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historixally-accurate · 19 hours

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how do you come up with your designs for mcyt’s? theyre so creative and cool so i thought id ask

THANK YOU AND THANK YOU FOR THE QUESTION

now entering yap city tihs will be a long post

my steps are basically

voice

personality

og look of minecraft skin/branding

player movement

other ppls fanart (if any)

things that happened/cultural associations

i start with a bunch of random sketches to get the feel of the person.. that's why so many of my early posts were doodle pages. to me, character design is more based on what the person is like rather than what they look like. i think a lot of people do that

I do this with all of the above and shape language, but in bigger art pieces outside of lineups i also use color and perspective (as in youll see more of someone like spepticle in large, sweeping scenes while someone like zam in closed, heavily perspective-based ones) to indicate personality. ill change designs when suited for this too (spoke with or without a gas mask, vi with or without a mouth, etc etc)

my first iteration of lifesteal designs heavily relied on the look of the skins and were gradually tweaked over time. my most prominent example of this is my spoke design, so i'll use him at least once in the examples for continuous comparison.

i watch a couple of each person's videos first, understand their voice, personality, and what they do, then focus on them in other people's videos too to get a full story, their movement, and what others think of them (helps with personality and things we might not see). streams are the most helpful because they're less biased and you see so much more of their antics. huge stream fan.

i get into the how after this

this process doesnt go in order for some designs and others have a more prominent focus on particular parts of the process that override or effect other parts

Voice

starting off with not spoke here's a problem i encountered when designing wemmbu

I based him a lot off of spoke and ashswag due to not knowing much about him besides the fact that he schemes (spoke&ash-esque) and he doesn't move his character around too much when talking (ash behavior). he didn't match the left one because his voice doesn't have the dramatic, flamboyant fratboy flair that spoke has, so I shifted it to be more friendly yet still dangerous with curved square shapes rather than triangles. i made his scheming, diabolical nature more evident through his clothing that's pretty jester-like and sharp, but with a smoother middle that spoke doesn't have (and to match his eyes).

voice also impacts character height. i dont know how to describe this. mapicc and zam are similar heights because their voices are similar, same goes for parrot and vortex, but leo and vitalasy are close to the same height (due to vitalasy's huge fuckass ears) despite having wildly different voices, with leo's bold text voice and vitalasy's higher-pitched jumbled kinda speech they still take up the same "amount of space" in conversation. they stand out. and even though spoke's voice also stands out an incredible amount he is still only slightly taller than average. this is where personality overrides voice in my designs.

Personality

spoke is sharp in every sense of the word, but is also able to mold himself around to get what he needs.

my first attempt at him was pretty lackluster. i didn't know much of him at the time, only his wither video, and thus understood him mainly through his association with parrot. he seemed a lot more evil and more serious at first glance. like woah! fully fledged mouth and nose?! not anymore.

i cover certain expressive parts to also depict more of their personality in some abstract, holistic way. after watching streams and whatnot, spoke doesnt actually speak (excluding his random sounds and yips or whatever he does) too terribly much, except when the spotlight is on him or he's trying to get something. so, i tweaked his design to encompass that when i understood him better.

i take away his arms to allow his hands to stand out more (character movement thing, he moves around a lot when no one is paying attention to him, punches the air when ..not talking but making a point ig. he's a big fan of hovering menacingly), i give him a slinky-like outside skeletal structure to both capture his affinity for withers (i made him a wither thing because of the wither sounds in his video.. and the withers in general) and to give him the feeling of more freedom with his movement.

i also just really like gas masks so. basically, spoke is someone that hides away until he chooses to stand out. thank lord heaven he looks like some shadow creature.

later on i gave him more magenta highlights, especially in the wormhole era because 1. magenta wasnt heavily included in his rainbow look, making it stand out on his whole being, and 2. because magenta is really really cool and people should use it more.

og minecraft skin/branding

hi spokeis here. this will be quick because his branding is so heavy. lightning, rainbow, black. boom. character. withers and white eyes? easy. causes a lot of anarchy? again, lightning and withers.

planetlord on the other hand is someone i greatly differed from the og skin and branding. i saw the design in a vision idk. i shift his colors all the time in different pieces but i use more of his pfp colors now because there's too many purples in this world. his branding, personality, and voice all connect very well. a bit misleading, he's a bit of a weasel.

