#anran

[dustsilog]

Those Wuyang interactions were spicy…

[breikka]

🔥

[buckwheat-pillow]

let my twenty-second post be of lets turn up the heat lets turn up the heat lets turn up the heat lets

[friedsaturn]

this siblings ...

[sylvseven]

[sushiisiu]

go my anran

[chromezi]

A Short Reflection on Anran's Design Changes

After today's spotlight event I wrote something about Anran's design changes between the animation and the concept art. I refuse to post anything on Twitter so here it is, bear with me my fellow human on tumblr 😔

Disclaimer: I am not an expert in traditional chinese clothing. I'm just some random Chinese who knows a thing or two about design.

Looking back at the animation, it is quite obvious that they just changed a lot of her designs to be similar to Kiriko's, including her classic handheld fan to have a kunai-ish blade, a traditional Chinese martial art outfit (Wuxing University's uniform, if I am not wrong) to athletic pants, random sleeves, and the Kiriko style sneakers/boots.

Kiriko's design style is explicitly said to have athleisure inspirations, combining the modern streetwear with her traditional miko-style outfit, like her identity. Now moving to Anran, this copy-pasting is simply lazy because being "rebellious" and "tending to her tradition in her own way" doesn't seem to be core to her personality.

Anran used to have matching arm armor with her brother's as well. We'v lost so much

In the comic, she never once had long, decorative sleeves, and all of her sleeves are tightened/tucked in. Considering the need for her movement set, this is the most logical choice.

However, by changing that, they added extra flow and softness (smoother silhouette), and Anran lost some steadiness in her design, which we could've used more of in the female Overwatch characters' design languages.

Moreover, this set of designs still lacks a central shape. They seem to attempt to add an S-shape in as the main visual clue, but the visual guidance is so bad that it lacks functionality. See Ana's triangular shape as a successful example, where it adds to the hero's silhouette to create a stable, stealthy feeling, as she is the best sniper in the world to support her teammates.

A collage of her face between the animation and the in-game model easily shows that they made her face shorter and rounder, while sharpening her chin. I'm not even going to complain about the rounder, larger eyes.

Her eyeshadow, eyebrow and stronger nose bridge also got nerfed a lot. She lost a lot of unique features. These are some of the features that made this character unique, "Chinese" at first look, and part of the Overwatch universe, but not some random character that you can pull out of any random online game.

While I understand that the animation model is not final, I am pointing out that they could have done better with their explicit choices made in the process.

I wish they would make some changes to the final details before she is released; however, considering that she is going to be in-game tomorrow, I doubt that will be the case. Seeing the standards watered down over the years saddens me a lot. Overwatch was something else. I hope it remains so (while obviously it is not). 😔

[u-so-silly]