Meet Freya - Mistress of Fire - v0.2

For the first character intro for v0.2, I 'm happy to introduce Freya, the Mistress of Fire.

Freya is part of the Lab storyline. She has complete control of over fire and is very interested in setting this new world ablaze. She took over her own world with her sister, and turned her half of it to ash, only letting those she deems as entertaining stay alive as her playthings.

Freya's Inspiration -

Now that we're on v0.2 and I've gotten rid of everything that was in the game before reworking it, not every character will have a direct inspiration. Freya is one of those that doesn't really have a direct inspiration. I was actually inspired to make her when working on her sister, tentatively titled, "The Ice Queen". Which was inspired by, well, various ice queen type characters. Mostly Emma Frost and Elsa. While working on her, I thought it would be fun if she had a sister who controlled fire. So I took some of the design elements I was working on for the Ice Queen and made them fire themed instead. They're meant to be opposites, but still similar. A bit like two sides of the same coin. So you can speculate on what that means for the Ice Queen design. To help with the fire aesthetic, I also incorporated ideas from the Gerudo tribe from Zelda, most notably the tan skin and bright red hair. I had thought about giving her to blue lips as well, but it really didn't fit with this design. That really only works for Urbosa and Riju because of the blue clothes they wear.

So no direct inspiration this time, more of a mix of ideas and inspiration. Which is how normal character design generally works. There's still going to be some characters with direct inspirations later on, but there's also going to be a lot of characters like Freya that are a bit more original and based more off of concepts and a mix of different ideas.

So far, Freya has turned out to be my favorite design. I know this is going to come as a world shattering surprise, but I've got a thing for anime women with lips, especially if they have dark skin, and if they have red lips and dark skin that's just peak. Which is a really rare thing to see. Off the top of my head, I can only think of a handful of characters like that, Rakshata Chawla from Code Geass, and then a couple from eroge who's names I don't know off the top of my head. Now that I've had a good amount of practice refining the Waifu Wonderland style while working on v0.1, I had to try to make one. Especially since I have so much more time right now. I can take the extra time needed to make adjustments and polish the artwork a bit more. Rather than hitting the deadline and just having to release what I've got finished. I've got a feeling I'm going to have a lot of trouble with her scene though. Mainly because I'm sure I'm going to be obsessing over the details a lot more than usual lol.

Next Up/New Art Schedule

That being said, next up should be Freya's scene, but if I have issues getting it to where I want it to be, I may end up doing another character CG next instead. Mainly just to make sure there's something out in time. Character CG generally takes less time, so if I get close to the deadline and Freya's scene isn't going to be done on time, I'll switch to another character. Which will be someone that's going to be included in in the first iterative update, v01.2. We'll see what happens though. I don't really have a strict schedule on which character or scene I do in what order. I have a list of artwork needed for each update up to v0.2 (with spots reserved for polls), but my only real goal is to make sure something is finished and released by the deadline. Otherwise, I try to just go with the flow and do whichever character I want to see the most at that time. I try to alternate character and scene, but it's more important to me to stay on schedule. As long as something gets released, that means I'm still on schedule. As soon as a post gets delayed, that adds to dev time. Which can add up very very quickly.

Either way, next art post will be Saturday. Currently planning on doing one art post on Wednesday and then one Saturday. That way, I have 3 days to work on them. Since I usually take Sundays off, unless I'm feeling particularly inspired.

And one final note, since I'm working on small monthly updates and also the next full version, I'll always say in the character intro title what they'll be added to. Freya is being added to the next full version, v0.2. I have a scheduled date of when I want to release v0.2, but I'm going to wait until we're a bit closer before I announce it. I want to make sure I can keep the current art schedule while also working on the game first.

Anyway, I hope you like Freya as much as I do, and look forward to seeing her appear in the game in v0.2!