it was suggested to me that i try my hand at redesigning the natlan cast…i’m a bit apprehensive of sharing this bc i’ve seen some truly fantastic redesigns by other artists, but i gave it a shot anyway, at the very least to expand my own mental library of clothing styles. some of these redesigns are much more drastic, others mostly in the details…still, it was fun to explore some of the missed potential in the game :)
a quick disclaimer that i do not come from any of the cultures referenced/represented by natlan. please do not consider me an authority on how any character “should” look…i did some basic research for each of them but can’t make promises as to thoroughness or accuracy, so apologies if anything is misrepresentative!
i personally prefer to design characters as a group because it pushes me to give them more variation…ik their shapes and body types are quite a departure from the in-game limitation of a standard 3d model, but this is just for fun. if i weren’t trying to preserve the anime gacha appeal of the original characters, i’d push them even more (esp in terms of age variation! i think citlali would be a lot of fun as an actual old lady w the personality she has)
a challenge i immediately ran into is that natlan is a hodgepodge of a gazillion different cultures across west africa, the americas, the pacific…for these redesigns, i mostly took cues from what i thought were the inspirations for the characters’ respective tribes, their existing appearances, and/or the origins of their names
mualani – hawaiian + samoan + maori + other various polynesian
kachina – navajo + pueblo
xilonen – aztec + mexican
chasca – peruvian + argentinian
ororon – west african + emo (which is not historical by any means but i couldn't resist lol)
ifa – argentinian + yoruba
perhaps this is personal preference but imo the brown skin + white hair combination is a very tired look…sure it can look good on individual characters, but when you do it to nearly every dark skinned character you can see a pattern emerge. i could write a whole essay on how i think of it as an attempt to create a head-in-the-sand, completely apolitical fantasy type of black/brown person while leaning into whiteness/lightness as beauty, but…well, long story short, i’m giving the characters dark hair where i can
also, you may notice varesa is missing from the group – maybe i ran out of brain juice or something, but i spent a solid hour on her design and just could not get it to look good lol
one last note – in regard to research and references, i tried my best to look for clothing/accessories predating colonization…but tbh it was difficult to find those, so inevitably some historical european and contemporary western clothing styles got mixed in. perhaps an artist better versed in history and these particular cultures could do a better job at envisioning a cast of characters whose nations were never colonized…
anyway, thanks for reading! feedback is welcome; and let me know if you’d like to see any of these designs refined into a full-color illustration!
