 or 3 views

I drew this up very quickly, but I’ll break down most of the process of completing a single design. The necessary flow can depend on the medium you’ll use and the details of your design, so my process may have something extra.

Now I’ll explain how to create with the process of thinking and surveying!

Step 1: choose a motif and try personifying it!

When you’re thinking you want to design a character, you generally choose a theme.

For work, I generally get design hints from the theme given, like this: “I want you to draw a main character. She should be a teenage girl. She’ll look like she fights with a sword in a fantasy world.” Sometimes I get instructions like that and find that I don't know what to draw. 

And in my own creations…

I want to draw cute girl characters, but I always draw the same clothes

I want a unique design, but I don’t know what to draw.

…those are my worries. In these cases—

I try to stop and not draw carelessly based on habit.

I stop because if I keep drawing without a plan for how to craft the impression I want, I end up with vague, random things like “a design like a main character” or “some kind of cute character”, and the finished character is lackluster, or you can’t tell what kind of character they are. 

Those are tragedies.

When I stop, I write down what comes to mind about the image of the character I want to draw and my motif. When I write things down, I can get random thoughts out of my head and they become clear and let me review them accurately.

Somehow I think you can easily pick out the themes you’ve described there.

Please choose one of them and try out the design method I’m teaching.

The introduction got long, but at the time of writing this it’s fall, and lots of fragrant olive flowers are blooming around my neighborhood, and I find them charming somehow, so I’ll try making a character based on fragrant olive flowers. Now we’ll start thinking about character design.

1. Survey your motif

^ The fragrant olive flowers I’m using as my theme

Here’s a photo of the fragrant olive flowers I’ve chosen. First I study the flowers and ask myself “What are the elements that make up fragrant olive flowers?” I make notes on the things I notice.

Sketches and notes I made while studying my motif

What kind of shape does it have? Thickness?

What kind of impression do you get from the motif as a whole?

How many colors are there?

What kind of color scheme do they make?

Considering the above, roughly put your motif’s visual details into words as well as you can. 

Because I chose a plant, there aren’t as many visual details, but I can study the design from other angles by asking things like:

Why this design?

Why this shape?

Why this pattern?

to include factors you don’t know at a glance. In such cases, I write down things I ask myself “Why?” about to look them up.

2. Look into the cultural background of your motif

Other than the info from studying your motif visually, 

look into the elements from a cultural standpoint. To be specific, look up things like: flower language, related folklore and stories, what status and use it might have in everyday life, and the motif’s history. At this point, write down rough notes about your research without scrunitzing what you’ll take or leave.

(Though almost all the fragrant olive trees in Japan are male, and I wanted to make a girl character with my motif this time, so I ended up leaving things like that out…)

I come into contact with lots of information while researching, so I feel like my stock of miscellaneous trivia has increased, but I digress.

3. Coming up with ideas (association game)

^ Sorting the items I came up with in the association game into those I could use

Once you’ve finished surveying your motif and looking into the cultural background, you’ll have more and more ideas for your character design. That’s the process for Step 1: thinking and surveying, coming up with ideas. We’ve finally come to the start of character designing.

Why the association game?

That’s my process for extracting keywords from my motif (fragrant olive) that could become part of my design or theme. 

There are pros to being able to put visuals into words and think logically on my design concept rather than rely on feelings, such as:

It gives me a range of ideas.

I examine and put into words the factors that make up my motif.

Derive ideas from factors that seem closely related to the motif.

Visualize my impressions and put them into words.

This time I tried association with what I call the box method. Explaining association methods isn’t the point of this lesson, so I’ll reluctantly leave it out, but there are various methods, so I’d like to summarize them one day…

4. Choosing elements: gather keywords and scrutinize them carefully

Now I examine the words I've extracted from the association game from the perspective of things I might be able to use in my design.

Keywords that might be a theme to unify the whole thing

Things that might determine the vibe of the character

Things that might become part of the character’s silhouette

I’ll sort them into categories like these

^ Examining the keywords from the association game

I go farther, extracting the keywords that feel instinctive after sorting them into categories. By instinctive, I mean literally those keywords that catch my eye or appeal to me, like “this might be good” or “this keyword might be close to the direction I want my design to take”. I’ve chosen five this time, but please choose at least three.

Why at least three?

By mixing three, the need to mix and reorganize the elements that feel right for the design emerges, but this process of mixing forces you to filter them in your head as the creator in the process of choosing the things you will and won’t adopt in your design, which creates originality.

If you take your idea from one element, your design  may unconsciously resemble it or turn out very common. For example, using the fragrant olive motif, if I simply used the shape of the flowers and covered the whole thing in the same shape, even if I'm not really referencing any particular design, there’s the risk it could lead to tragic troubles like plagiarism.

As well as cases of having unexpected conflict, to have the design you spent time thinking up turn out common… that would be a tragedy too.

A long time ago I consulted someone familiar with copyright law, and mixing at least three elements to avoid a design looking too much like any one thing was the answer I received, so that’s my personal policy.

The keywords I chose will become the concept and elements of the design I’m creating.

5. Find references: create a vision board

Using the keywords I just chose, I gather visuals like information and reference photos and illustrations I think are good. The result is called a vision board.

A vision board uses visuals for what you can’t explain in words. Some in the industry may add different nuance, but that’s the broad definition.

^ The vision board I made this time

I’ve blurred it for copyright reasons, but using the keywords, I pulled together broad reference images of things like:

Characters that give a similar impression

Clothes that give a similar impression or that appealed to me strongly

Photos of flowers

Accessories

Haircuts

Faces

The trick is… choose real photos like those of actresses or clothes rather than illustration as much as possible, so that when you make your chibi illustration, you can reduce the risk of your creation accidentally resembling a particular artist’s work.

