Sneak Peek #14: The Entourage, the Crew, & the Sibling

I'm back with another first look at some new characters coming in the club update. There are many characters in the next update that will play a smaller role just to make the club feel more alive, but not this batch—these are storyline characters. Most are new to you, but I have a few revisions of already revealed characters as well.

Alex's Entourage

First I want to introduce you to some of Alex's people. So far we've only seen Alex within the walls of 21CA, but outside of school he's actually famous. If Connor chooses to hang with Alex, he's gonna be stepping into an entirely new world...

Forte

Florian Forte—just Forte to everyone in the biz—is Alex and Raven's manager. He's a hip guy with a convincingly laid back attitude, but is mercenary when he needs to be. He was formerly with a band but has now taken on a behind the scenes role—a role that's much more lucrative than being a struggling artist.

Fun fact about Forte: You may recall he's in the background of one of Alex's CGs. All I kept from that original design was the beard, and not even the same beard. The character model in that CG actually became Parker later on!

Raven

We already met Raven in the last sneak peek, but now she's very, very pink. This was actually what I always intended her look to be—I was just waiting for the texture asset to go on sale! Like Alex, she always sticks out in a crowd. Which is the only way to be when you're influencer-famous.

Hannah

Hannah is Alex's tiny and hyper-competent assistant. She's the one who schedules out his entire day, takes care of his social media, keeps track of his brand obligations, and more, all so Alex can focus on just being The Talent. She's invaluable most of the time—but sometimes Alex would like her to schedule herself to go away so he can have some more unsupervised free time.

Antonio

And now we come to Antonio, Alex's mysterious and handsome bodyguard. At 21CA Antonio lurks in the shadows and out of sight—but once they're on the street, he's glued to Alex's side to keep him from being mobbed by overzealous fans (a few of which we'll meet in a future sneak peek). 

Isaiah's Dance Crew

Just like Isaiah, many of the 21CA dance students are hitting the club to show off what they can do outside of the rigid instruction they follow in class. Some students from a rival dance academy had the same idea...

Gabriel

We already met one of the dancers from the rival school in the last update—David, Isaiah's high school crush who jerked Isaiah around. When David meets Isaiah again, he'll have a sidekick—Gabriel, another student at the rival school. He looks a little intimidating, but it remains to be seen if he's as big a jerk as David turned out to be...

Skye

Skye is a classmate of Isaiah's. She's here to have a good time. She's not here for your shit. 

Bastien

Bastien had a small redesign. I stole his previous hair for the next character, so he got a haircut. And I took the opportunity to repose him for this placeholder sprite to give him a bit of a knowing smile. In the last update I mentioned he's basically the dance department's Will—I wonder if that means he's as open to certain extracurricular activities as Will is...?

Skinema Sibling

And lastly, I have one more redesign. This one is a little more significant than Raven and Bastien.

Trevor

In the last update, I introduced Trevor as NC17's brother. As I was expanding upon some storyline ideas, I decided I wanted him to be NC's fraternal twin. One brother is the bright, clean-cut one; the other prowls the night like a wildman. But despite their differences, they just might share certain appetites...

The changes I made were:

• I fixed the issue with his clothes that deformed the mesh.
• I changed the shape of his face slightly to more closely match NC. He's not identical to NC, but he has a variation of the same face shape so it's clearer that they're related.
• He got new hair. I wasn't super pleased with the previous hair asset. When looking for a new one, I decided I wanted it to be shorter and with a similar hairline to NC's hair. After cycling through all my unused hair assets, I finally stole Bastien's old hair and it turned out to be just what I was looking for. A sunny echo of NC's punk 'do.
• I matched his eye color to his brother's.
• I changed his eyebrows—the original brows were actually the same as NC's, but they looked different and thinner on Trevor's face. I found new brows that are similar-ish that worked better.
• I reposed him in this sprite to have a semi-mirror of NC's standard sprite pose, and to cap it off, I gave him a half-cocked smile just like his brother.

Much like Trevor, all of these character designs are still subject to change. I've found between the frat party and now the club that the act of creating these models really brings into focus what kind of character they'll be. It's why I'm doing it so early on—how they shape up visually starts to form a certain voice for them in my head, which in turn informs how I will use them in the plot. Sometimes that means a redesign to better fit where the new ideas take me.

That's it for now! There are still more folks to come—it's gonna be a busy night at Atelier 54!