#documents folder

3- What was the first thing you decided on, the character's name, appearance, personality or their role in the story?

Personality and role, definitely! For context, she started off as a Lobotomy Corporation OC based on one of my first playthroughs of the game, said nugget (term for said workers ingame :P) was instead named Summer, and as can be seen the only things of the og nugget they were based on that stayed were just. The dark hair (which did still change to a dark purple instead of black) and the Mountain of Smiling Bodies gear.

As for her appearance and name, her appearance majorly changed except for her dark hair being the same (though ofc the MoSB gear staying), while her name started as Summer from the randomized nugget name she got. I remember being stuck between her name being Sable and Monica (or Monika) for a while before settling on Monica; no real reason Behind her name being that other than I liked it for her :)

As for her personality, that is probably the first thing that was really solid (though she was a bit more of a silly rascal/prankster at first) and the thing that hasn't changed much through developing her more, although some of the Reasoning for it changed due to later changes/additions to what she has going on in her background ofc. She was always intended to come off as Basically "weird, a bit scary, but kind and a bit unaware of just how she comes off." Originally, a lot of that just came from the idea of a higher level agent dealing with higher levels of insane bullshit coming off as Very weird and unnerving to literally anyone else. That ended up getting a bit more fleshed out with the later addition of the flower abnormality Majorly fucking up her memory and the head of that higher level department basically using that excuse to get an agent that'd do just about anything they'd say. With those additions, it basically ended up instead going "kind person fucked up beyond repair in some ways turns to going 'thog don't caare' to 99% of situations because they come off as unnerving and don't think anything they do would fix that." TLDR general idea of a bit unnerving but kind person mostly stayed but got elaborated on lol.

As for role, the general of her being a higher-level agent working in the deeper areas of the facility was always pretty consistent, but for a while she was in the state of in that main kinda set of OCs doing stuff but not really Being one of those OCs doing stuff. Her connections and overall Everything Else she had going on were kind of up in the air for a while (as in "this is a developed character that has does and will continue to do things" instead of "neat character idea & design :)) until the flowers addition & talking about her and other characters w/ @somberine and realizing "oh hey connecting xyz characters make things so much worse" and kinda developing the overall wtf is going On with the set of characters Monica's a part of in general. She definitely ended up affecting more story things/affecting other characters than the initial "local kind weirdo" was probably intended to though lmao. (+ some early Summers/Monicas below :))

4- And reverse, which one of the four things did you struggle with the most?

Name was pretty shrimple as, other than changing it from her ingame name, I never really had a moment of "oh god I need the perfect name" as it was just pretty much "yeah that name vibes that's a Monica i think."

As for appearance, again having Some changes over time, but most of her appearance after the first proper drawing I did of her stayed pretty much the same since. If anything, I think I struggled (and still struggle) with her MoSB suit, and I think if I drew her in it again I would definitely redesign it as I still don't like how it looks in the drawings it appears in. I settled on her distorted and EGO designs pretty quickly and easily, and the same for her gear and brooch.

Her personality I think I struggled with a little bit in terms of trying to properly work out "okay here's B, how the fuck did we get from A to B" because. well. Point B is a skilled killer who genuinely does not see why people would be freaked out by eating corpses while point A is a doctor who probably would freak the fuck out if they got overwhelmed in a med bay. You can see the issue here. Solution ended up being working out connections with other characters and kind of making that point B instead a situation of crungling and fucking up point A into the result of point B. She's probably fine

On the other hand, I think role was pretty steady and her affect on the overall story/other characters kind of naturally came from her personality and situation interacting and clashing with the other characters as we kind of developed them all in sync !

What was the thought process behind their appearance? Did you go mostly for the aesthetic or are there other reasons they look the way they do?

Breaking this into a few points.

As for her normal person and not fucked up creature design, there's nothing too special about her design! It mostly came from aesthetic/just going "okay that looks better / vibes more I think" for her normal Not In Lcorp Gear Or Fucked Up Design.

For her suit/weapon, they're mostly the normal matching gear for MoSB (and also are the primary inspiration for. well. her being a cannibal as the special affect of the suit ingame is "the agent can walk over bodies to heal themselves (which gets rid of the corpse) :)"), but I leaned more on the teeth and got rid of the faces as I felt the teeth leaned more into the cannibalism focus while the faces I felt would clutter the design. The addition of flowers to the suit and weapon itself later (e.g. sketch of the two hammers with the original one mostly being goop and teeth and the second one having a more plant / insect theme) is intentional as it kind of ties into "this is not just something he has this is Hers now" in terms of well. she has this shit under control now

Gifts. the flower abno and its gift (the flower brooch) are pretty simple - it's meant to be kinda symbolic of her reliance on running from her problems basically through addiction (the flower brooch itself is usable and is not just for show) even if just as a safety blanket of sorts. She later gives it away to Anthony as a result of trying to quit doing that and actually deal with her problems :) she trusts Anthony to have it unlike herself :) this is a foolproof plan

She does have a gift from MoSB, but instead of the ingame mask, I decided to represent that as just her having fucked up teeth (whether sharp or blunt) and generally her body Also being kinda fucked up. I think if I draw more pieces that actually show her teeth like that, I'd probably make them primarily blunt but More as I often feel that having regular human teeth but Wrong is more unsettling than more carnivorous teeth for someone who's a cannibal. assigned while "gifts" are given by the abnormality to the person. In Monica's case, her weapon and suit came, of course, from the original nugget she was based on, though I made em look a biit different as I thought the focus on teeth worked more for her Eating Corpses Thing whereas the faces I felt would clutter the design a bit (and also i didnt like them .) She got basically gift of "you can regen and eat bodies now :))))" from MoSB, which I decided to represent as her teeth being fucked up (although not sharp/classic carnivore ish teeth as I felt blunt / more "normal" looking teeth would look More fucked up)