System Settings: Initial designs

I’m waiting for Unrestful’s soundtrack to come through. In the meantime, I’ve started on my next indie project; System Settings. Today, I would like to discuss about the game a little bit. I am also hoping to show off some sketches for the game’s characters.

On the 3DS, when you meet another player, you get to see what he or she has been playing. If the gamer was inside system settings, it’ll say that was the most recent game. That’s where the idea of my project came from.

In System Settings, you’re a beta user for an operating system named Shelves. With the help of mascots Shelfie and Debuggie, your goal is to maintain the OS. But things turn out to be far more sinister than anyone could have imagined.

This was my first attempt at creating the two stars of System Settings. Shelfie stands on the left, while Debuggie is on the right. Straight from the start, both characters are littered with Shelf’s logo. It’s the yellow blocks you can see on Shelfie.

The shading is rough, but you can see Shelfie’s clothes are shiny, while Debuggie’s costume is torn and covered up with patches. Her hair is also a mess compared to Shelfie’s. The specific reasons for this will be explained on a later date. In general, though, it’s important for characters to be distinct.

I disliked the color scheme that I had chosen. The orange and brown reminds me of, well, shit. Debuggie was worse. It looked like she just climbed out of a garbage truck. I wanted her to look messy without being unpleasant. The first attempt disappointed me. I took some time off before having another go.

For the second round, I dug around for some inspiration first. Those mascots featured in the Japanese version of Windows were a great help. This time, I steered clear of those brown hues and went with a purple color scheme. I also modernized Shelfie’s clothes. A nice zipper with a cool belt, etc. At the time, my Photoshop was acting up. Every brush stroke came with a five second delay. It frustrated me to no end. That aside, I liked this version far more.

There was still a problem. I thought Shelfie looked too much like Hatsune Miku. The skirt in particular was a rip off.

Here is round three, which I had polished off this morning. My focused was on changing Shelfie’s skirt. It now gave Shelf’s logo an extra emphasis. I’ve dropped the stockings and gloves as well. Honestly, I liked their modern look, but again, Shelfie needed to stand out from a certain Vocaloid.

I also had another go at drawing Debuggie. Notice how her hairclip sits in the opposite direction. Just another attempt at giving her that contrast. A brown color scheme was still applied to Debuggie because it fits her background. However, I have lightened up the hues to make her look less gross. I also put a blush on her cheeks to make her cuter. By the way, she is missing a shoe.

Thanks for checking out these designs. Hope you’ll look forward to hearing more about this project.