The cast of Canvas Menagerie grows with each Act, with most being designed all at once during the early parts of the game’s development. Although not entirely, most of the cast were concepted to reflect their TV show counterpart.

Let's begin to see how they were designed!

Here are some of the initial sketches! You can recognize most of these characters as being very close to their final incarnations- some, though, you won’t meet until later Acts.

To start off with, let’s look at our protagonist.

Being the teen protagonist in the midst of a rebellion, the main character in the show finds himself in new territory while trying to get through turbulent years. Likewise, Niko is trying to navigate his early 20s and become comfortable with his newfound stardom. He’s a trans man and started transitioning several years prior to the start of the story, when he was 18.

Niko’s visual design has always been very casual. He puts a lot more emphasis on comfort over “coolness” and would definitely be the type to shop at second-hand stores, wearing clothes that were in style years ago. It’s the comfort and ease on the wallet that matters, not what’s in fashion now!

Most of his design process was actually figuring out how the heck to style his hair! Eventually though, I embraced the floof.

Next of course is our resident heartthrob and talk of the town, Ren. His character in the TV show is the rival- the man looking to tear down the fascist government after being wronged years ago. Both this character and Ren are family men.

Originally, he was supposed to be much more flirty and talkative. It was hard to write someone who’s a workaholic and pushes himself more than he should but is also excessively flirty and narcissistic, so as he came to life in the story he became much more reserved and pessimistic. Rather than flirting with coworkers, he now spends more time jumping from project to project and having little social life (work parties and celebrity events don’t count).

To put it simply... the more I wrote, the more of a loser he became!

Ren is someone who’s very self-driven but, despite first looks, he puts a lot of emphasis on trust and family. Being a celebrity workaholic, he always has to look good but never has much time for anything. His shortcut? Leather jackets and black pants. Sometimes a layered sweater.

He is almost always dressed in a lot of black, whether it be in a leather jacket or a vest or a full suit. He may be on the verge of 25 years old but he’ll never outgrow his goth phase.

And that's the design process for Niko and Ren! Next time we'll take a look at how Angel, Serena, and Victor were designed.

Thanks for reading! As always, you can find more devlogs on our website.

Read Part 2 here!

— Arimia

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