Who will be the Next Strawhat?


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Scotch: Vol 107 SBS

Caribou did not hear the dream Luffy gave to the crew when he infiltrated the ship.


It's over Caribou bros :ronalugh:
Worry not Caribou bros. Just shining nakama action at play. :finally:


Paraphrasing a very wise user who spams frequently on here, if Goda says something that goes completely against your agenda, just disregard what he’s saying since we understand the story better than he does. :funky:
 
Now that I think about it. Looking at the end of Carrot's and Yamato's journey. I really hope fans didn't harrass Oda in letters, this would be really problematic.
 
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Now that I think about it. Looking at the end of Carrot's and Yamato's journey. I really hope fans didn't harrass Oda in letters, this would be really problematic.
Carrot fans are the crazy ones though.

For Yamato you have to admit its their fault. Yamato was = Oden, I want to join Luffy, Oden, take me to the sea, Oden, I want to leave etc. Did I said Oden already? And the last second: Nope I will stay. It was bullshit

Lets say you are the mastermind that you think, even though you are not, you as a mastermind cant expect that normal people, especially the younger ones are as smart as you right? For you it was obvious Yamato will not join, for most people it was not. They were hyped for a new good looking very strong woman.

Either this is all double subversive affirmation and Oda made it so obvious that she will join, just for her to not join, JUST for her to join in the end, or he just likes trolling.

@Logiko

Here is a serious question for you: Lets say Yamato does join the crew, wouldnt it be just genius from Oda, that he even tricked someone so smart like you? Ever thought about that? Like I said, double subversive affirmation. What do you think?
 
Really ?

Is this good character design for you ?




I'm sure theremight be good stories. Tho I wouldn't go as far as saying that there are good character designs in this project.

But maybe I'm wrong and maybe I'm not looking at it correctly, can you give me the top 10 character design of this project please ?



That's basically what creating a story for the character means. Some give the character an amazing background and some give just key points but the creation of the identity of the character ALMOST ALWAYS preceeds the actual design research.

This is - despite what V4N is trying to tell you - how it works in the industry. At least if you work on project where there is a goal for the character more than just being the subject of a poster or an illustration.



I'm not denying it doesn't exist. It can in some case. In fact in the entertainment industry, the fact of using randomness can help the creating process. Example herewith fengZhu:


BUT, those are only done on early stage and even when you are silhouetting a character there is always some guidelines you need to follow first. Here are some example of people explaining their method:




Again you need to understand that by "telling a story of your character before the design" doesn't necessaraly means that you will give the character all basic rules of characterization and development and start the plotline or the outlining of the development of the character. No. It means that you need some guidelines, and the more the guidelines the better (design relevant guidelines, we don't care about the blood type of the character during the design process)

Damn, this give me motivation to work a little so I will give you my own example:

Let's say I want to create a character in the universe of One Piece:

1. First I put on paper a list of characterization guidelines (what I'm talking about by story). here I want the character to be:

- A Teenager / young adult
- Joyfull
- Smart and ressourcefull
- From a high dinasty lineage
- Surviving on its own.
- Pirate at hearth

Why ? (Don't mind the mistake, I'm doing this on the fly)

Let's say that that Hitori ("one person") is destined to be a princess of the Fire kingdom, a small kindgom where fire is used as an art in all types of fields. 10 years old and with no survival instinct of her own, she has only one thing in mind, to explore the world one day like a pirate to find the Eternal flame, a mythical and magical flame, from the legends of her people, that can shine brightly and proudly through darkness and never decrease.

One day, when escaping the sight of her mother and father, the girl finds a little raft boat alone in the seas, no one aboard. In it, lies a a big box of fruits. When she looks inside, there is a strange yellow fruit. Without hesitation, she bites into the fruit but is immediately seen by people and workers of the kindgom. They sound the alarm that the princess is trying to escape again. One of the weapon forger, a friend of her, notice the incident and hides her into his shop. She is always amazed by his forged weapons. But this time there is something wrong.

The moment Hitori approaches the fire of the forge, her hand starts to ignite on fire. Her friend is not afraid and start to put the fire down with water.. but the more he tries to put her down, the more he flinches. Now, not only her hand is in fire, but her entire arm. And Hitori's friend just collapsed on the floor.

