Persona Shadows

A project to create hypotheticals of all sorts from Personas 3 & 4. WARNING: This blog has unmarked Persona 3 and Persona 4 spoilers!!

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Scan ended up being brighter and lighter than I intended, oh well.  Didn’t want to spend any time fiddling with it on the computer to make it look better so this is all you’re gettin’ for now.

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Just Persona 5 concept sketching.  Altering the workflow to see if I can produce them faster.  Working in pencil, which I haven’t done much of at all for this entire blog, and I think the ideas are flowing quicker and more naturally.  This good fellow’s design is coming along nicely I think.

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Okay, finally finished P5, you can spoil it for me now.

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Just about finished with Persona 5.  My mind is alight with possibilities...

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Finally the Persona everyone’s been waiting for.

Hanako Ohtani’s Persona, Amanozako

Amanozako was a monstrous goddess born from Susano-o keeping too much ferocity within himself until he vomited her out.  Amanozako herself was said to have a terrible temper and a truly beastly face.  She had a long nose, long ears, and incredibly powerful teeth that could chew through swords.

By and large there’s not much to Hanako’s character to really come up with suitable Persona choices, so really the choice came from my association of Amanozako’s long nose and my Shadow Hanako’s clown nose.  And I guess Hanako is seen as a rather monstrous figure to most around her.

Like Nobunaga this is a design I’ve been sitting on a while.  When I sat down and came up with Personas for everyone (which I basically did all at once) I had a really vivid picture of Amanozako pretty much right away--a short, stout thing that wielded a pair of swords with bites taken out of them (you know, her strong teeth and all).  Which is a pretty fun visual I haven’t really seen before.  All in all this is one of my favorite Persona designs I’ve done.  She kinda looks like a cross between a chicken and shark.

As I said in a previous post, drawing Hanako as a Persona user was pretty fun.  I gave her brass knuckles because... I dunno.  I just kind of drew her in that “ready to punch” pose at a whim and thought it looked good.

Go here to compare to Shadow Hanako.

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Drawing Hanako and liking it.

(Three thousand followers?!?! What?!)

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Ah, it’s finally behind me.

Ryotaro Dojima’s Persona, Nobunaga

Anyone with a passing interest in Japanese history will know Oda Nobunaga, the infamous warlord of the sixteenth century.  A brutal daimyo, he’s known as one of the three unifiers of Japan.  He himself was fond of western styled fashion and is often depicted wearing high collars and western styled armor.  He was also a major proponent for the usage of firearms.

In Nanako’s entry I kind of had to dance around why I specifically chose to make her Persona to be the daughter of Nobunaga--in truth, I came up with Dojima’s first.  In the world of Persona 4 Dojima kind of comes across as the “ruler” of the protagonist’s world, so this Persona seems less like how Dojima sees himself but rather how those close to him see him.

I’m also kind of cheating as Kanji’s two awakened Personas (Rokuten Maoh and Takeji Zaiten) are actually technically based on Nobunaga (they’re both nicknames he had), but I figured I could get away with it as this isn’t actually an “awakened” Persona, perhaps Dojima’s second rank Persona would evolve into something else to give Kanji room (just hypothetically, I don’t plan on designing awakened Personas).

But getting to the Persona’s design--the obvious origin comes from Shadow Dojima’s car wreckage.  I took that in the obvious direction--he’s sort of a combination of a Transformer, a shogun, and Samus from Metroid.  So he’s made of car parts, or rather mostly things that look like car parts--actual car parts are pretty dry looking and difficult to draw, but I think the general effect came through the design anyway.  The gun arms could be seen as a callback to Nobunaga’s usage of firearms in warfare.  I also really like the visuals of bullet belts.  The flower symbol on his belt is the symbol of the Oda clan, and is the same as seen on Nanako’s Persona, Tokuhime.

The design didn’t change much from my original sketches even all the way back when I first came up with him (again, I actually came up with this design before Nanako’s).  So it’s been a long time coming.

Dojima himself of course needs a standard issue handgun.  He’s gotta do this shit by the book.  I had given him normal glasses at first but he just didn’t look right.  The sunglasses ended up being much cooler looking.

Go here to compare to Shadow Dojima.

(only three left!)

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soon

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Working on Dojima’s persona last year and I got pretty far, and then I had a computer crash and lost most of my progress on it!  I lost interest in keeping going at that point, but there’s some new Persona game that came out recently?  Perhaps you’ve heard of it?  Anyway, it’s not important if you have or not, what is important is that its given my passion for Persona things a pretty good shot in the arm, so here we go again I hope!

(if you spoil Persona 5 for me I will personally find you and steal your heart though, I’m only on like the third dungeon)

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Took a break, but back on the horse again.

