There is a reason why I choose best girl as my mascot. It's inevitable. Oh, look, it's the #17 entry, my favorite number and coincidentally, I want to talk about one of my favorite kids. 2015—2018. She went from designated placeholder for otome game heroine and occasional snarker with closet tendency to fully embrace herself as a wota with a personality, hahaha. Build up story and design notesWhile I do have [Kai] as the way I present myself across the web and it also becomes the name of the mascot that represents me... back then, I did have another identity as well, for personal reason. And there she is, [Sana]. Actually, I never thought to make her as a standalone character, at first. [Sana] was just a name; a pseudonym that was created merely for a personal purpose when I did not want to use [Kai] name at circumstances. But well, yeah. Aside from that, I was only using that name for every game that I've been playing, at first. Thought to give her design and make her as a character was emerged when I was hyping hard on Ensemble Stars! around 2015. I thought the producer in Ensemble Stars works similar way to the admiral in Kantai Collection or the saniwa in Touken Ranbu, so yep, she then created for that purpose. I'm not a fan of creating new OC for every single stuff I follow and play, only to be abandoned later. So, I decided to make her as the girl who leaps through time and dimension, shut up. And that was where she went from a pseudonym into a mascot. Aside from using her as a game mascot and/or a placeholder for protagonist of games that I play, I usually use her for singing mascot as well, since Kai is my drawing mascot I didn't think much of her design, as well, because, being the mascot, she will wear everything the protagonist wear, as simple as that. So does with her age, it was very vague, and she’ll basically age up or age down depends on the game. Talking about giving her a proper design and face, I derived her design from Yomi aka making her as a base for Sana. This is because back then, I always use Yomi as my avatar as Sana; since Kai is associated with Asca quite a lot. Hence, she has the bandanna and the curly hair. To make her different from Yomi, however, I style her hair in a crown twist bun, while Yomi lets hers down freely. Also, from their stature, Sana is short and flat, while Yomi is tall and curvy in comparison. She also has brown hair, which came from Yomi’s hair color. However, I made it slightly reddish due to the influence of some game heroines that I was playing back then. I also like her eye color, as well. It has similar color with Chem’s, because I need variation other than red, green, and blue (laugh). I did sketch her initial concept as a mascot, but I drew it in unused office paper during lunch time back then haha. Sadly, I couldn’t retrieve it and bring it home, though, since my tantou said that the information on the back of paper is kind of private, even if it was unused, so she had to put the paper on shredder. Goddamn. *clench fist* When revamping her for the STKR, I’d like to dress her properly. She’s… very much an avid gamer who doesn’t go out much except for going to live, or schools, so I think she’s the type of girl who dresses for comfort, not for style. Hence, I gave her some kind of homey attire, with an over-sized T-shirt, short pants, and jacket. I really want to emphasis her slenderness; hence I gave her the short pants, hehehe. I also think of her as someone who wears pants to the school no joke, there are girl’s academy that has slacks as their uniform and I thought it’s very rad, yo, so I made her as such. It’s also to give her a comparison with Hii-chan and Riho. Name & BirthdaySanae Konishi is derived from 371-524. 371 is a backward from 1703, a number that I still considered lucky until now. While 524, it refers to a line in Matryoshka song (click that pretentious analysis, I mean). Since her whole existence was intended as a joke at first, so I made similar concept with her name. I love puns, ergo, it came from a number play. Interestingly, the name of a coworker of mine is also Konishi. So, when she asked out of curiosity why I named Sana as such yes, she knew I play games and draw during breaks and when I explained about the Matryoshka thing, she said, "That's interesting, because it has a meaning that it has no meaning." Schrödinger much. Come to think of it... that was the only time I talk about my kids passionately to a normal person, out of hobbies, I mean. Her birthday is come from Knight's Day. Yes, that certain unit on Ensemble Stars that I stanned hard back then, not the actual knight. Again, the number play comes to action, since 7/12 can be read as Na-i-tsu, which is the pronunciation for Knights in Japanese. Personality & RelationshipI tend to group her together with Hii-chan, since they are my mascots initially. Yet, different from Hii-chan who exists with design but without personality, Sana… is the opposite because she is somehow a tad more detailed on that aspect. Tsukkomi / straight-man probably the thing that defines her best, as she projects my reaction toward stupid things that happened in-game which worth to be commented. However, she's far from acerbic, not like a son of mine who is also sometimes I use as a gaming mascot. She's full of expression, not a deadpan potato. I haven’t built her much for the story, but being the loud gamer girl is definitely her key that I want to keep. When I revamping these two again for STKR, I made them as cousins with mutual interest of well, things I like. Drawing... gaming... and such. Writing the dynamic between these two is fun as well, because, they are similar, yet there is striking difference between them. I won't talk much about this, though. End noteI actually don’t want to play favorite among my kids, but admittedly, Sana holds dear... memories for me. If it's not because of her, I might have been stopped drawing in 2015. I was in my slumping period at that time, not to mention that I was busy with real life as well. So, there is no time for me to draw anything, nor having any motivation to bounce back. I was also in doubt with my drawing skills and such hahaaa yeah, I was an emo. By playing games and simultaneously creating her, I found myself back in drawing again. I started to do a lot of her drawings in my college binder; most of it were for winding up and getting myself used to drawing again instead of for being executed seriously. It was quite bad… nevertheless, it was a real joy. So, well, thanks to her that I’m still keep drawing until now. The other thing is, she is the only child that created when I was abroad. So heh, maybe that's another special status she only has. [Last updated on June 2020]
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