Character Development: Mirai Samekuma

In this post, we'll take a look at the origins and design history for Zombie Shark Bear's main character and heroine, Mirai Samekuma.
The first interesting aspect of Mirai, in my opinion, his her name. It's Japanese. The reasons why I decided to go with a Japanese name for the character is a. the language allowed me to create an interesting pun to use to describe the character, and b. although the story takes place on a fictional world, it allows readers to easily picture the character by making a cultural analog to people of that world.

Mirai's first name means future, which says alot about the type of person she is. She is a character that has gone through a considerable amount of grief, but will still continue on toward the future.

Her last name is a merging of the words shark and bear- because she's a Zombie Shark Bear.



Design-wise, Mirai has taken a very long time to develop. It really wasn't the personal details that were tricky to figure out, actually Mirai's final design doesn't vary too much from her initial concept.

Her dress has been more or less the same since her second draft, and her facial scars have always been a part of the character. She has also always been a slight character, with a very petite build and a baby face, I did this in order to make her different from Pai Bunny in Gremlin World. Whereas Pai is fit, active and muscular, Mirai is delicate and small, though she hides incredible power.

What was difficult to develop for Mirai, though, was the art style to render her in. Because Mirai is the main character, the art style she is rendered in is very important to the styling of the overall art in the project.

The first two efforts I made had her drawn up in a style similar to the Gremlin World art style, with the third example of the character being more Disney-esque and taking several stylistic ques from an artist I admire greatly, gueuzav. It was at this point, with the urging of 3D Johnny, one of the editors on the project, that I added Mirai's bear-feet, as well, to better illustrate that part of her character.

With version four of Mirai's design, I began taking a much more stylized approach with the character. This version eschewed the softness of previous attempts and introduced harder edges to the character. This direction stayed with Mirai through her next few design phases, which mostly dealt with variations on the character's body build, hair style and eyes- which at this point were given black sclera with varying irises.

Upon the seventh design variation of Mirai (which I had intended to be her last) I went back to using soft shapes on the character, but still kept the basic shape approach to the character. But she looked much too young in this rendition and I set about on an eighth design, which culminated in the final version of the character. This version also has a simplified hair style and a bow on her head, as well as having a black eye with red iris and a completely blank white eye.