Development Document: Axl's everchanging design
While the development of the project progresses slowly, I decided that it would be a good idea to continue posting development documents here. I'll probably make more once I have enough art, but for now let's discuss Axl a bit.
I already had a similar post here two years ago, but some stuff had changed since then. So let me have a quick re-cap:
I had made two designs before the project was born. The first one was made in early March 2020, long before I actually got into MMZ properly. He was written as a hermit who lived in Area Zero in a shack he made from scraps of metal. He also had a dog that a Caravan member left in the forest to die... yeah, I really didn't know what I was working with, reading the first few paragraphs from a fan wiki is not enough.
This is probably the most different iteration of MMZ Axl that I have, even from the design perspective. He is even supposed to have one of the strands of his hair dyed red (to look more... modern?). The only design element to carry from on from this design were shorts on suspenders, attached to the bolts because that's how I read Axl's MMX design.
The dog does look cute, maybe we can repurpose it somehow?
Then I made Halloween Axl art a few months later, where he was wearing a grim reaper costume reminiscent of Red. I had a reference art made for the design as well but I had since lost it unfortunately, but largely it was me trying to manifest X DiVE Halloween alt design for Axl (didn't work but I got some praise from my mom for the artwork o3o)
Then in August of 2021, I decided to make a sequel drawing for this one, with Axl with the MMZ design in Grim Reaper costume instead. By that point, I started to get interested in MMZ and chose to scrap the original idea I had for MMZ Axl in 2020. The design below was done by August 24th.
I did notice by that time that MMZ Zero had the same helmet silhouette as MMX Zero despite how different they actually were. However, I had no idea how to do the same with Axl's helmet so it became a bit of a mess and the addition of two new scars also didn't help it in the slightest as I look back at it. Another major difference there are the backpack wings; they're very different but they look more like they were made with the purpose of proper flight rather than hovering above ground. I ended up reverting this change later on.
Then I started working on the Halloween art. I have been drawing it for the entirety of October actually but it really became my magnum opus at the time. I made the outline for it in 10 minutes between classes which you can also see below.
In the middle of the drawing process, I thought to myself: "Damn, the idea actually sounds quite good, what if I develop it further?". And thus ROCKMAN ZERO, Chapter: AXL was born. The design shifted around a bit between 2021 to 2023, but mostly remained the same (you can see all of those iterations below, in the order of their completion).
Most of these changest were done for simplification reasons, either in the coloring department, or in the amount of details Axl's body had rendered. At some point we (me and my team) decided to ditch the reaper cloak altogether, too... it's not like he wore it more than once in the entire story anyway.
Then I left the project hanging for two years and now that I am back working on it, I have redisigned Axl again. Changed the shape of the helmet once more and removed other elements that I thought were too much. Then I redesigned him again to change the appearance of the forehead/chest crystals and the eye (and by extension the scythe light) from green to blue to reduce the color pallete again.
I am yet to actually make a character sheet for the final design but it should be the same as pictured above.
I wanted to also write about every design decision I have made for the final design (I have put too much thought into it), but I guess I will do that tomorrow. Writing this thing for the whole 3 hours made my head hurt ^^;
See ya in the next post! o/