Movement

i never used to look into movement, but pvp styles and conversational movement of lifesteal is intriguing. unfortunately it was only something i started paying attention to during the end of s4 because vitalasy's movement was so interesting. he's a big fan of getting in people's faces.

ill be real, i didn't really notice spoke a lot during things because he was almost always never alone, and when he was it is always at a distance or you knew he had people to back him up.

spoke's movement isn't actually too abnormal. he's goal oriented and tends to always be doing something, and when he does he finds the most efficient way possible. pretty basic. his design choices are based mainly on voice and personality.

someone like mapicc on the other hand has very particular movement. he spins around people when fighting and gets right up in their face (in nethpot pvp mostly), so i made his clothing tighter to the skin with looser parts to accentuate that movement: practical clothing for close combat battles. it was also noticed (by the lord) that he tends to look straight forward instead of the slightly down that most players do.

zam fights differently, but i made him with the og branding (he's princezam) and what he does in mind. his body language in my art is more indicative of his personality.

Other people's fanart

shoutout the community, a notable amount of ideas were from the mid-late 2022 lifesteal community.

dog leowook and leather jacket mapicc were from gen, jackalope rek from aoi i think, "croptop" jacket spoke from saints-blade, snail terrain from navy-leader, tv ashswag from kish, sock puppet red definitely from someone i dont remember, 4 armed squiddo from seri, and old cartoon jaron was from bucket

Things that happened/istarted talking about cultural inspirations

spoke and his connection to godhood influenced his redesign greatly. this section affects what the character wears most of the time.

i give both spoke and vitalasy painted palms (alta) due to their connection with godhood and destruction, with spoke in particular reminding me a lot of Kali Ma, thus i gave him a skirt (due to nppp too). vitalasy's clothing is based on Indonesian cultural clothing. wemmbu's also takes inspiration from Indonesian and Bhutan cultural clothing.

indigenous cultures inspired some designs too (i do a lot of ethnographic anthropology work with some of the tribes i base the clothing off of), with woogie having Yupik and Inuit inspiration. polar bear = cold climate in my head. and leo has Haida and Yunnan (minority Chinese providence, not a tribe) inspiration.

bacon's... not bacon strip design's clothing was based on Bangladeshi clothing (im Bangladeshi, i also added alpona patterns to ash's design), nomadic cultures, and some german pilgrim thing?? idk not my best design. i specifically looked for nomadic inspiration because of his willingness to flee at any moment lol. i didnt do this for rek despite his fleeing reputation because i dont watch rek content too much and he already had hybrid traits that took care of that presentation.

poafa's design is a goat because of the medusa trials where he was used as a scapegoat. makes sense i think. his horns are from past associations with jepex that infected mapicc as well (devil trio s1). zam's design is very much from s3 empire and s4 castle.

planet's design changed slightly, mostly rounder shapes, but also the number of "spikes" on his scarf, now stuck at three because of 3ht.. and easier to draw than five. minutetech has a bow instead of a bowtie from jumper due to s5 happenings. the gem on his crown has wemmbu's highlights from his gem's main color.

roshambo's design was also heavily influenced by medusa where i gave him a snake body. in my art that depicts before medusa events he doesn't have the snake body, and same goes with before s4 spoke where i draw him with full pants. in some sketches ive depicted mapicc with a muzzle only after the destruction of s4 spawn due to quix's mapicc dog influence shoutout.

mapicc and ro have matching things that persist seasons (mapicc periwinkle collar, ro red painted ring finger... head finger?), as did subz and vitalasy with matching shoulder pads (beginning of s4 subz had a bandana and vitalasy had a bell that traded between them through artworks of mine) Vitalasy also gained sun and moon earrings. mid and 4c have matching hoods/cloaks ^_^ marriage or something.

hope this made sense and covered everything you could have ever wanted forever... feel free to ask me questions i love explaining processes

