Design Concepts: Ophelia

And rounding up our main girls is Ophelia! Fellow main protagonist and possessor of at least two brain cells, Ophelia's design always went complementary and hand-in-hand with Reinie, from colour standpoints, to gameplay and thematic contrasts to provide that dynamic we wanted to establish. As before, Empress and I created the initial blueprints for both girls' designs and for Empress, that girl was Ophelia!

Our design processes are very different, so while Reinie has one sketch that exists earlier than her concept art, this right here is the first design draft of Ophelia since we got in touch with Sugar quite quickly, and this allowed for a very nice and streamlined process for her. We knew from the outset that we wanted to go for a mage, and Empress decided to go with that striking Witch Hat that we even turned into a silhouette of the title!

Ophelia's design inspirations were a little more abstract than Reinie, drawing from the elements of her magic, leading to the weather-oriented spellcasting that has become a theme you'll see in her spells going forward! But things such as rain, mist and wind in particular led to this cool blue and green colouration. However there was an influential personality in her design, particularly in her green hair, that being Mira Yurizaki from Dimension W who influenced Empress to settle on green! When it got down to writing her, it was a bit tricky to figure out what her 'bit' was going to be, at first I thought of writing her like a straight-laced-tsundere, which I am very glad I decided against because I would rather cut off both hands than lean right into that archetype, though you'll notice that there are speckles of it in her dialogue and mannerisms~

Ophelia became a very fun character for me to write very quickly however, as Reinie's personality being like that of a golden retriever needs a little bit of tempering before it becomes the misadventures of a happy idiot! Ophelia also works VERY well for punchline delivery and in general for continuing the feeling of levity on the game. Be sure to keep an eye out for more concept art as things keep on going!