Progress: Carmeline the 13th

Since the reasoning behind Carmeline's design isn't spoiler-driven like the rest of the cast, I thought it would be all right to share my griefs on designing her.

I think it hardly comes as a surprise that Carmeline is the hardest heroine I have ever designed. Of all my characters, she is the one I resketched many times until I was at least satisfied. That's not to say she has a complicated design, mind you - in actuality, it's the simplicity of it that made it so difficult to begin with.

Part of my struggles comes from the fact that her entire design was based on these two principles:
1.) Make her look generic.
2.) Make her distinguishable.

In most stories I've seen and read, princesses are always painted as these perfect and beautiful beings...but that makes them somewhat superficial as a person in my opinion. Just like the way Nomura designed Rinoa, I'm trying really hard not to make Carmeline "beautiful", but "cute". Otherwise, I erase the sketch and start all over again lol. (I burden myself too much...)

Next, her distinctness. Indeed, I'm still having a hard trying to come up with a balance between those two...however, if everything about her looks generic, what could set Carmeline apart from, say, other brunette characters out there?

Adding quirks will surely help, which may or may not be true in her case (this will all depend on how well I can present her as a character in the end... /knock on wood), but the truth of the matter is that people will judge the characters by their looks first. There's just no way around it.

This was Carmeline's very first design back in late 2008 2005 (edit: sorry, I mixed the dates of zer-o and HM!). Around this time, her name was Cielo. I remember the story as BxG/slice-of-life! She wasn't a princess, but rather the love interest/neighbor of the male MC lol. She had a scary-looking dad and was meant to be a quiet character.

I suppose the one thing that seems consistent about her old design is her braided hairstyle.

What is anatomy lol This was around the time when I came up with the club idea! On the right was the original uniform design. The middle costume was the Pooman outfit lol.

The whole story was supposed to be in Killian's POV, who at that time was the main character, but the focus was mostly on her. Basically, Carmeline was known as this quiet onee-sama at school, but her true personality showed up whenever it involved Pooman lol.

I thought the long black hair made her somewhat pretty, so I didn't go with this design.

Ah, this was when I first designed her casual look. Around that time, I did some initial character sketches for someone else's game...when it was discontinued (?), I ended up keeping the ribbon design on my character instead. Her color was supposed to be red, but I changed it again because I felt like it made her too much of a girl-next-door type.

This was when I finally finalized her casual attire! I looked through my Japanese fashion magazines as inspiration for this outfit.

I think the only thing that changed was the color scheme, although I'm still fond of that stocking color. ;A; Anyway. I thought shorter hair would give her that cute quality I want, so I decided to stick with that design after that. (There was also that brief period when I made Carmeline wear a big bow instead, which is quite obvious from this design lol.)

This was around the time when I decided to make the first HM! thread over at LSF. I finally went with the name Carmeline, whose name I based on this one girl my friends used to tell me about. You see, that girl is very pretty, but she hates how her suitors only like her because of her looks and not because of her personality/quirks (i.e. her interest in playing eroges).

I thought the idea of superficiality was interesting, so that became the basis for HM!'s story. It's part of the reason why I decided to turn her into a princess.

Unfinished sketch from that time when I was going to turn the game into my thesis project lol. She ended up looking a little older than what I had in mind.

Final sketch before I do the lineart! I tried to find a balance between making her moe and not making her into creepy moe...if you know what I mean lol. I also made her tilt her head a bit so it doesn't look too stiff.

She looks a lot closer to what I envision her in my head, so it makes me a bit happy! Somehow, she became a boyish character compared to her original conception, partly because of the way the story shaped up. Carmeline's love for Pooman is no longer part of the main story so I can focus more on other important things, but...well, you'll see. xD;

Thanks for reading!