this took a lot longer than expected + some of these guys look a little more rough than desired but I'm pretty happy anyways!
keep in mind that these are *my* interpretations of the characters that i've curated over the many years ive been fixated on this game :,-)
some design notes below the cut since i put an ungodly amount of effort into the thought procress (its a lot of text, warning you now) ⬇️
- following the ts3 + ts2 genetics, my curious-smith family are darker skinned with less racially ambiguous features, fuller lips, larger noses, etc. (although not every person of that ethnicity is the same of course! these were purely observational looking at their family line). they are afro mestizo in my headcanon, with glarn being afro latino & kitty being mestizo.
- vidcund still has his mullet thing going on but it is a loc mullet!
- my curiouses are generally chubby. i don't have any exact reason for this. i know a lot of people headcanon pascal as being chubby but i think it could be cool if they all were. it also adds visual interest with different body types.
- erin & loki are scandinavian (like me!) so they're already very pale but i wanted to excaberbate that even further by making them albino. this isn't an accurate depiction of albinism as in real life, people with that condition often have health issues alongside that. (if i were to give that any thought, i like to think that loki initially became interested in inventing to benefit his own health issues but then his ambition took him down a darker, more mad sciencetist path). for erin as well, i just think it's cute considering her whole psychic thing, lookin a bit fairy-like + contrasts nicely with her pink colour scheme.
- nervous is darker skinned, exactly the same as his ma since grim doesn't have dna really. (some people have their own school of thought regarding why nerv being super pale, but this is my own). he has burn scars as electrocution causes scarring on skin + organ tissue, which he has gone through, a lot. he has various stitches, scars, and vitiligo marks across his face and body. the vitiligo on his face looks like a skull. this was originally going to be on the left side of his face, where theres no burns, but i figured it made symbolic sense + was a lot less cluttered if the burns covered up the skull vitiligo markings on his face.
- johnny, ripp, tank all have acne / acne scars - typical of teenagers.
- chloe + lola are of different skintones for storytelling purposes. in my little world, chloe and lola are very deeply close but also very affected by the abscence of their dad (him abandoning them), and being the only aliens they really knew of - basically being raised in isolation for most of their life. This is your typical cain & abel tale. Lola always felt inferior compared to Chloe, who had personality and charisma. She was always jealous of that, feeling like she’s always the awkward one + always will be in her sister’s shadow because of this. She tries her best to compensate for this through pouring herself into her work, in hopes that when she gets money, she’ll finally be accepted. This extends into their assimilation to humanness as well. Chloe is able to assimilate better whereas Lola feels like she cannot.
- Ripp is very different to canon.. I don't have a lot of an explanation for this but I just wanted to give him scene hair (also longer hair because I headcanon her as being a trans girl, but a very closeted one so she's in that awkward phase of growing out her hair but pretending like it's just shaggy + pulls it back into a low ponytail). The cleft lip is a bit of projection on my part, as I had a cleft palate when I was younger. Characters that I like will recieve some kind of disability that I have, for Nervous it's deafness + debilitating leg pain, for Ripp its this. I think it's also interesting narrative wise to compare how Buzz & the Beakers both handle disability. Buzz is a very 'tough it out' & 'you're just being sensitive' type whereas the Beakers uhh caused it, with their experimentation.
- I'm gonna be real, I hate Jill's design. It tells me nothing about her personality wise + I'm bummed out how human she looks. We need more weird little girl designs! Tried to find a middle ground.
- Buck has brown eyes like the corrupted version of Lyla. I chose to make him look like a carbon copy of Lyla (relatively speaking) for irony purposes. He has the least memories of her and yet looks exactly like her.
- Kristen is intended to look more like a typical masc lesbian because I am soo indulgent towards making the singles household just like a crazy lesbian situationship household (minus the curious sisters with eachother - of course).