Throwback Thursday: Nova Pascucci

Our 2nd week of Throwback Thursday! If you missed out the previous ones, you can check them out below! Follow along for some fun behind the scene looks and information on your favorite character's growth in development! ^^
https://www.patreon.com/posts/throwback-miki-57980399

The project first started with placeholder 3d assets, which we can see above in some images of early Nova. There has been quite a bit of adjustments and changes from her very first preview to today. :P

Fun fact #1: Did you know? Originally Nova wasn't even part of the comic that MA first started with? That's right! All the main girls except for Zoey and Nova were actually not part of the comic that first started and would kick start the early plans of making MA into a visual novel! Bridget was meant to be the original tomboy character with more of a girl next door, childhood friend tomboy feeling as she'd be more targeted with gaming and other boy interests instead of the more sporty Nova we have.

Looking at the 2nd image preview, this is the very first sketch of Nova received. (Notice we were still planning on following more closely to her 3d asset? :P )

Moving onto the 3rd and 4th image in previews we can see we scrapped the original hairstyle for more of a pony tail.

Fun fact #2: Did you know? Originally Nova was going to have purple hair because at the time, I was going to actually make it canon for MA that instead of darker brown or black hair colors. It'd instead be seen as purple hair colors would = dark brown/black hair. Some anime series I've watched seemed to do this and so I thought it'd be neat to do that, but as things progressed in development and we revisited some sprites to fix up again. We scrapped the idea, but it's interesting because there used to be a unfixed writing script line in one of the old builds of the game referring to Lola's hair as purple instead of it clearly being black like her sprite. :P

The last preview image shows us her 3d asset with less clothing on, giving us a good idea that her diaper design more or less stayed intact along the way.

[Design concept]

The concept for Nova as noted above briefly, when coming up with plans for MA to become a visual novel to properly tell it's story. I felt like there was something missing within the cast and that'd be Nova. A more sporty tomboy.

I knew from the start that I'd want to make sure she felt fitting to this role as a tomboy type character, trying to build up her backstory first. What kind of sporty things did she do? Was one of the first things to tackle and I settled on the more interesting concept of having her be big into kickboxing as the primary sport she does.

This would then tie into her family backstory being that her family dates back to many other famous kickboxers, of course including her Father and Brother too. So I more or less had the groundwork figured out that she'd be pretty fit and had kickboxing in mind to work with. Of course I'd have Nova engage in other sporty activities, we'll see her often trying to fit some morning walks/jogs in at times and do stuff like swimming. There's some mentions in-game that let's us know she's tried stuff like volleyball and briefly cheerleading at the academy since being there too.

Overall I felt good about Nova's groundwork and with that out of the way, I tried to think about her personality wise and how it tied into what makes her a person. I knew that she'd be hard working and dedicated, but knowing that she does have this backstory that adds up to making her out on first impression as being "famous". That it'd be good to play off of that, instead of having her be cocky or full of herself, she'd come off as being more humble and trying not to bring attention to herself because of her "fame".

This would later help for some story arcs and character interactions that will really play off of that kind knowledge in mind. Two examples I've always had in my mind being Bridget and Heather. Not to focus too much on those two, but Bridget being a good conflicting character to Nova in that Bridget would have have common ground. They both have some sort of fame they've earned or came into attaining, but Bridget would play off of her "fame" to make money and sort of go against Nova's ideals in some ways.

Heather has some fame of her own and is well... Hopefully you know by now how tense she comes across. ^^" She's quite the conflicting character for Nova, as Heather tends to be full of herself and thinks too highly of herself, going against Nova's more humble outlook, etc. Overall I knew I'd want to have Nova interact with these two in order to help make Nova as a character feel more.. Real? <.< Not quite sure how to explain it, but I try to write and think about the characters to play them off as real people, evolving and changing in ways, but of course that's subjective to each reader. ^^"

Anyways! Nova pretty much took over as the tomboy type character for MA and I'll explain more about Bridget's failed tomboy attempts in her own throwback post in the future. :P

I will say, Nova is a very neat character to write for. When choosing kickboxing for her, I had to do a good bit of research into the unknown about kickboxing as I'm not really a sporty person myself. But the more I looked into the sport, the more fascinating it seemed to me!   

She seems like such a easy, down to earth person to be around... Well... One on one, when she doesn't have Allie causing trouble. :P

One other thing about Nova that came about during development and writing is that knowing she's big into sporty activities. I wanted to imagine she lacks any understanding of video games, as if she never played any really because she hasn't. There will be some other little stuff that pops up for her along the way that she's never done in her upbringing, but it's always fun to find each character's strength's and weaknesses in varying degrees to play off of and help breathe life into them further.

I think that about sums up what I have for Nova in this throwback, but I can't wait to dive further into her story in the near future with you all! ^^