Thoughts, theories, and opinions on the design of Crysta

[sonic burrow]

Wanted to take a moment to consider the design elements behind our latest hunter - what they articulate about her character, the world of Supervive, and how she's meant to appeal in terms of visual and character design. Probably breaking this up to get into rambling details.

Basics of Design & Appeal
Crysta's design starts with a strong sense of shape language, with her baggy pants (which seem to be overalls partially taken off) contrasting with her petite torso and arms clad in tighter clothing. Her motif/element seems to be those pink crystals (more on those later), displayed most notably in her crown and underhair, though we can find elements in her shoes, hands, and those face markings as well. Rounding her out are her drones, which provide a certain 'engineer' feel, at least on the visual level.

That mixture of her as conventionally cute or feminine against the scrappier, engineering aspects set up a real sense of contrast. There's a few immediate canons of characters she draws from (cute engineer, cute bomber, crystal girl), but she remains pretty distinctive. Side note - while still easily within the canon of 'classic female appeal', she is pretty notably distinct from the body types of say, shrike or celeste. She's small and not particularly curvaceous, which I think both suits her character well (her power coming from her tech and the fact she's made of explosives) and is a fun bit of variety. I could maybe grumble about her face being rounder/bigger eyed than earlier concept art that drifts her towards disney face, but I understand the move here is meant to specifically evoke her as cute in the exuberant but dangerous femme tradition.

Character Assumptions
In her introduction video, Crysta is called a soulborn, a term that, while I'm not sure we've heard officially used, seems to imply characters with natural affinities for certain elements, and may naturally express those elements from their body (see Joule and Celeste). In Crysta's case, her element is referred to as Nuclarite, and is established as volatile/explosive. Her powers seem to be built around detonating Nuclarite from her body, or Nuclarite stored in her equipment/drones (likely after being harvested from her body?). There are some very cool ideas built out of this notion - notice in her warmup image her hands and feet seem to be sprouting the stuff, and her gloves and shoes seem designed to channel or fire these as blasts.

This sets her as a character of contrasts - someone perky/cutesy contrasted with the fact she's made of explosives. Your Tiny Tina formula, if you will. Granted, unlike other kawaii bombers it seems a condition she can't help, giving a certain implied tragedy to her character, and better serving to contrast her upbeat or naive personality. If she's growing explosive crystals on her body, there's a danger or transience to her day-to-day life, or at least a condition that she's learned to accommodate and overcome.

In all, she's not groundbreaking across all art - with clear points of comparison from everything in the cute but dangerous canon to girlybombers like Borderland's Tiny Tina, to spunky but cute danger girls ala Overwatch's D.Va or 2017 Ducktales' Webby - but she clearly seeks both a personality and visual niche that is on the more distinct end of the cast, particularly the female cast.

Good visual design should aim to be A: distinctive and memorable (and in games in particular, immediately distinct from the rest of the cast), B: tell or at least hint at the character's nature or story, and C: be fun or appealing. C is of course entirely subjective - my partner grumbles about her crystal growths being conveniently hidden or not really disrupting her cute girl factor, while I'm sure many people appreciate her cute factor is entirely untroubled in that way - but in terms of A and B, I think devs have done quite well on both fronts. She's distinguishable from the cast by a variety of factors, and her design does well to both articulate key details about her character, and imply more possibility (certainly I can look at her and speculate about her character more than I could a character like, for example, joule).

[fresh knot]

Hot as shit, but low key why does she get such awesome jigs and stuff and all the other hotties have like absolutely awful ones. Like dang none of the other hotties can dance or what?

[lunar merlin]

define "hotties" because I was of the assumption Crysta was a mid-teenager 💀

[fresh knot]

OMG NO WAY if thats the case then straight up eww