Edith is a more mysterious personality. Unlike Clara who has a reason to want to be alone, Edith likes to be alone for other reasons. In the game, Edith is introduced as someone who doesn’t like talking at all, she doesn’t seem to have close relationships with the others as well. She also walks around and talks like she’s holding back from spilling the truth; this is because she’s aware that the Ring Master erases the crew’s memories of all the ritualistic events that occur at night- and she has to pretend like everything’s fine.
Finalised Design
For Edith’s design I wanted to incorporate stripey patterns and the colour purple to connote mystery and an enigmatic personality. I think that the stripes are her defining feature as well as her micro bangs and long hair. As she’s a knife thrower, I added a belt with sheathed knives.
Clara is a trapezist and loves being high up in the air. She is quite reserved and quiet but as soon as she steps foot on stage, you can see the level of professionalism. She likes to keep to herself most of the time and appreciates the quiet once in a while. Because of this, she gets along with Bozo the clown very well. She also likes cute frilly costumes but as it’s a hazard to her health being so high up and doing dangerous tricks, she is prohibited from wearing anything that would get in the way of her performance. However, she still collects dresses and wears them inside of her trailer.
Finalised Design
For Clara, I initially used purple but it clashed with the pink hair too much and I didn’t like the look of it. As mentioned, Clara can’t wear skirts that are too long or anything that gets in the way as she performs, so I’ve designed a see through skirt that goes over her leotard, this showcases a bit of her personality.
Finch is a fire performer at the circus and one of the oldest at age 45. Finch is a loud and boisterous character, he loves talking to his crewmates and always checks up on them after their acts, offering them food that he personally makes. Finch has a family but can only see them once a week due to his line of work, he sees his circus crew as his secondary family.
Finalised Design
In comparison to the other characters, I kept Finch’s design relatively simple as when all the characters are displayed on screen, I don’t want to overload the player with too much design information. The one thing that separates Finch from the other characters is that he wears eye make up for his performance. To make him look like a fire performer, I added some fire patterns to his trousers and paired it with a red waist coat for some colour harmony.
Bozo the clown is part of the crew in Cirque du Pénombre, his act consists of making other people laugh at his health and dignity at stake. Although on stage he has a lively and joyful demeanour, there is nothing more in the world he wants more than to lock himself up in his trailer and watch his favourite TV show. His crewmates have no idea that he enjoys watching colourful ponies on screen fixing problems about friendship; if anyone were to find out, he would dig a hole 6 feet under and bury himself alive. Bozo has a very conflicting relationship with his occupation, he hates his job but appreciates the comfort his crewmates give him and doesn’t want to leave.
At this point of my design journey, I wanted to be more efficient with my time, so instead of making warm up sketches, I went straight into the action. I also chose images I was sure I was going to use for my design concepts, I chose images for my concept that I would use for certain and incorporate that into my design.
Finalised Design
This is my finalised design for Bozo, for his costume, I took inspiration from real clown costumes. I noted down that the clown costumes were large and loose, like it doesn’t fit the wearer. Finally, I added the stereotypical oversized clown shoes.
Nola is protagonist of No Entry After Midnight, the player is first introduced to her whilst she’s still on the streets. Nola although is a capable individual, doesn’t mean she wants to be alone again, especially after discovering a life after living on the streets for so long. For her aesthetics, I want to make her look unisex, whilst still keeping some feminine aspects to incorporate in her design. Out of all the NPCs in the game, she will have the most outfits; I want to make a pre-circus life design, her main circus costume and another costume that she borrows from Wendy (this can only be achieved when she reaches a certain friendship threshold with her).
Initial Plan
Starting off with the main costume, I want to incorporate really fluffy materials, whilst making it look tomboyish. I started collecting some images that I think may be useful for my design journey, from what I can gather here, I want to make a costume where Nola is able to move freely but still look part of the circus.
Design Warm-ups
Here, I did a few more design warm ups, as we can see, I have incorporated shorts / bloomers in my iterations. When I look to making my finalised design, I want to design Nola in gender neutral clothes.
Finalised Design
This is the design I worked hard on, I used some images from my mood board and went on Pinterest to find new images to help me with my vision. In regards to Nola’s colour palette, I wanted to use primary colours, later on I felt that the red top / blouse made her look like an “angry” character, so I changed it.
Finally, I came up with this. I like this colour palette more as it uses primary colours and it makes her character appear more soft.
