#iansan

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Genshin Impact Birthday Party (2025) Preview Illustrations

it was suggested to me that i try my hand at redesigning the natlan cast…i’m a bit apprehensive of sharing this bc i’ve seen some truly fantastic redesigns by other artists, but i gave it a shot anyway, at the very least to expand my own mental library of clothing styles. some of these redesigns are much more drastic, others mostly in the details…still, it was fun to explore some of the missed potential in the game :)

design notes:

a quick disclaimer that i do not come from any of the cultures referenced/represented by natlan. please do not consider me an authority on how any character “should” look…i did some basic research for each of them but can’t make promises as to thoroughness or accuracy, so apologies if anything is misrepresentative!

i personally prefer to design characters as a group because it pushes me to give them more variation…ik their shapes and body types are quite a departure from the in-game limitation of a standard 3d model, but this is just for fun. if i weren’t trying to preserve the anime gacha appeal of the original characters, i’d push them even more (esp in terms of age variation! i think citlali would be a lot of fun as an actual old lady w the personality she has)

a challenge i immediately ran into is that natlan is a hodgepodge of a gazillion different cultures across west africa, the americas, the pacific…for these redesigns, i mostly took cues from what i thought were the inspirations for the characters’ respective tribes, their existing appearances, and/or the origins of their names

mualani – hawaiian + samoan + maori + other various polynesian

kinich – mayan + mexican

kachina – navajo + pueblo

xilonen – aztec + mexican

iansan – cherokee

mavuika – aztec

chasca – peruvian + argentinian

citlali – aztec

ororon – west african + emo (which is not historical by any means but i couldn't resist lol)

ifa – argentinian + yoruba

perhaps this is personal preference but imo the brown skin + white hair combination is a very tired look…sure it can look good on individual characters, but when you do it to nearly every dark skinned character you can see a pattern emerge. i could write a whole essay on how i think of it as an attempt to create a head-in-the-sand, completely apolitical fantasy type of black/brown person while leaning into whiteness/lightness as beauty, but…well, long story short, i’m giving the characters dark hair where i can

also, you may notice varesa is missing from the group – maybe i ran out of brain juice or something, but i spent a solid hour on her design and just could not get it to look good lol

one last note – in regard to research and references, i tried my best to look for clothing/accessories predating colonization…but tbh it was difficult to find those, so inevitably some historical european and contemporary western clothing styles got mixed in. perhaps an artist better versed in history and these particular cultures could do a better job at envisioning a cast of characters whose nations were never colonized…

rrr here are some edits I did while I was out of commission,, first time doing this,, I knew I probably wasn't going to be able to draw out full body redesigns for everyone in the Natlan cast so I think this works DKJHKDJHDKH I included some of the redesigns I did for Mavuika, Chasca and Varesa I made beforehand :D I renamed Ororon to Camazotz in my ocs au, cause his design and constellation (bat motif) was definitely more reminiscent of Camazotz, so I leaned into that aspect more for his design (Edit: Hello future Mae here! I just learnt about how Ororon may be derived from the Māori word Ororongo - Sound File, and Oro - To resound/echo, which fits in with the bat motif and the Camazotz reference, along with Ororon's play style in-game! So ignore the renaming thingy here btw - I'll be integrating the Māori aspects when I do a full redesign while also integrating the Camazotz influence seen in Ororon as well!!)

(Another edit from future Mae here! I took out the Tā Moko on Mavuika’s edit as I have learnt that it is not appropriate to draw them as a person who isn’t Māori! I’m sorry if this caused any discomfort! Also, these updates might pop up again if I need to make any changes to these edits - also seriously if there’s any changes that are needed to made, please tell me! I’m more than happy to listen and make changes as soon as possible)