#collarva

We weren't super satisfied with the face of Collarva so I did a few iterative takes on new directions we could take them. As you might tell we wound up going for something around B!

With Collarva->Plumask they were looking for an early game lepidopteran (butterfly/moth) and I'm the go-to bug girl. There are a lot of moths and butterflies in monster games (bugs are the origins of the genre nobody is surprised) and I wanted to represent a type of moth that hadn't gotten much love yet. Plume moths are dusty looking creatures that don't look like they should be able to fly at a glance, it pulled me towards making something eerie and ghostly!

Image source here.

I don't want to color anyone's read of the line too much, but my general overarching theme was about picking up various personas/behaviors/aspects like a mossy rock until you find yourself as an adult and shed what you don't need. Both Axolati and Collarva are pulling from my teenage theatre kid life, uhuhu.

You can actually see the concept art for most beasties in the Beastiepedia under Morphology->Visual Studies. It even lists concept artists and sprite artists! (Research is concept/pose work and Videography refers to their in-game sprite and animation based off those poses)

In terms of mechanics/design we often don't have too much direct say. Since the color palette is often relevant we typically know what types of moves they'll specialize in. In my experience I'll pitch a concept and then give a narrative/emotional description that they use to inform stats/moves/etc. There are maybe one or two times where I lent a hand with stats/moves but I don't have a ton of time to play the game outside of work so I was always a bit too behind on the meta to contribute much, personally.