Odette P.4

Despite the animated design being favoured by the artists and designers I tried to come up with more designs that fitted more to the sole elegant style idea, I don't regret attempting a new one even though I don't feel the design worked. A lecturer prompted that we try to solidify the concept into one theme as our blood bath and over-the-top mechanic did not work with the 'subtle elegance' theme, and if we wanted to go with that theme we would have to show that theme more visually as a whole, not in small parts of the design as it has caused us to lack a focus. As a result I had a go at designing a more subtle, elegant themed 'Odette'.

I worked on a design that would be more elegant only based but have Gothic and horror themes into it, drawing a combined inspiration of Venetian masks and Plague Doctor masks. A theme of blood-roses & rotten flowers and fruit came from Plague Doctor's having had flowers and perfumes in their helmets as they believed the smell to spread the plague, and tried to cover it. I wanted to keep with the more 'subtle' theme and have heavily implied gore and death imagery without having over-the top gore and have everything be hinted by intention in the design. I designed her with the concept of the devils and demons from the Hell of our universe all being once-living people who are now an abstract concept of their own deaths.

I animated her movement in a more basic and rushed way than I did with the last Odette design to visualise and explain parts of her design in action that I had trouble explaining in conceptualisation. This concept didn't stick as we felt the design lacked practicality in movement and focused too much on the elegant theme which did not fit in with the mechanics. I feel the design itself needed more fleshing out beyond this rough design, but I do feel the themes of the design had strengths. In a way it was slow and wouldn't fit with our game mechanic as there would be no obvious way for her to move fast & keep with the designs elements, while the core mechanics relied on fast paced 'blood bath'.
We theorised that this design could be recreated into one of the bosses the real Odette would fight and brainstormed on various ways she would be defeated. The back of the head in combination with her spider legs was one less fleshed out idea, and another was removing the mask then stabbing the lungs through the chest.

I elaborated slightly on the idea adding details and changing themes of it but could not use the same basic design effectively as it would never have the wide rage of movement or fit the bloody theme we had. I made a design with a more basic subtlety and brainstormed different heads for it including an animal one. I drafted it by making a silhouette.

Eventually the entire concept of "Odette" was scrapped as we lacked focus, which became very clear to us in our presentation to get green-lit. It also became obvious that our concept was unoriginal as it was too heavily inspired by the writer's interests in the Bayonetta series to the point that no team member could contribute originally our own ideas. We were told by the lecturers it would be best for us to start from scratch and while we were unsure at first we do feel we made the right choice by doing so.