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Nanako Dojima’s Persona, Tokuhime

Lady Toku, or Tokuhime, was probably the most well known daughter of the infamous sixteenth century Japanese warlord Oda Nobunaga.  She’s best known for being responsible for the deaths of her mother in law, Lady Tsukiyama, who she detested, and her husband, which was an unintended consequence of getting the former killed.  Oops.

The specifics aren’t really all that important here, as I mostly chose Tokuhime because she was the daughter of a terrifying warlord, which I thought was a good enough callback to her own fears of her father in her shadow.  I dunno.

But, funny thing, this Persona’s design.  I have really good ideas for basically every other Persona I have left to design, and I hit a roadblock with Nanako for a while.  I only really knew two things--one, that it was to be a navigation Persona, not a combat one, and two, that I wanted it to be angelic looking.  You can see an earlier attempt on the bottom left of the lower picture.

However, I felt nothing was really working until I just looked at the design a completely different way--Personas don’t have to be big, monstrous things, do they?  That’s when I realized the direction I had to go.  Some more brainstorming, and I came up with this.

I wanted it to look like a cartoon, kid appeal character, something that Nanako would really like.  Soft, cute, and cuddly: and what soft, cute, cuddly thing does Nanako like the most?  Teddie, of course!  So the design became sort of what Nanako would imagine as a female counterpart to Teddie.  And I really wanted to sell what I thought would be Nanako’s personal excitement at helping the Investigation Team, so I gave it a magnifying glass (I know she’s also a fan of some detective show or manga in the adaptations I think).

I didn’t really pull anything from Tokuhime’s tale from the design at all (as there isn’t much to go on, really), so I decided to use the Oda clan symbol as her belt buckle and tie its flower motif into its dress, which helps connect it to Nanako more I think, what with her fond memories of her mother picking flowers at the riverbank.

Anyway, yeah, Nanako is intended to be a navigator.  She would use the magnifying glass to see what’s going on.  I briefly, briefly thought about giving her a combat role but that just felt so very wrong.  Like, gross child negligence or something.  You just don’t make a six/seven year old fight.  Plus, Nanako’s too sweet of a girl.

Go here to compare to Shadow Nanako.

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It’s still going to take a while for this next one to be finished, but just thought I’d upload this to make sure you knew I was still working on this as it’s been a little while.

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The Fox’s Persona, Tamamo-no-mae

Tamamo-no-mae was one of the names taken by a fox spirit who was supposedly responsible for corrupting royalty all over eastern Asia.  Specifically, Tamamo-no-mae was the identity it took of a courtesan under Emperor Toba.  She was said to be beautiful and extremely intelligent.  But when the emperor mysteriously fell ill she was exposed as a fox in disguise and the one behind the illness and she fled.

But really, the reason I chose Tamamo-no-mae is because she was a fox interfering with human affairs, though obviously the fox in Persona 4 was a helpful figure, not a malevolent one.  Oh well.

When it came to designing this thing, though, it was a little tricky.  I mean, I had a pretty good idea right away, but I don’t have very much experience drawing foxes, and I wanted it to be recognizable as a fox, so I had to do some research and practice.  But like I said, I had one idea right away--the mask.  Typically you see people wearing fox masks (as is the case in my design for the fox’s Shadow), not foxes wearing people masks, so that felt like a fun reversal.

I don’t know how I ended up first drawing those lips but after I did along with the visor shape for eyes it kind of reminded me of a female spy from like a 60s movie or something, so that informed the rest of the design.  She also needed nine tails, of course, being a fox spirit and all, so I had to do something there, but I always seem to arrive at a design solution that’s the most difficult to draw.  Those things were a pain, I’m not going to lie.

For the fox’s weapon I had to mull on it for a while, as I definitely wanted a proper weapon and I didn’t want to just copy what Koromaru had.  Four legged creatures are obviously limited to what human weapons they can wield, so I gave the fox a kusarigama (a sickle with a chain and ball at the end).  A rather...  short kusarigama, but a kusarigama nonetheless.  I’m not entirely sure how it wields one, as real ones require two hands, but it sorta looks cool in the picture.

Here’s the fox’s Shadow for comparison.

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Had only just started on the fourth one when I posted this last, so thought I’d post it.

The next Persona in the P4 line is coming along nicely too.  Hopefully this week I’ll finish it.

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Eh, maybe I’ll just tell you.

Coming up with all these Shadows and Personas naturally got me thinking of coming up with characters and a story to go along with them.  Not like, P4 fan characters, but like, “what if I designed a Persona title.”  So in my spare (spare) time I have been sketching out ideas for it here and there.  I have a rough concept of the characters, setting, and plot ideas but only my Persona designs are at any real advanced stage.  I’m just never really at a level I feel comfortable showing it all off.  So we’ll see.