ZZZ is fun to make designs for
I've recently been playing a lot of Zenless Zone Zero after quitting the game for a while, the only reason I returned is because of Starlight Billy and the fact I need to save for him. But I figured I might as well also use my time to make characters for it too. I'll include the final designs for all 3 at the beginning of the post, and the rest will lay out all my ideas for the team as a whole and will be very, very long with multiple images of my process and my thoughts as I went along ^^ Please note several of the pictures may be blinding as I often use white backgrounds when drawing
FINAL DESIGNS
Continue reading below for my process & more details about them ↓↓↓↓↓
INITIAL IDEAS The first place I started was inspiration. I already knew I wanted to base my team off of some of my other ocs from an entirely different universe I made
These two are my ocs Tilly and Pheta respectively I made them a long time ago, and I was also meant to make a third member to their group but gave up after not being able to figure out how to make a robotic jaw work with what I had in mind. I figured these could be the perfect place to begin as their original concepts could also be viable within the world of ZZZ MEMBER #1 - TILLY I decided to begin with Tilly as she felt like the easiest concept to start with, and she was. Looking at her originally design, its very out there and good for her original universe, but within the world of ZZZ, it would feel like a copout to make her frog-based and not make her an actual frog thiren. First order of business was to look into how people anthropomorphized frogs and how I could establish that in my own way while still fitting the world of ZZZ
The most complicated thing about Tilly's design ended up being compromising about her face. I wanted to make it more oval shaped and really lean into the frog features like Ben and Lycaon do, but I had to give her more forehead space for her hair to look good. You can also see me struggling to map out her digitrade legs in a front view. It wasn't too difficult though. As you can tell from the hair, I wanted to lean into a gyaru aesthetic with her. Part of it is due to the fact that she uses a cute persona to try and fix her own sadism and anger issues, but the main part of it is the fact that a friend of mine loves gyaru. I was struggling to pick from the many, many gyaru aesthetics out there. My friend told me their favorite was kogal, but I felt it was too simple for what I wanted. I really wanted to play up the colors. From a very useful Gyaru Wiki, I ended up finding a style called Ishoku Hada, in which people use very bright colors and even color their skin. Look at all these beautiful ladies!
Once I found this, I knew this was what I wanted to do. The colored skin would be perfect for a frog thiren who would already have green skin. Everything fell into place after that and it was a very straight line to her final design.
I did at some point attempt to add spots to her design, as she was originally based on the spotted glass frog, but I ended up not adding it. I took inspiration from multiple pictures of Ishoku Hada as well as other pieces from other types of gyaru while still trying to keep it as Ishoku Hada... But I don't know if it still comes off that way
Most important parts to add for her were her makeup, her gear and wire bow, and the bulky containers on her arms and legs. The gear is a subtle symbol of their team [at least subtle for the rest of them], and the containers are for her to store several utilities [as well as bombs made from nokias]
The bell hanging from her chest is just a funny reference to how parts of how the first ever phones looked, as she uses a rotary phone as her main weapon
The rest was just a lot of frills for aesthetics! I originally thought of her as an A rank Ether Support agent, but that may change. Fun facts about her; - Loves taunting people by jumping on their heads and stomping on them - Really REALLY enjoys horror & thriller movies and always overanalyzes them - Loves noodles, but ONLY THE ONES FROM 6TH STREET. Only those.
MEMBER #2 - CORA
Cora was based on the oc I previously mentioned I gave up on designing, which meant it was definitely going to be harder than Tilly. I originally came up with an idea to give him locs that were very long and turned into electrical plugs and make him an Electric damage dealer... until realizing the market for black characters with powers related to electricity is heavily oversaturated. So I wanted to do something else. After consulting some friends for ideas, I decided to make him Ice instead. Now we had a better direction.
I ended up giving him cornrows that grew out into these kinds of icicles and liked the base body I had going on.
Now here is where I made my very first mistake. I tried to go into the clothes with barely any direction of what I wanted. I looked up pinterest references, different aesthetics, considered lots of things and thought I liked where it was going. Until I didn't.
