#i think it's fun to look for parallels between Sayu and other nsr characters

[crabbycatboy]

The second part of my "Sayu & other NSR artists collaboration" series!

click for better quality! (mobile tumblr ate the picture. again.)

[gamebunny-advance]

@Civilian AU!Anon

Here's Kayane of the Civilian AU! 

Aw, she’s pretty cute! I like the Miku-style detached sleeves, they’re a cute reference, and the emphasis on the Sakura blossom motif is cute too. I really like the transparent layer on her skirt! I’m a little curious to see how the “black light” phase is going to work since she’s already starting with dark colors. Maybe she becomes a blinding light, lol.

I also like the variations on the teams’ symbols/colors, so they’re still parallels, but still unique for the swaps. Very nice!

More thoughts under the cut since they got too long for the tags and I have some visual aids this time.

I knew that she’d be a mermaid from the silhouettes you sent in, but it’d also be cool to see a non-mermaid Kayane.

Fun Fact: Some of Sayu’s original concepts had her as a bunny themed idol. You can see some of this concept art on the wall during Sayu’s defeat cutscene.

I think that mixing themes can work, but I’m having a hard time following the through line between “Sakura” and “mermaid.” The through line for Sakura seems to be the Japanese pop idol influences. As mentioned before, there are clearly Miku influences in the design and Sakura are associated with Japan first and foremost. And that’s all fine, I think that isolated, all those themes could make a very cute character design.

I guess what’s throwing me off is that *neither Kayane or Sayu are associated with Sakura, so the addition of it makes me want to see an even greater emphasis on it rather than it just be an “icon” on her outfit.

I think I’ve said this before, but when it comes to AUs, I like to see a focus on what makes the AU different from the original, so since the Sakura theme is unique, I would love to see it get pushed further.

I want to see “Kayane if she was a virtual idol like Sayu.” more than, “Kayane if she was Sayu.” I know those statements sound very similar, but there’s nuance that makes them different. The former is a deconstruction and reconstruction of the pieces of each character, and the latter is a fusion of both wholes. Neither is necessarily better than the other, and they both have their places and uses, but I have a preference for the former most of the time.

As a personal example, let’s look at my recent Kun3h0 x 1010 swaps.

I would say that the first pass is closer is a “fusion” because it takes White and puts him Kun3h0′s outfit, just in his theme colors. There are some elements that changed to fit him: the belt accessory now resembles NJ’s screen instead of a rabbit, the heart motif was swapped for a star (I associate White with stars, but that isn’t a canon element), and the design on the boots changed from the speakers to more resemble the original pattern on the 1010s legs. And besides the outfit, there were some elements that were added/changed to keep Kun3h0′s elements from being completely erased: the skin turned pink because Kun3h0 has a human skin tone (and pink is a normal skin tone in the NSR universe) and his irises had to change from white to purple because the sclera aren’t black anymore.

The second pass first asks these questions: What makes a Kun3h0 unit a Kun3h0, and a 1010 a 1010? I decided that the most important parts of Kun3h0 were the rabbit-ear headphones, the boots, and the gloves, so those were going to stay no matter what. Instead of keeping the strict construction of the outfit, I kept the silhouette mostly the same. So he still has the crop top, the shorts, and the sleeves still taper outwards, but the design of the top was changed to be more sailor themed because a key-part of 1010s characterization is the sailor motif. To add onto that, a sailor hat was added to really push the sailor elements since a lot of the other iconography was dropped. The outfit colors were also kept monochrome and black was used in more places to better replicate the 1010′s original uniform.

To me, the fusion reads more as, “White in Kun3h0′s outfit.” while the deconstruction-reconstruction reads more as, “White if he were in the same series of robots as Kun3h0.” I don’t think either is significantly better or worse than the other, but there were different thought processes for both which came to different conclusions for the prompt, “Kun3h0 x 1010 swap”.

I hope that this explains and illustrates what I’m trying to get at.

I know that it would be kinda difficult to really “deconstruct” Kayane because her entire role/design revolves around her relation to 1010, so in an AU where she has nothing to do with them, it makes it a little harder to visually emphasize the things that originally characterized her. However, that being the case means that there’s actually more room to focus on new visual motifs like the Sakura to really make the design your own. You did it with Daphne & Jan with their new underwater motif, so I think you can do it here too.

Again, I really like the direction these are going, but I just know that they can be pushed so much further.

But I don’t always give the best advice, XP. They say that you know you have a good design not when you can’t add anymore, but when you can’t take anything else away, so me asking you to “push” the designs further might not be the best advice and shouldn’t be taken as an absolute. I can only tell ya what I want to see, not necessarily what’s the best choice.

*Strictly speaking, there is a canon flower!Sayu that appears on a poster in the Akasuka district. I find the design itself kinda underwhelming for a themed alt, (it’s no all pink Sakura!Miku), but I know it wasn’t made to stand out on its own: its function is to be a cute themed variation of the character, not totally reinvent her. It’s literally a little poster on the side of a wall that not everyone is even going to take the time to investigate, so I understand not wanting to spend too much time designing a more grandiose flower themed Sayu.