There are various places to choose reference photos from:

Taking them yourself (go for a walk, go to the store, to museums, the library, etc)

Photos in your cell phone camera tool

Searching the internet

Etc

They’re just reference materials, so try not to use or edit pictures whose rights are unclear or those made by others as the start of your design. That leads to lots of trouble.

Great job making it this far!

Next time I’ll finally explain step 2: creating a sketch, and I think I’d like to get into the process of drawing a character design!

I’ll be happy if you read the next one as well! Thank you for reading this far.

Learn character design tricks from zero! Anyone can design

the author uses colors in the characters names to hint the characters hidden traits, true identities and emotional struggles, traumas within the dream world 

the reason that the kanji has Japanese kanji for colors instead of regular kanji for color is to highlight the complex realities of the cast 

my description is very sparse but I will try my best to explain it in this post. 

the kanji in Mashiro’s name means “真白, pure white” in Japanese it can also mean “blank”. 

white is the color that means purity it refers to his desire for purity and his struggle to keep his hidden side pure and untouched by the worlds expectations and the facades he uses to hide his trauma and gender dysphoria 

white is the color of perfection this correlates to how mashiro wants to be seen as the perfect man and not let anyone see any weaknesses 

this is seen heavily in his prince charming persona that he portrays in school

white symbolizes innocence this can reference to mashiro's apparent innocence that is not yet defined or corrupted by the psychological battles around them 

white is a color that is a blank and natural state that is not yet dyed by any color this can also not how Mashiro doesn’t know how to define himself this aspect also symbolizes the blank state nature of the intersex nature of their body and their identity it represents their lack of a fixed identity or gender before graduating into a defined identity 

Yes there is, its a pivitol part of his character development, 

before riddle initially respected his mother and credited her successes, he has difficulties accepting what his mother did to him was abuse, the reason why he didn’t question it was that it is painful to know that the person who was supposed to love and protect was actually hurting you and all the sacrifices that you made were for nothing which was twice as painful in book. 7 the dream allows him to confront the pain she caused him. 

this is what makes Riddles confrontation with the abyss version of his mother the turning point of his character development

when riddle woke up with his mother reading to him he cites that if he slept his mother would yell that he would wish that he never woke up this here is riddle knowing that his mother was never so enduring mentioning his he breaks free from the toxic conditioning riddle acknowledged that while her style of education made him strong but rejects the reality she represents this is him acknowledging the abuse in his dream 

all this is from the same riddle who is blindly admired his mother and believes that her control was for his own good to accepting what she done to him was abuse when riddle rejects the abyss impersonation of his mother he is rejecting the version of her he was conditioned to love and obey.

the confrontation ends with riddles resolves to be his own person and no longer be a puppet on her strings. the confrontation is riddles ultimate rejection of his mothers control and emotional liberation from her allowing him to define himself as an individual rather than an extension of her legacy  this is the key development is riddles shift from obeying the rules his mothers then the queen of hearts to forging his own path 

While the group was trying to find out how to defeat swing deuce was the one who thought up the plan, instead of relying on his fists to solve problems Deuce is showing complex thinking of how to defeat him this is tremendous since Deuce is known for taking the easy way out is now thinking of complex solutions.

Yes, Crowley likely sent the MC to the mines expecting them to be lost or killed thereby hiding the evidence of his summoning. 

Crowley sending Mc to a dangerous place like the abandoned mine which was inhibited by a dangerous monster to remove any evidence of this failed ritual and by sending them to a dangerous location would ensure Crowley doesn’t have to report a “magicless human” to authorities since they would find out they were summoned and Crowley would be suspected of it. 

yes in fact Crowley surprise Crowley’s surprise when he found out that Mc couldn’t use magic could be the biggest hint that Crowley summoned Mc his reaction could mean that he expected a sorcerer for his sinister agenda but didn’t expect to summon someone with no magical ability.

that is a strong possibility,

Grim claimed that he sneaked in but that's fishy since there is a barrier placed in school managed by Crowley yet grim was able to sneak it so I think Crowley put blind spots in the barrier on purpose so grim can sneak in.

Crowley harbored a suspicious interest in Grim and and keeps him close to MC, even showed an unusual amount of concern for his we-being hinting at a hidden agenda. He often bribes Grim with food to preform tasks and has mentioned having high expectations for both MC and Grim.

yes, it was heavily implied that Grim did not arrive at NRC by coincidence it was suggested that he was either brought here or manipulated into appearing.

Grim said he has no memories other than being hungry and alone and was drawn to NRC this might suggest that he was transferred here by someone else. 

and there also the timing of his arrival it was consider too perfect by other characters occurring when a series of dangerous overblot begin to take place.

I lean heavily towards being manipulated into appearing since we know that there was someone who can be heavily manipulative to make everything seem like a coincidence. That Grim appearing could be engineered by someone else to make it look like a coincidence. 

Yes, Riddle had lingering doubts about his lifestyle but was forced to convinced himself that it was necessary, proper and beneficial to survive. 

Riddle know that he didn’t have a childhood like others missed out on holidays, playing and making friends because his mother forbidden them.

Riddle knew that his strict schedule was stifling because he secretly snuck out to play with Trey and Chenya the fact that he had to break the rules to experience happiness proves he knew he “normal” was not truly normal 

Riddle expressed jealousy towards kids who could dress up and go trick or treating during halloween or celebrate holidays acknowledging his situation was isolating 

Vivid Voyager 

Blaze Battler part 2

Blaze Battler part 1