Hitori doesn't understand, panics and searches for help.. but people flinches in front of her and collapses. Now her upper body is on fire and Hitori is desesperated.. she jumps to the castle and go see her parents. Her mother flinches on sight, her father, a very strong man keeps is sanity and ask her what happens. She explains with despair that she hates a fruit and started burning in fire. The man is in shock and ask her the color of the fruit. She tells him and the father takes her into his arm.

This is the Hito hito no mi model Akurojin no hi. The god of fire of the wrong road. In mythology, this god is a spectral flaming deity that appears in the rain and makes people gravely sick.

The father embrasses her daughter for the last time and start taking fire too. He says those last words "this is not your fault, I love you" and collapse on the ground, dead. The girls starts crying and screaming in despair, her entire body burnes in yellow flames and expand all around making the ground shake and the castle collapse. People in the Kindgom collapses left and right. In the span of one minute, there is no one left. The kindgom is dead and Hitori is the last survivor.

7 years laters, the strawhats debark on the island and finds Hitori, alone, trying to fixes the walls of what we now know being the castle of her parents.

-----

So here is the story of the character (that we will have later in the actual story), the explanation of the characterization's guidelines.

Now there is two ways to proceed, either we jumps into the design right away, or we sketch. I will be doing silhouets first. Hitori is a girl and ressourcefull so this must be reflected directly into the silhouette.

As you can see here (forgive the roughness of the silhouets, I'm doing this fast), I liked the long hair tresse of the 1 design and the "pikes" on her head (those will in fact be her royal attributes) but I didn't like the robe, not ressourcefull enough. I like giving scarf belt to my characters so In fine I have her a scar belt and instead of putting her in a dress I gave her shorts (if you can see on figure 4)



Now that we have the shape of our design we can start drawing roughly. I won't do an amazing sketch here, I don't have the time (And i'm incapable of that in my current state) but you will get the jizz.



The lines



And a bit of color



This is far from being professionnal work, this is actually pretty bad, I lack tehnique. But my point is the same. To create this developped character design (you can check the design and pretty much check all the basic points I made before (joyfull/royalty/ressourcefull etc.) I couldn't simply go with my guts on a whim a just play with shapes.

I had to actually think about the character and its story (that I developped a bit after) and create at least a bit of checkmarks and characterization points.
Its wrong for me to brag about my irl experience,i dont mean to look down on you or anything. but since i let cat out of the bag, i just say it.

i work in one big 3d animated movies in the last 5 year as one of concept artist for charachter design, some streaming series ,and some 3d animated kid show, i also teach charachter design in my local univ, i wont give you any proof, call me bullshit or fraud, im not gonna care.

what you say in this post is not wrong, but its only worked for movie, not for ongoing series.

one amateur mistake is, they try cram alot a meaning in their design, which is a big no-no.

when you design for ongoing series, you dont do that, you put a lot weird questionable thing. that somehow somewhere sometimes in the future, you can turn into a plot point.

if your charachter have meaning for everything from begining, that mean they doesnt have any room to grow and destined to be a side charachter.

so despite how much you think luffy hat mean freedom , sanji eyebrow mean all blue or zoro 3sword mean something, its totally not.

the story are made to justified the design, not the other way around.

oda didnt plan anything from begining like how sanji have a family with same eyebrow, or roger also somehow wear luffy strawhat. i bet you also read one piece log and know how lucci randomly picked to be cp9 from bunch of shipwright charachter.

now about your design, here a simple test:
-put her around charachter you imagine her hang out with ( lets say shp in this case) in their debut cloth/ or after2 year cloth, do she look natural with them ?or she look over/under designed around them?

-draw her without wearing anything, are most her charachterization still noticable?

-draw her with totally different cloth without any similar color scheme. do she still retain her charachterization?

if all three answer is yes, that mean your chara have good design.

thats all, you may agree or not agree, but i wouldnt bother to reply anymore.

im gonna talk only about vivi until vivi make appearance.
 
Really ?

Is this good character design for you ?

ZUN (the creator) likes to experiment with his characters and add things you might not think to add to their designs, like antennae or a frog hat. Choices like these play a part in what makes these characters unique and memorable, and it’s something I would like to take note of if I ever make a game.

