Hey hey, Akua here! I’m the character design and sprite artist of Onigashima, having also drawn the cover art and main menu art of the MC! Also, temporary page owner before it gets transferred.

Some of you might already follow me on Twitter/X, Bluesky or Tumblr and have seen some insights about the process and concepts I posted on there. Obviously, not everyone follows social media, so here are some more in-depth explanations and answering some questions people seemed to have about the characters.

Well, as a first, I initially didn’t even plan to join Spooktober VN Jam! In fact, I actually wanted to join a little project with like two sprites or maybe draw one BG for someone, when I saw Azure’s recruitment post. While I personally never talked to her before, I knew about her and her older VNs, namely Doppelganger and the Fantasia series, both of which I played like, 10 years ago? I found her games on Lemmasoft Forums when I was hunting for more VNs and specifically Otome games to play because let’s be honest, the amount of translated VNs specifically for girls and women was SPARSE back then.

So yeah, I wanted to join her, so I DMed her about the details and read the doc she gave me, immediately going “HOLD UP”

And honestly, that detail sold me, hahah. I applied, got into the team and then recommended Polly to join as a CG artist since I worked with her on Trail of Stars before and knew she was reliable with her work. After the full team was gathered, onto the concept stage we went!

Early Concept Stage

Inside the doc, Azure mentioned the possibility of giving the characters animalistic features. Except for MC, who is more leaning into a dragon/ water dragon thing. And obviously, I had to give them (cute) animal features XD Yamato is based on a deer, Shiori on a fox / kitsune and Hikaru is a crow / karasu tengu. These were based on the notes I was given and as you can see, I looked up front facing images of these animals, taking their “face” shapes to have them reflected in the characters as well, along with their eye shapes being unique. A big part of the process was making the characters truly unique and easily distinguishable.

And yes, this included even their height and body types. Yamato is obviously the tallest and most trained of the bunch, followed by MC (yes, they are the top in the Hikaru pairing lol), then Hikaru and smol Shiori. You can just pick up Shiori, she is probably like at least 30% just tail. I even made sure that their expressions are all unique as well, with Yamato being the most expressive, followed by Shiori while Hikaru seems calmer but becomes more emotional and MC has the ‘muted’ expressions. Even the blushes completely differ!

Style

At first, I wanted to go for a sketchier style, but knowing the game was set in an ancient Pseudo-Japan of sorts, I suggested we go for a watercolor style instead. Both to cut down on the work of rendering and to have a cohesive aesthetic going on (and it worked really well!). The idea came to me from my own project, The Beauty only Beast knows, which uses a more detailed watercolor style but was inspired by Chinese ink and watercolor paintings, so I looked up and Japanese watercolor and ink styles also were a thing, specifically the Sumi-e and Gansai style. With some inspiration like old Ghibli movies sprinkled in~

To help Polly match that style, I also provided a (rough) guide to follow and also a guideline for myself to keep the steps cohesive and well, because I’m forgetful like that, lol. I’m a Clip Studio Paint user, so I had a lot of resources at hand that helped me imitate a watercolor style thanks to user uploaded materials on the asset store! If you were curious which brushes and textures I used, you can check them out yourself:

Lineart | Watery Ink-Style Rendering | Watercolor Main | Watercolor Base | Texture

I also took over the rendering for the ghost sprites to give Polly more time on the CGs, and we decided that a ‘rougher’ and dirtier style would help make the ghosts creepier! For that, I also used the above brushes, along with these for a more watery feel and muddiness.

I specifically avoided any intricate patterns on the designs to make it easier for Polly to draw since she used Procreate and, uh, can’t really convert .sut files into Procreate acceptable brush files that easily.

Character Notes

MC

MC was actually the last one of the four I designed! They were supposed to be a hero, so their design reflects that with mostly white and blue colors with gold/yellow accents, looking something like a saviour type. Only to be not that. Since their gender like Hikaru was ambiguous, I gave them a pretty face that can be interpreted as a sort of bishounen or bifauxnen, whichever the player wants to lean into. I had in mind to give them a dragon tail, but then I forgot about it and yeah, tailless MC we got.