Once I got to the colors here, I realized I absolutely hated what I had made and it was not what I wanted for Cora. So at this stage I started over again and tried to find an actual direction. I ended up trying to base him loosely off of a Yeti, and things ended up going much better. His clothes made more sense, and there was more intent behind my choices. The most important parts of his design are his icey eyebrows that resemble horns, his fluffy sleeves and pants, and his heterochromia. Although I didn't draw his weapons either, he uses one large axe to fight and creates several smaller throwing axes made of ice in battle. The gear is also a pattern on his shirt.
His claws are retractable, but I didn't write that in at the time ^^ And along with his tusks, his teeth are all sharp and made of hard ice This concludes Cora! He is an A rank Ice Stun agent... which I partly decided from my love of Lycaon and their similar fluffiness. I'm sorry I did you a disservice for so long, Cora. You're okay now. Fun facts about him; - Loves to sit out in the rain as it never gets him sick - Is actually a hopeless romantic - Devours ice cream and chews it like a maniac MEMBER #3 - PHETA I knew from the absolute very, very beginning Pheta would be the hardest of all of them to design. But I wanted to make him so bad as I love all the Intelligent Constructs in the game [and as an avid Billy fan]. Learning from my mistakes, I did an initial sketch of how I wanted to change Pheta to fit more into ZZZ, as a sort of corrupted Intelligent Construct.
I knew for sure I wanted to keep his face and hands very human and easy to identify, as his original purpose in this universe would have been to be not just an assistant to his creator, but also an interpreter as the man was deaf. I also wanted his chest to resemble a rib cage and hold a core inside that resembled the heads of ethereals. With this initial sketch, I felt more confident to go into the design. In which I realized I absolutely did not learn my lesson.
Although I was very confident in what his head, chest, and hands looked like, I very quickly realized I was lost on everything else. Which was, of course, my fault. I didn't put much thought into them assuming I would figure out, which I did, but it gave me many headaches along the way. I decided to get rid of the ether crystals on the half of his face from the initial sketch as I felt his face should be clearly visible. In game, I'd want him to be able to use expressions to more clearly use sign language.
I decided to give him digitigrade legs that were hands at their ends instead of feet to make him more creepy. Which if you can tell, I struggled a lot with in front perspective. Consequences of not struggling much with Tilly. Pheta went through many, many, MANY iterations. I asked many of my friends for helps multiple times through multiple steps. I was undecided on his shapes, his colors, almost everything that I hadn't originally sketched out. My phone ended up with lots of images and screenshots of him as I asked friends for their thoughts.
But eventually, after looking over various designs of ethereals in the game I figured him out. I would also like to thank the one person who made an Ethereal design of Anby that shows up when you look up Ethereals on google, as I looked at it a lot when thinking of how to interpret certain parts of Pheta in a better way. Most of my important notes on Pheta are already written on his reference [he is my favorite, after all].
At first, when his design was done, I felt rather unhappy with it. It felt I had worked so hard for something I was unsure about. But after actually settling down from this design frenzy, I realized I really did love what I'd done. And even if he isn't perfect, I ultimately pushed myself into do something I'd never done before and had fun with it. I also realized I had unintentionally made them all cool colors, which is nice when you see them together and helps them look more like a team as they are very different from each other. Anyways, I consider Pheta to be an S Rank Ether Rupture agent, though I also thought about giving him his own special attribute like Yixuan's Auric Ink. Would that be a bit much? Maybe, but look at him! He's just a guy! He deserves it! Fun facts about him; - He loves fluffy thirens [and often wonders why he got a tail after being corrupted by ether] - Parts of his memories are stored within other intelligent constructs in the abandoned warehouse he lives in, so sometimes when speaking he refers to himself as 'We' when talking about certain types of information or his past - Will sometimes make sure his own facial expressions are still correct by testing a random one on people he knows and it can sometimes be a lil frightening FINAL THOUGHTS All in all, I'm fairly happy with how these guys turned out. I think they could be their own fun team with their own lil fanbase who likes them I'm not sure when I'll draw them again, if ever, but for now I just need a break after scrounging my brain for so long Thank you if you reached the end ^^ I hoped you enjoyed seeing and reading about their team :] [Never, EVER, go into a design you know will be extensive without a plan. Don't suffer like me.]
