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This was made for a school sci-fi project, we just had to make a mock screenshot, but I went a little overboard and built up the whole narrative and story line. It's set inside a post-apocalyptic city inspired by a mix of Kowloon, Made in Abyss (2013 – ongoing manga), Library of Ruina (2021 game) and I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream (1965 short story/essay). You play as Cathy, slowly making your way down the many layers of the city, B367 and piecing together the truth of the city - that the whole place is just a battery harvesting people's energy to power a giant spaceship where the main population lives.
I originally wanted the main character to be more simplified and silly against the grim surroundings, and have other characters be more realistic. However, I tried drawing her more realistically and really liked the design so I want to lean into it a little, also as I don’t want her to look too childish. I kept her face and features soft and round, but I wanted more messy, ragged hair and clothes.
Playing with the stylisation, I liked this drawing where I kept her body the same, but did more exaggerated big round eyes, nose and ears, so I stuck with it. The other characters will still be more realistic and detailed in a way more typical to horror and dark fantasy, I want to incorporate more textures in them too while keeping Cathy smooth and simple, with somewhat minimal shading if I can restrain myself.
Usually when I make characters, I draw what I imagine them to look like off the top off my head, then build their story, and then go back to finish the design and especially clothing based on that. This was the initial concept, so I then built up this character in the form of writing. I made two documents, one for our main character and one for the general worldbuilding. They are embedded here.
I gave the dad a longer, sharper face and obligatory glasses. I wasn’t sure on the hair, but I didn’t like the neater styles so I tried a more sleepless scientist look, I want him to look more ominous and untrustworthy at the start, making your interactions more eerie and suspenseful, and you only grow more suspicious throughout the game, but by the end he turns out to be a good guy just trying to protect his family. I kept the bottom left design.
I quite liked the side swept design, so I used that in her bangs for the final design. I leaned into a more into her character of doctor’s daughter who secretly prefers engineering, with the simultaneously doctor and lab coat. She also has dungarees; I thought they looked fun and makes her more childish but also used a lot of squares giving her a more dependable look. For the bag, my thought process was “I’d like a shoulder bag, but they’re always too small” -> “Extend it.” so it’s 2 bags connected. This mirrors the city, and the cramped invention side of things makes her design more sci-fi-esque, and she did make it herself, so it shows she’s more of an inventor than she may let on. It also has all the tools you could want, a stopwatch which any resident would have, as it keeps track of when they need to go back to sleep. It is not a normal clock, as the city doesn’t have a day and night cycle, you’re simply either sleeping or not sleeping. It can also be used as a backpack, and the bottom bag is removable. The belt on the left was removed in the final, as it felt unnecessary and made it seem more like a trench coat than a lab coat.
I first decided the tones and then just gradient mapped and hue layered the colours. I liked the first tones better, but the bag didn’t stand out enough. Instead of the jarring appearance of the second, I gave it a lighter gradient to the pale colour.
The orange was my favourite colour when gradient mapping (I started consulting with my friends here), but they felt a little too cute, which is a little too atypical for sci-fi in this context. I made everything darker and blue, but after trying some different colours everyone missed the orange look so I backtracked and tried to mix the two together. I do think the mix of warm and cool colours represent her very well, though they still don’t fit into the duller grim aesthetics.
I did think the bag being blue looked a little strange, so I went in with the red colour layer and made it brown instead and put some on her hair too to balance it out. It will make her face stand out better in-game and separates the bag from the clothing better.
The implementation of the red makes Cathy’s design split complimentary, which is one of my favourite schemes to use.
Her skin tone has gotten darker than her previous design, as I thought due to the setup of B367, people on higher layers would be darker and vice versa. I feel this would become a status symbol, like the old Chinese idea that pale skin mean nobility as they didn’t have to work or go outside, but flipped. Cathy lives near the top layer, as her dad’s doctor business does very well.
Regarding the very big difference between the first and final design, I originally wanted her to be a very quiet, blank slate sort of child, not only is that boring, but the story has changed so she is breaking puzzles set by her genius engineer dad, so she’s become much more competent. I think she fits the story much better this way and allows us to get more into sci-fi technicalities.
I drew some more concepts, and this cute girl appeared. I initially don’t know who she was but adding in characters makes the picture much more interesting. In the original concepts all the cables look like they're connecting to her, a little bit of foreshadowing. I did really want to draw what the npcs would look, so while I decided to stick to an early concept from before she existed, I put the girl looking down at us from the balcony. I tried making her younger and shorter too, but the silhouette looked much better in the first, so I’m keeping it. I imagined her as reoccurring character who knows more than she lets on.
I wanted to reuse Cathy’s old concept here, but she went through a similar pipeline of developing lore makes her more sophisticated. The only thing I didn’t want to change was the haircut. After the first concept, I thought some kind of cyber Chinese dress would look neat, but I missed the dress’s trail from the first design so the two got merged. Originally it split in the middle, but I wanted her to look more uneven, so I moved it to the right. I also gave her head tubes, for lore. The back of the dress was tough for me; I wanted to use the cyan of the hair but eventually decided grey looked best.
For her story - when the battery cities are made, they’d send around 3 scientists into the cities to look after the residents and make sure nothing unexpected happens. In exchange, they receive eternal life and can carry on their research infinitely within the battery, though they may never leave. They are also exempt from the energy harvesting, which is what the tubes attached to Q are for. I’m… honestly not entirely sure how that would work, maybe they are technically having their energy taken but it’s being put back through the tubes. This also solved the strange time problem of Cathy’s dad being one of the inventors of the machine but still being in it a century after it was built.
He invented the batteries and became one of the 3 scientists within B367, slowly growing to doubt whether the intention is truly for the greater good. Then he falls in love with Cathy’s mother and decides to abandon his role and immortality to have a family, becoming a doctor, hence having no tubes. The 3 scientists are split between the layers of the city top, middle and bottom. Cathy’s dad was in charge of the top, Q is the middle zone and has the greatest area and access to all parts of the city. I imagine the caretaker of the lower levels to be a very scary, distorted man creature. I imagine her to be a meddlesome person, she hasn’t heard from the doctor in years and now his daughter has appeared in her zone, realising she’s now doomed, helps push her towards her end. Also, Q is named after one of my online friends. They approve.
This was less difficult than it was time consuming. I spent about 23 hours on the lineart… I got to sneak in many things in whenever I started getting bored, such as 10 missing posters, hidden letters spelling out ‘y_u _r_ heart’ as a hint to the true ways of the battery, T+K left by Cathy’s mum and dad, Kai was here, two birds that represent my ocs, and probably much more that I forgot about.
I also set up some future puzzles, the door on the central left building is closed and must be opened through a puzzle on the left, to do that you’ll need a carabiner clip to attach yourself to the wall and not fall off (many electrical systems here are on the sides of buildings, so this is how they’d get around that). You would get this by talking to Q when you first enter, and gain after inspecting everything. I realise the game’s playstyle has become more like that of the Professor Layton games and a spot the item puzzle, due to the sheer amount of detail I added.
Regarding colours, the darkness of the first image made everything look very dull and I also decided not to use the old palette I made for the same reason, so I cranked up the light more than I’d initially planned and gave everything a kind of glowing effect. This made things too bright and inviting, as this is supposed to be a sci-fi horror and I want thinks to stay dark and mysterious, so I went back and forth making things darker and less saturated without it looking too boring. I also added a metal texture over everything, that gave it a kind of foggy look. I almost went with the second to last picture but decided a little bluer would be worth it and added the first drawing over it on a low opacity, despite the other being more suitable for the genre.
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