Original 1980s Mode Student Concept Art
Usually, when designing a character, I start off by deciding the character's personality traits, and then giving them an appearance that suits those traits. "This character will be obsessed with researching the occult, will be a social outcast, and will have a shy, timid, gloomy personality. So, she will have messy black hair, and have dark circles under her eyes!"
However, the cast of 1980s Mode was designed completely in reverse. First, I asked my lead artist to illustrate 100 different hairstyles. Then, I picked the 10 hairstyles that I liked the best, and chose personality traits to go along with them. "Wow, this hairstyle looks kind of like an explosion coming right out of the character's forehead. I think they're going to be a tomboy with a firey personality, and also be a secret pyromaniac!"
In the end, I think that this was a mistake; I wish I had not done things "backwards." I think that it's better to come up with an interesting and intriguing personality/identity for a character first, and use that personality as inspiration for a great appearance. When you work backwards, it's much harder to create a memorable or unique character.
But, even though I wish I had done things differently, I still think that the dozens of illustrations created during the pre-production stage of 1980s Mode are well-made and very fun to look through...so, I've included them here! I hope that you enjoy looking through them!
Feel free to suggest other ideas for Patreon posts in the comments below!
Comments (7)
Do you plan on adding more classes or teachers to the school or teachers assistants?Like a teacher that works the science classroom?
I'm sorry...I'm not planning on it. It wouldn't be easy to add new faculty members to the game.
Hi dev! I found a bug, on the hill of the cherry tree the area surrounding the tree is black
I don't see this bug when I play the game. Would you be willing to record a video of the problem, upload the video somewhere, and e-mail me a link to the video?
Thank you for sharing this Yandere Dev! Looking at all the character concept art is cool, as I think the designs are amazing. However, it begs the question, why didn't they get used? I ask this because I counted the hairstyles unused for female students, male students and teachers. I counted 34 unused hairstyles for the female students, 19 for male students and 8 for the teachers. I think it would've been cool to see them in the game.
The school has a population of 90 students (counting the protagonist) I only needed 45 male and 45 female hair designs. The least interesting hair designs were unused. Likewise, the school only has 6 teachers, so only 6 teacher hair models were created. Creating more hair models would serve no purpose.
these all look fantastic!