Found Character 3: Learning How to Better Express Tropes through Characters

Source of Inspiration

For this week's Blog Post, I got inspiration from something that I had not seen for a while, a cap from a Kool-Aid Jammers drink. The first thing that came to my mind was how it resembles a lobster, which I thought would make a cool character.

The biggest issue I had was that I was trying to figure out a good trope to use for this post. I did not know exactly how I wanted to express a trope, because I had a problem trying to think of tropes in general that I could use, or even tropes that were familiar to me.

Sketches/Proof of Concept

As you can see below, here are my sketches. I wanted to bring out the element of lobster in my character, so I looked at my object and some pictures of lobster to get some inspiration for the character I wanted to make. It was difficult having to narrow down a trope to make the character, because I felt like I had to base it around the trope.

The idea for my character comes from the villain or boss character that, despite their appearance, may not be all that they seem. I wanted to add detail based on lobster to create the "Lobster King" character, and I wanted to make sure that the character design looks threatening, yet mysterious. I hope that my design shows that throughout.

Character Background & Game Theory

In terms of how I wanted to incorporate my trope, I wanted the "Lobster King" to look very menacing and threatening, but with an air of mystery, hence why I added the face guard and mask for eyes. Similar to a lobster, my character actually has two extra eyes on the top of his head, as well as two eyes in the face, guarded by a mask/goggles so that people do not know the true face. Also, the character is a mutant, and can change different attributes at will. If I were to change anything, I would want to show more transformations/abilities showing what the "Lobster King" can do other than grow and shrink his hands/claws for combat.

To elaborate on how I would use tropes, I would think that the player would go throughout the story thinking that the "Lobster King" is the big villain of the story, but discovers via stories (some mechanic in the game) that the "Lobster King" is a victim of some experiment and rose to power so that other mutants would have a safe place to live. The players would have to discover that exposition for themselves. As for a second elaboration, the "Lobster King" is seen as this conniving ruler that takes advantage of the works of the citizens. During a fight later on, the player discovers that the true conniving person was the character that told the player in the first place. That lying character may have had some in-story history and wanted to use the player to take the blame/revenge in place of the NPC. Of course, I'm just spit-balling here, but elaborating on these stories could make a good way to change the overall trope.