Probably got their eyelash treatment from Hikaru lol

Shiori

Honestly the easiest to design since shrine maiden outfits, both realistic and fantasy, were easy to find plenty of. I decided to keep it simple and use accessories instead to make it unique, such as the bells and her hairstyle standing more out. She is such a small fluffball, you could snap her like a twig, she had to be zoomed in in-game so she wouldn’t disappear behind the textbox when right next to Yamato. Really not much to say about her that isn’t too spoilery ;;

Hard to believe she is a monsterf#cker, huh…

Yamato

Hooo boi, this guy probably pulled in a lot of people with just his… assets. I’ll be frank, his design was largely shameless self-indulgence, since I primarily draw for Otome, BL and Joseimuke games LOL

And yes, his deer tail is VERY important. I repeat, VERY IMPORTANT. I even adjusted his sprite pose to be able to show his behind a bit more and his cute lil tail twitching there. But on a more serious note, unlike the other characters, I couldn’t really tie him in with any mythical creature, even if deers in Japan can be seen as sacred creatures. So what got a big mythical deer? Mononokehime. In fact, his top was inspired by the one the male protagonist wears in the movie, and markings lean towards the markings you see on the forest god’s true form. His color palette is for that reason brown and green, his skin being lightly tanned from training in the sun. While he is an aspiring samurai of sorts, I depicted him more as a ronin here, since he gave me the vibe of someone who protects his loved ones, but not necessarily a lord… lol.

I kept his horns simple, just so neither Polly or me had to draw complex horn structures at different angles. Also, if you wondered what that white band/rope under his hakama is – that’s a fundoshi. This tree has no free hanging branches. But also no canon size for the branch… yet.

Hikaru

Hikaru is like MC, they are gender ambiguous. So the ‘bandages’ on their outfit? Could be chest bindings. Or just bandages to keep their clothes tight even while wearing a fluttering scarf. Anyway, bottom energy either way.

Given they were intended with crow features, a karasu tengu as a base idea was concepted for them and I gave them a mask to emphasize that. Probably by now people wonder why they have a white eye and scar… To be honest, that’s up for interpretation. My main thought was to draw attention to Hikaru’s face even when they wear a mask and to avoid that people focus on the scarf too much. Explanation for the eye can be that after their father disappeared, someone hurt Hikaru and MC protected them (maybe that person then got eaten by Yamakui lol) or Yamato messed up during training once and accidentally cut Hikaru (and probably cried about it in secret heh).

I put a lot of attention into their wings because crow wings are pretty. Also had to make them pretty in general once they take off the mask and seems it worked lol.

They got the most luscious of lips, probably always took care of them to have the best kisses with MC…

Tidbits

As you may have more or less noticed, all the characters having something red on their designs. Shiori’s shrine maiden outfit, Hikaru’s red scarf, Yamato’s red symbols and MC’s change in eye color later on… What it means? They are marked. I don’t think I need to say marked by what XD

But it was also to bring the group together with something in common between them, at least in color.

For MC, Yamato and Hikaru I took references and inspirations from Hakuouki as well, the clothing parts that were sensible to exist before the Shinsengumi’s timeline as well. Of course, the character description doc that was given to me also had references that followed.

Sneak peek at my digital workspace! And also the layering of the sprite. I keep brows, eyes and mouths separate, same with any extras like blushes or sweat drops so developers can go ham on mixing and matching expressions.

Cover Art, Masks and Paper Effigies

Yes, aside the cover art, I also drew the masks and paper effigies aka the Teru Teru Bozu you can see in the forest at one point!

As you can see, they have different faces! I based them on the characters actually (+ just regular Japanese ‘face’ one). You can probably figure out which one represents who and the red one remained unused, but was just funny to include lol. If you remember that scene, well, wasn’t it ominous seeing these paper dolls ‘hanging’ from the trees while looking like all the characters? :)

As for the masks, OtokeNeko gave me instructions on the design in a separate PDF file, with one mask representing MC and the other the Oni. With that knowledge, you can probably newly interpret the cover art~! Or maybe you figured it out already XDD Either way, it’s very symbolically used, initially inspired by Noh masks!

Now for the cover and main menu art! That one I had an early idea already, using the masks as part of it and also animating it a bit to get more attention when people look at it! When you play through the endings, you will instantly notice something wrong. A character ‘replaced’ and the MC changing… It was a visual cue for players to grasp that one playthrough wasn’t the end and to encourage people to explore more and discover the truth!

As for the cover specifically, I used the different parts to animate it frame by frame, dropping the most obvious hint only when you decide to watch the GIF. So if you have GIF loading turned off, you only see that seemingly innocent cover that could be more Action Shonen in vibe, while watching it you’ll realize something is VERY wrong with the MC and game itself. I initially wanted to animate the braid and bangs as well, but decided my sanity was already depleted for September and people liked this current version! So many frames tho…

And well, I also did the NPC sprites, but not much to say there given they are just shadows anyway XDD

So, that’s it.

Thanks for reading!

Yep, that’s it. Well, there will be more eventually, we got something special planned for the future and there will be devlogs by others on the team to read! So please follow AzureXTwilight for more news on Twitter/X or Bluesky!

Also as a last treat, here is the full sprite size! (Yes, Shiori is at a perfect height to get smothered by buns XD)