#edit.qd

Evie - Tapeworm

"Stuck with a damaged relic inside her head, Evie is dying as her consciousness is being slowly overwritten with an engram of a dead rockerboy. Now she's a ticking time bomb, desperately trying to find the cure, while fighting gradually increasing seizures and Johnny himself."

Evie was the first OC I had the concept ready for. Since she's my V and shares many personality traits/experiences with the player character, I went for what happened to be the easiest route for me - taking V's condition and relic malfunctions, and turning them into a source of horror.

Ever since my initial playthrough, V's condition and the effect it has on their mental state were (and still are) some of the most interesting aspects of the story. While never being the focus, a lot about it is certainly hinted through V's actions and dialogue choices and I couldn't help but add my own made-up lore to that.

Bearing all that in mind, I had the concept for her cover art ready almost instantly and while I ended up enhancing the vision a bit, it's still mostly how I initially envisioned it - the close up of Evie wearing Johnny's tank top, her face shattered into a few fragments, each one showing a different glitchy facial expression.

Thalia - Hard Reboot

"Thalia's last venture into cyberspace did not end well. She wakes up in an abandoned facility, suffering from cyber-seizures and visions of her long lost soulmate - Crystal. Amidst isolation and hopelessness, ghosts of the past end up being her only comfort, when it turns out that the facility was never truly abandoned."

Thalia caused me little to none issue as well. I instantly knew she'll be wearing a damaged netrunning suit, showing off its details and damage by having her back turned to the camera. Even as a concept it felt very Dead Space-esque and Dead Space was my main inspiration for the atmosphere and the feeling of loneliness.

It fits her very well too. Sully lost her nomad family after choosing to sacrifice herself to save them. Assumed deceased, she wouldn't stand a chance to survive if she wasn't found half-dead by the third party that decided to take her in. In a way she died that day and got a second chance, this time as a powerful netrunner designated to take down a big corporation.

Despite the support and not being really alone, she couldn't help but feel isolation and longing for her old family. She knew she has to find Crystal, not only as an actual requirement to complete her assignment, but especially for herself.

Putting her seemingly alone in a big industrial complex after the netdive gone wrong and giving her a glitchy ghost of Crystal as the only entity to talk to turned out to be a great way to touch on what she was feeling during their time of separation - illness, isolation and hopelessness.

Crystal - Crystal Palace

"What was supposed to be an easy gig turned into a nightmare as Crystal got trapped in Megabuilding H4. With the way of entry sealed off and her cyberdeck damaged, her only option is to dive deep into a compound full of hostiles, learn the truth behind the building-wide quarantine and, most importantly, survive."

Reading about Evie and Thalia, you probably got the idea that I love psychological horror. That's very true and it's partially the reason why Crystal caused me so many issues. She went through her own personal hell too, but it's a bit similar to Thalia's, and anything I came up with would end up being a rehash of Thalia's.

I decided to take a different approach. How about making her look like a stylish ps1/ps2 survival horror protagonist and putting her in a less of a personal situation - just drop the psychological horror aspect altogether. How about trapping her in a desolate building full of psychos, Condemned-style? What's a better place to do that than the abandoned building V was supposed to take Hanako to for Takemura? Well, Megabuilding H4, because there's no way I'm working with vanilla lighting inside or outside of the former! (at least not today)

She's a merc, so it felt natural for an unsuccessful gig to be the reason she got trapped in the building. Add a conspiracy and countless numbers of rooms to search through and it's beginning to feel like a PS2 Resident Evil clone!

Since settling on the less personal and more classic survival horror experience I couldn't get that one Parasite Eve render out of my head. I knew I had to replicate the vibe. Parasite Eve is a weird one though - it's as much of a JRPG as it is a survival horror - it's experimental and even its sequel didn't replicate its gameplay, choosing a safer, Resident Evil-clone approach instead. I went for that exact mix of 90s atmospheric video game renders and experimental japanese games to set the right mood for the cover.

Luckily the pic I shot already kinda looked like a PS1 render, so aside from the color temperature I didn't have to change anything. The lighting on concrete and overall vibe remind me of Final Fantasy VII's one specific promo render (even the character placement looks kinda similar) and its pre-rendered environments (specifically the industrial ones). I'm very proud of the logo, using a Wipeout/JSRF-style Y2K-futuristic font with a japanese caption above that reads "Futuristic Survival Horror Action" reminiscing of Metal Gear's "Tactical Espionage Action" slogan, and it's placing, leaving as much attention as it can to the background.

Conclusion

While initially I intended to focus on the PS1/PS2 survival horror vibe, after considering my limitations I had to divert from that a bit. Still, I had so much fun coming up with cover ideas for my girls and thinking about what places would their respective stories take them. Kinda makes me wish these games actually existed. And looking back on it, it seems ironic that the part I struggled with the most (Crystal), turned out to most accurately capture my original vision.

I'm really glad I was able to get it done using only the console photo mode and GIMP. Sure, it's not without its limitations, but it's still one of the more flexible photo modes I used and with a bit of tinkering with sliders, lighting and pose exploitation, and you can go a long way, arguably even on the last-gen consoles, since they didn't bother to add new photo mode and character editor features since the last old-gen update.

That being said, two years in it's much harder coming up with something that's remotely interesting and isn't just a rehash of pose + angle combo I probably already used at some point. At the same time I do most of my exploration on console, sitting comfortably on my couch, so modded photo mode poses are out of equation for the most part.

Now projects like this is what makes me wanna boot up Cyberpunk 2077 again, spend an entire evening on shooting pictures and continue thinking about it for the next week - it's what rekindles my love for it and virtual photography in general. What I mean is that I'm starving for inspiration and I can't wait to come up another cool idea (or get inspired by someone else) to play around with photo mode, post something cool and maybe even talk a bit more about my inspirations, and the things I like in general.