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historixally-accurate · 1 day

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I like these but can we consider planet as minior

I honestly have thought about leo being like vikavolt? if we are talking about lifestealers being gym leaders, an old friend of mine wrote a few lifesteal pokemon fics on ao3 and it kinda spurred me to think of him like... elesa from bw where he's a model? I like the thought of it but tell me what you think about it

also what about princezam jirachi??

i just woke up I may add onto this one day

i could not say it before the conversation moved on. but heres my pokemon hc for some lifestealers

mapicc is absolutely a houndoom. something about how if you're burned, the burn never goes away. also the mega is awesome

zam i like to think as a joltik bc hes small and i saw art of joltiks being soggy and im like wow princezam.... but ik he doesnt like spiders which is SO SAD JOLTIK AND GALVANTULA ARE SO AWESOME AND SO CUTE IT FITS HIM SO WELL. anyways he can be jolteon but ampharos does fit him too like he said before. also shiny shinx hes so yellow and a little guy

vitalasy i believe someone said espeon which kinda fits but ninetales is right there. also the pokedex entry about how if you pull its tails you get cursed. something big to do there. could also be zoroark but he doesn't have the deceiving aspect to him, like really not, so ninetales is my choice for him

subz. umbreon does fit a lot but im also thinking gallade. because he's always trying to do the right thing and fighting for it and does it ever work? maybe not but hes trying. or, even better : ABSOL. he tries his best but is seen as evil no matter what. he brings disaster wherever he goes by trying to prevent it. he banishes himself to live alone so he won't hurt anyone else. absol. it works. could also be ceruledge, the ourple, the resentment to fall in combat before accomplishing his goal... yeah

poafa is a swablu the chat was right on this one. hes blue and cloudy like i mean come on. also hes nice to be around and doesnt rly get involved in big things except the one time he was medusa that was crazy

planet honestly? minccino/cinccino with skill link. cute and unassuming. will fucking maul you. i had one in a fangame playthrough (reborn) and mine was named menace and she decimated so many opponents.

roshambo is a runerigus. it's such a cool looking mon, it fits his vibes so well. also it can show you horrific memories if you touch it and i think roshambo would make others do it for fun bc him and mapicc think its funny but its real

spoke. is a zorua. except hes a zoroark pretending to be a zorua pretending to be other pokemon for the bit. he looks small and unassuming in behavior and even if he has illusion powers he uses them to mess around with pranks, he could do no harm :) right guys? right? anyways. spoke is so interesting. he's always showing himself as goofy but behind the scenes we know he's a tryhard and a game breaker and very good at hiding his true face. zoroark pretending to be a zorua fits perfectly.

clownpierce has meowscarada vibes honestly except for him the design would be more creature than cat, but the tricks, the flair, the drama of it all, then the smart traps, the hidden ability being protean showing how clown can adapt to situations on the fly, it fits rly well

minutetech could be a ceruledge but subz fits that one more than him... and also coviknight is right here. it looks so good for him. big bird who strikes fear in the heart of his enemies. helpful for those he likes. works so well

jumperwho might fit goodra. firstly awesome pokemon second its very friendly but can pack a punch. i think it fits her well tbh. she's friendly to everyone but can hold her own well in a fight. honestly galvantula fits her well too... or whimsicott! cute pokemon you might underestimate but it can pack a punch and give you status ailments - and the prankster ability fits her rly well too, with her various mischiefs around servers she's in

branzy. wooloo/dubwool. people like throwing him around for fun but he can take hits and get back up. also its cute and round and i think it fits well for him

parrot is a chatot i do not need to explain myself do i

pangi is a sandshrew/sandslash. i do not need to explain myself do i

ashswag is necrozma hes not from this plane of existence and is a bit freaky looking but hes cool and totally doesnt want godhood you can trust him.

wemmbu is either sableye or mawile. little purple guy people thinks steals the souls of people. mawile because it gains your trust then fucking chomps you

thats all i can think about right now honestly i know theres more people but yeah

#tell me what you think #the pokemon hyperfixation never stops #leowook #princezam #planetlord #pokemon go brr #pokemon

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