From this point, I started thinking about who would character A be, so I thought about possible characteristics this character would posses. Eventually, I came up with “Harley”, during my initial mind mapping, I was going to have the ring leader make the player join the circus, but as I wanted to add that layer of mystery and anticipation build up, I decided against that idea; Hence why I resorted to Harley being the plot behind the story unfolding at the introduction.
Initial plan
As most of my concept designs go, I started by looking at images on Pinterest to help me gather an initial idea of Harley’s aesthetics. Initially, I was set on making her an acrobatic, so I scoured Pinterest for acrobatic attire and costume designs. I was drawn to the checker patterns, eccentric silhouettes and lots of ruffles!
By utilising this mood board, I began to sketch out a template to do a few initial designs:
Design 1: This design was heavily inspired by the red and golden acrobatic costume, I wanted to play around with the circus type patterns, so I started off simple with the stripes as the primary feature of this design.
Design 2: Out of all the designs, I favoured this one the most as I love drawing very feminine and fluffy garments. I also toyed around with the patterns, expressing a playful feel through this design. By looking at this costume, it almost feels like a magical girl attire, which wasn’t what I wanted to achieve but nonetheless, I still enjoyed sketching this one out.
Design 3: In this concept, I was trying to mix and match my references, in my opinion, I think this design looks quite alien, but in a pleasant way. The skirt’s material is supposed to look see shear and translucent; so when she does acrobatics in the air, a long frilly skirt wouldn’t get in the way
Mini Reflection
The reason why I chose to stop these designs after the 3rd one was because I felt like the references I pulled weren’t speaking to me; therefore I felt quite disconnected to the concepts I was coming up with and designing just another character. However, I want to design things that I am proud of; especially woman characters as I have the most fun doing concept art for them. So, for these next steps I spent my time looking at my Pinterest and listed the things I want to include/explore in her design:
Neck ruffles
Ballerina attire
Rabbit symbolism
Elegant attire
Frills
Additionally, I mapped out who Harley is alongside some basic information:
Media Inspiration: Doll
Whilst I was gathering images for my more refined design and thinking about Harley’s occupation within the circus, I suddenly remembered a character from a circus as well that was a pivotal point in Harley’s design. Doll, from Black Butler: Book of Circus (2014), is a young boy who when performing, wears a wig and dress made out of white roses. She specialises in aerial ballet and completes a “death defying” tight rope walk.
I remember watching this and thinking that her act was elegant and captivating, hence why I am switching Harley’s occupation from an acrobatic to an aerial ballerina; It’s a subtle change but I believe this act will fit her the most.
Change made: Harley is now an aerial ballerina instead of an acrobatic
Why rabbit symbolism?
I want Harley’s attire to symbolise a rabbit because it’s ironic yet true to her intentions:
Rabbits symbolise innocence because of how cute they are and unknowing of the world out there is, they’re also vulnerable because they are animals of prey and in my opinion, they also symbolise naivety. In Harley’s case, she posses the physical traits of a rabbit, looking both cute and pure of heart, however, her intentions to sacrifice the player for her friends is quite the opposite. It is a violent thing to want yet in a sweet way. She is also naïve in the way that she doesn’t realise that she’s being used as a pawn for the ring master’s evil deeds.
Finalised Design
Here is the finalised design! I am really happy with how it came out and the way it comes off visually. I want her design to be deceptive and ironic of her intentions.
The Ring Master in No Entry After Midnight is the main antagonist of the game. The player is introduced to this character when the player goes to the circus for the first time. The Ring Master likes to Portray himself to be relaxed, ditzy, full of energy and almost like a father to the circus’ residents, but this couldn’t be further from the truth; When the player finds out what happens during the night, the truth is revealed. He is a callous, twisted and calculated leader responsible for all the missing people in the circus.
Mood boards
Here is an initial mood I made for this character but as I started to make initial sketches, I figured that the images were too vague and I was thinking of the entire cast instead of one character. So I started from scratch again.
Then I started to look at Pinterest again with the Ring Master in mind- and ONLY this character. I thought about the possible colours he’d wear, the accessories and the silhouette of his design. Eventually, I compiled images that look like a stereotypical Ring Master.
The main things I want to include in his design are:
The colour red and yellow
A big top hat
A slicked back hairstyle
Initial Sketches
I came up with several different sketches for this character as I wanted to nail the design on the head. In the majority of these concepts, I have designed the Ring Master to be in a long tail coat as I think it’s fitting for his profession, I also experimented with different types of hats and shoes.
Finalised Design
Finally, I came up with this design as his costume. I went back onto Pinterest to find more specific images for the aspects of his design and stuck with 3 main colours for his colour palette.