I'm sure theremight be good stories. Tho I wouldn't go as far as saying that there are good character designs in this project.

But maybe I'm wrong and maybe I'm not looking at it correctly, can you give me the top 10 character design of this project please ?
Top 10 character designs, huh…? There’s a lot to think about here, considering there’s over 180 characters.

Well, people’s thoughts on character designs are subjective, and everyone likes different things. Because of this, I don’t think I can give you a proper answer. I think playing/watching playthroughs of the games can help you develop your own list.

Music is something that can develop characters as well (Ex. U.N. Owen Was Her), and it plays a big part in setting the tone of the games. Just as there are many characters, there’s also a lot of music.

I'm not denying it doesn't exist. It can in some case. In fact in the entertainment industry, the fact of using randomness can help the creating process. Example herewith fengZhu:


BUT, those are only done on early stage and even when you are silhouetting a character there is always some guidelines you need to follow first. Here are some example of people explaining their method:




Again you need to understand that by "telling a story of your character before the design" doesn't necessaraly means that you will give the character all basic rules of characterization and development and start the plotline or the outlining of the development of the character. No. It means that you need some guidelines, and the more the guidelines the better (design relevant guidelines, we don't care about the blood type of the character during the design process)

Damn, this give me motivation to work a little so I will give you my own example:

Let's say I want to create a character in the universe of One Piece:

1. First I put on paper a list of characterization guidelines (what I'm talking about by story). here I want the character to be:

- A Teenager / young adult
- Joyfull
- Smart and ressourcefull
- From a high dinasty lineage
- Surviving on its own.
- Pirate at hearth

Why ? (Don't mind the mistake, I'm doing this on the fly)

Let's say that that Hitori ("one person") is destined to be a princess of the Fire kingdom, a small kindgom where fire is used as an art in all types of fields. 10 years old and with no survival instinct of her own, she has only one thing in mind, to explore the world one day like a pirate to find the Eternal flame, a mythical and magical flame, from the legends of her people, that can shine brightly and proudly through darkness and never decrease.

One day, when escaping the sight of her mother and father, the girl finds a little raft boat alone in the seas, no one aboard. In it, lies a a big box of fruits. When she looks inside, there is a strange yellow fruit. Without hesitation, she bites into the fruit but is immediately seen by people and workers of the kindgom. They sound the alarm that the princess is trying to escape again. One of the weapon forger, a friend of her, notice the incident and hides her into his shop. She is always amazed by his forged weapons. But this time there is something wrong.

The moment Hitori approaches the fire of the forge, her hand starts to ignite on fire. Her friend is not afraid and start to put the fire down with water.. but the more he tries to put her down, the more he flinches. Now, not only her hand is in fire, but her entire arm. And Hitori's friend just collapsed on the floor.

Hitori doesn't understand, panics and searches for help.. but people flinches in front of her and collapses. Now her upper body is on fire and Hitori is desesperated.. she jumps to the castle and go see her parents. Her mother flinches on sight, her father, a very strong man keeps is sanity and ask her what happens. She explains with despair that she hates a fruit and started burning in fire. The man is in shock and ask her the color of the fruit. She tells him and the father takes her into his arm.

This is the Hito hito no mi model Akurojin no hi. The god of fire of the wrong road. In mythology, this god is a spectral flaming deity that appears in the rain and makes people gravely sick.

The father embrasses her daughter for the last time and start taking fire too. He says those last words "this is not your fault, I love you" and collapse on the ground, dead. The girls starts crying and screaming in despair, her entire body burnes in yellow flames and expand all around making the ground shake and the castle collapse. People in the Kindgom collapses left and right. In the span of one minute, there is no one left. The kindgom is dead and Hitori is the last survivor.

7 years laters, the strawhats debark on the island and finds Hitori, alone, trying to fixes the walls of what we now know being the castle of her parents.

-----

So here is the story of the character (that we will have later in the actual story), the explanation of the characterization's guidelines.

Now there is two ways to proceed, either we jumps into the design right away, or we sketch. I will be doing silhouets first. Hitori is a girl and ressourcefull so this must be reflected directly into the silhouette.

