Concept Corner #4 - Cappuccino Girls, Original Designs (Patreon)

Hey guys, we’ve got our fourth concept corner post ready for you! This month, we’re taking a look at how characters went from their original concept art to the finished product. Colette and Cerise were mostly created while we already had our Patreon running, so those of you that have been here a while may have seen some of these sketches. Sophie, Mira and Lucretia’s origins on the other hand, have been kept somewhat under covers. Let’s start with Sophie!

Sophie:

Before we settled on the cafe theme for Project Cappuccino, we wanted to come up with a happy go lucky design for a girl. Admittedly, we hated her first look and we constantly tweaked it until we were finally able to settle on her current look.

In a game where most of the characters are supernatural or cursed, Sophie is the only “normal” one. We wanted her design to reflect that by having her be as much of a “girl next door” as possible. Compared to the other characters, her design, color theme and body type are a bit more down to earth.

Colette:

For Colette’s design, we wanted to make her look like an antique porcelain doll so that the marionette curse would fit well with her.

We initially aimed to have Colette be the most serious character of the bunch and we feel that we’ve nailed that aspect. Her hair was going to be blonde but we had our early supporters vote on whether they preferred blue or blonde and we all know how that ended up. Blue definitely seems to fit her much better to be honest. Also she may have gotten taller somewhere along the way.

Cerise:

Cerise, The timid witch! Doku was concerned that her original sketches looked a little too much like Hinata from Naruto, so she tweaked her appearance a bit in the final product. She’s the latest character we’ve designed, so we had a better idea of how to go about it. The gradient in her hair was a last minute decision that ended up working out pretty well.

We had a rough idea of how we wanted her to look, but hadn’t settled on a color theme until the livestream. Although a lot of color themes looked great on her, we wanted to make sure her color theme different from the other girls, and that it would still fit her character. 

Mira:

I don’t think anyone has seen this particular concept sketch of Mira yet. This one is literally from day 1 of development when we were bouncing ideas back and forth. Somehow, Mira just clicked from the start and very few changes were done to her appearance. That black dress she’s wearing looked a little too formal for a manager at a cafe so we changed it for her current business casual, pencil skirt look. I believe we toyed with different hair colors on her as well but the burning red fits her best for the type of character she is.

Lucretia:

Lucretia is a bit different. She is from a scrapped VN that we tried creating, and failed to take off. We loved her design and felt it would be a shame to let it go to waste in the pile of failed attempts. Doku redid her artwork in the newer Cappuccino style and thus, Lucretia was born. There were a few other interesting characters from that project that we may revive in later games, but all in due time.

That's it for now! We'll be giving you guys our usual progress log on Friday with what we've been up to this week!

-Vanis & Dokucchi