WIP: Prop Design for Aphrael

Greetings and salutations! Inspiration sometimes comes from the strangest places. I was trying to come up with a design for Aphrael's sword which was supposed to be slender and more elegant. Inspiration suddenly hit me when I was just doing some random browsing on the web and saw a photo of the Shanghai World Financial Center. I decided to research the shape of the building some more and then decided that yep, this is the base shape I want for Aphrael's sword: simple and elegant but still sci-fi. Once I had an idea, I got to work drawing some sketches:

Aphrael's weapons designs

The original design was to have a flat top, but I kept thinking it looked like a spatula or frying pan so I tapered the tip of the blade. The blade is pure energy and is a bright reddish-pink while the physical part of the sword is a matte, metallic black or dark gray. The grip is supposed to be made of a rubber-like substance so it doesn't slide in her hand. A small switch above the hilt and just below where the quillions would be on a more traditional sword controls the activation of the blade. This sword is Aphrael's signature prop and will be featured in the final piece.

In addition, I decided to add a secondary weapon for Aphrael in the form of a pistol as you can see in the sketches above. I was partly inspired for this from a character in the new Guilty Gear Xrd game that has just recently come out. I was also thinking about what Aphrael would do if she somehow lost hold of her sword for some reason. Therefore, I thought it prudent that she would carry a smaller backup weapon in case of such an eventuality. The pistol design itself was inspired from several different sources, including the Beretta M9 and the Varista handcannon in Phantasy Star Online. I also placed a similar design element from the sword around the barrel of the pistol to act as a unifying design element. Like many guns, this one is in a matte gray or black steel color due to its material and fine quality build.

Finally, I had to decide how Aphrael carried her weapons when they are not in use. This was probably the longest and hardest step for me and I eventually decided that Aphrael's jacket has a sleeve on the back to hold her sword while her pistol is held at her waist by a holster on her wide belt. I made these decisions because Aphrael is right handed. She doesn't use both her sword and pistol at the same time; it is either one or the other. In addition, when she uses her pistol, Aphrael takes the proper form of a true marksman: legs apart with both hands holding the grip, her left supporting her right. I figured that if she didn't do this, she would probably strain her wrist pretty quickly if not outright break it which would be bad since she uses that same hand to wield her sword. While Aphrael has a strong upper body to wield her weapons with relative ease, the majority of her strength is in her legs; thus she has to be careful when using her pistol.

I've noticed that many video games do not take into account where characters actually store their weapons when not in use and just use in my opinion lazy workarounds. For example, Electronic Arts' Dragon Age series just have characters' weapons floating behind their backs and not actually being held by anything. JRPGs can be worse. In those you just usually see the characters reach around their backs and "pop!" their weapons just magically appear and disappear. Sega's Phantasy Star Universe tried to explain this by saying they were stored in a characters specialized nanospace but I don't buy it. I still feel its lazy design.

Now that the weapon designs are done, I redrew some of the concept sketch I had shown previously to highlight Aphrael's sword since that is her signature weapon. I am not highlighting the pistol because it is only a secondary weapon and doesn't add to the image, hence it is still in its holster.

The final concept sketch

With the sketch finally finished, I can move on to actually painting the concept. The next time we see Aphrael, I will have a full color concept using this as the underdrawing. This concept will be the base I will use when I build the model sheets for the final 3D version. Since painting takes quite a bit of time, I don't know what the topic will be in the next post. I'm sure it will be interesting though so stay tuned!