As you can see here (forgive the roughness of the silhouets, I'm doing this fast), I liked the long hair tresse of the 1 design and the "pikes" on her head (those will in fact be her royal attributes) but I didn't like the robe, not ressourcefull enough. I like giving scarf belt to my characters so In fine I have her a scar belt and instead of putting her in a dress I gave her shorts (if you can see on figure 4)



Now that we have the shape of our design we can start drawing roughly. I won't do an amazing sketch here, I don't have the time (And i'm incapable of that in my current state) but you will get the jizz.



The lines



And a bit of color



This is far from being professionnal work, this is actually pretty bad, I lack tehnique. But my point is the same. To create this developped character design (you can check the design and pretty much check all the basic points I made before (joyfull/royalty/ressourcefull etc.) I couldn't simply go with my guts on a whim a just play with shapes.

I had to actually think about the character and its story (that I developped a bit after) and create at least a bit of checkmarks and characterization points.
I see.

Your art isn’t bad, and neither is your story (it could be less dark?). However, I can’t see it happening in the world of One Piece. It sounds like it would work better in something like Avatar: The Last Airbender.

Also, I think Hitori’s character design is a bit too detailed with all of those accessories, which can result in a character being too distracting.

You want to find a balance where a character can blend in with those around them without taking focus away, and I think simplifying the design a bit would help with this.
 
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For Yamato you have to admit its their fault. Yamato was = Oden, I want to join Luffy, Oden, take me to the sea, Oden, I want to leave etc. Did I said Oden already? And the last second: Nope I will stay. It was bullshit
No it wasn't. Like I explained multiple time, Oda is very subtle in his character and Yamato was destined from the start to stay. Nothing justify harrasment.


Yamato will not join, for most people it was not. They were hyped for a new good looking very strong woman.
THe problem is not Oda, its the fanbase and what we are doing here. If the discussion were rationnal and respectfull of the story, people wouldn't be as hype as they are, after all its not the first time Oda hype someone as a redhearing. But by pushing the agenda like we were doing here or in other place like twitter, we are pushing the expectation. I guilty of that too with Carrot.

The difference is that I have always been careful with my audience on twitter about Carrot journey and I keep repeating that this was just a theory, nothing more.

Maybe Oda should have made it more obvious for fan not to be so dispointed (even tho and don't see a lot of those "fan") but it was really not necessary for the story.


Here is a serious question for you: Lets say Yamato does join the crew, wouldnt it be just genius from Oda, that he even tricked someone so smart like you? Ever thought about that? Like I said, double subversive affirmation. What do you think?
This is what you guys keep missunderstanding about me. I'm open to Yamato joining, and if Yamato join, I wouldn't be surprised. Why ? Simply because before joining, there would be obvious signs of her recruitment other than a subversive affirmation. Real sign like for example the development of a post for example or a special skill.

The sad thing is.. I simply can't be surprised about a character joining the crew, because I'm am theorizing and analysing so much about it that I would obviously see all the details related to their future recruitment.

That's why I'm preventing myself from theoryzing beyond the next Nakama, I don't want to spoil the story and I want to keep some surprises.

BEcause their is a simple principle that is important to understand about theorizing. Its that, the closer we will get toward the end, the easier it will be to theorize the story. In fact I predict that in a year or two, at least half the theories about the story will be soonly proven true.

The reason for that is that we are at the end of the story and the differents threads are closing in.

To understand what Isay more clearly, I made a graph



You can see here that at the beginning of the story its quite predictible simply because some trope must be placed into motion like in any story, and the more we approach the second act the more it becomes unpredictible.

Then we enter the second act and the story is quite unpredictible until we start seeing the glimps of the mid point. Here, there must be some radical change and in One Piece this change can be predictible already in the end of thriller bark.

The mid point happens and we dive directly into unpredictibility due to the structure of the story and the way the new world works.
Until the beginning of Wano were unpredictibility start to decrease. Indeed, at the begiining of wano, the threads of the end of the story starts to emerge.

Even more in Egghead. And the threads will keep on reuniting until a point of convergeance at the climax of act 2 (the big battle of One Piece that we are waiting) and the third act should be quite predictible.

That's why, I started saying to theorist to be careful with their revelation as the more we are approaching the end, the easier it will be to predict the end and the different threads of storylines.

Note that this graph also work for arcs (its the same structure) with maybe a little bit more unpredictibility during the midpoint.

i work in one big 3d animated movies in the last 5 year as one of concept artist for charachter design, some streaming series ,and some 3d animated kid show, i also teach charachter design in my local univ, i wont give you any proof, call me bullshit or fraud, im not gonna care.
Its not my place to question your background. I only question your method.

one amateur mistake is, they try cram alot a meaning in their design, which is a big no-no.
I agree with that, which is why I started with a simple checklist for my character. The actual story came after. But in a serie like One Piece, its important to understand that the story comes first and the design MOST OFTEN later. Simply because the mangaka must have his storyline prepared month in advance in order to work on his actual design. If that was not the case, the story would feel completely unjointed (I don't know if that's a good word for that idea)


if your charachter have meaning for everything from begining, that mean they doesnt have any room to grow and destined to be a side charachter.
When I'm talking about a character having a story, I do not mean that the creator must have all the story planned in his mind (even if that's better) but rather big characterization parameters that will allow to milk the theme of the story through the character and the design.

Of course, you need to keep some room for shapes iterations and silhouets.


the story are made to justified the design, not the other way around.
Oh no. Not at all. And I'm sorry but if you are teaching that to your studient, you will lead them to do very bad work at the end.

THe story is ALWAYS the prime directive. EVEN if that story just take the shape of simple characterization points like (joyfull / Royalty / Ressourcefull etc.)

Design without story is meaningless.

You really need to understand that by story I can talk about the background of a character, but I also talk about the FONCTION and THE CHARACTERIZATION of a design.

For example, when you create a room, you must always have in mind fonction first. This is the "chracterization" of the room. Same for a vehicule, and same for a character.

You should know that as a concept artist. Or maybe you know that but we are not using the same words.


so despite how much you think luffy hat mean freedom , sanji eyebrow mean all blue or zoro 3sword mean something, its totally not.
No. Sanji's eyesbrow don't mean all blue, they are just a reference to food. Its the fonction of this design.
But for the rest, I'm sorry, but they are, despite what you can think.


oda didnt plan anything from begining
Of course, that would take a God to do such a things.


or roger also somehow wear luffy strawhat
I wouldn't be so sure about that.

Lets take for example the project I'm working on. If I do things correctly, the project should take pretty much as long as One Piece, despite that. I'm actually working on the end and very little detail about the end of the story. Why ? Because this is the best way to create a story (or rather, the most efficient way). Meaning that even if it can be surprising, Oda can actually had in mind such things as the way Vegapunk is dressedup at the very BEGINNING of his writing process for One Piece. It all depends on what he needed to write at this points to create a powerfull ending.


i bet you also read one piece log and know how lucci randomly picked to be cp9 from bunch of shipwright charachter.
Well, there will always be randomness in a creative work and I'm glad for that.

-put her around charachter you imagine her hang out with ( lets say shp in this case) in their debut cloth/ or after2 year cloth, do she look natural with them ?or she look over/under designed around them?

-draw her without wearing anything, are most her charachterization still noticable?

-draw her with totally different cloth without any similar color scheme. do she still retain her charachterization?

if all three answer is yes, that mean your chara have good design.

thats all, you may agree or not agree, but i wouldnt bother to reply anymore.
I agree with that and the answer is yes in all cases. Simply because I gave her specific design shapes that are not too out of this world and in the meantimes, shapes that can be recognized easily.
In that case its the weird devil crown, her weapon, her skin color and her long braid. Something that is almost non existent in One Piece.

it could be less dark?
It would actually be very hopefull. I just gave you the setup. But with the arrival of the strawhat, this setup would transform in a story where the character actually learn to pardon herself. It would be a similar situation that Luffy faced in Wano with the sick prisonner. This character is enslaved to her devil fruit and would actually refused until the last moment to control it by fear. This would be the overpower over fear.

But looking at One Piece, its really not that dark lol. We have seen worse.

Also, I think Hitori’s character design is a bit too detailed with all of those accessories, which can result in a character being too distracting.
I actually agree with that. That's one of my technical problem, I lack the principle of simplification of design. I'm too tempted to add accessories.


You want to find a balance where a character can blend in with those around them without taking focus away, and I think simplifying the design a bit would help with this.
Agreed.
 
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