Hey everyone! Here is the first of several month devlogs for ‘The End’! Here I will be posting progress, answering common questions, and just discussing design philosophy for the fan game!

So let’s get started with this month’s topic: Character Design!

As the trailer and the page noted, ‘The End’ will be a bit different from most Undertale fangames. In that, aside from a few key cast members, nearly everyone in ‘The End’ will be completely new characters!

That’s right! While we might hear mentions of them, we won’t be seeing any Toriel, Asgore, Papyrus, Undyne, Alphys, or even Sans in the main segments of the game.

Now, most fangames rely on these characters to push their story along. And that makes sense, considering these characters are already developed. You have a basis on how to write them, and a fan base eager to see more of them. So, why did I decide to not include them as major characters in ‘The End’?

Simple, actually! I wanted to bring back that feeling players got when they first went into the Underground. That feeling of uncertainty. Every corner could be someone you never met before. Someone you could learn about, fight, or befriend! From when you first turned around to shake Sans’ hand, to the moment you walked into New Home, I wanted to bring back those emotional moments of discovery. And, sadly, that becomes difficult with characters that already had development. So, to combat this, I decided to take that extra mile and make an entirely new cast.

But this in of itself led to another big hurdle: How does one design completely new characters for an established game universe without making them feel out of place? If all the characters I created just became ‘the new sans’, ‘the new toriel’, etc, then what was the point of making new characters in the first place?

SO, I had to set some ground rules for myself. And these rules became the design philosophy for ‘The End’.

To give a good example, let’s use Cheerie, the shopkeeper!

Cheerie already made a big splash with her introduction, after all! So allow me to explain how I created her design.

The main rules I used with her creation were the following:

1. As a character, what does she bring to the table?

2. As a monster, what is the basis of her design?

3. Is her design and personality unique?

4. Could you see her in the Undertale universe? Does she fit in the game?

When I designed Cheerie, I didn’t really think about her design at first. I thought about who she was as a person. At the time I was trying to think of a good concept for a shopkeeper. I didn’t want her to be a repeat of, say, Catty and Bratty or Burgerpants, but I did want to make sure she had personality. Was she professional? Nervous? Kind? Awkward? Inexperienced? I had to take into consideration all of these aspects before choosing what felt right.

Then, she began to evolve. How would she react to having a customer? How would she react to a customer leaving without buying or saying anything? How would she react to them talking to her? Did customers speak with her often? Around this point, I realized that she would have a long tree of dialogue based on actions. With her being the only full shopkeeper in the game, it only made sense that she would be a bit more complex emotionally than the vendors from Undertale.

From here, I started getting into her actual design. After looking through the other vendors from the original game, I wanted to make a vendor that felt like a natural progression of the ones before her. So, after going through the designs of Catty and Bratty, Burgerpants, Gerson, and the Bunny Innkeeper, I realized that none of them were birds. In fact, there were only one or two bird monsters in Undertale that I could remember, and none of them were major characters. With this in mind, the basis for Cheerie’s design started to take form.

Here was the first pass on Cheerie’s design. I chose the black and white color scheme initially to make Cheerie seem off-putting despite her kindness. She does have a shop in the void, after all. But the first major problem I saw was that her empty eyes and longer hair really messed with her silhouette. So I cut her hair short, gave her hair some unique stylings, and gave her eyes pupils to help her express better.

I was excited with what I had so far! That small hint of color to her look made her seem more ‘alive’, while the pure white face and black feathers helped make her look ‘lost’ like a lot of Gaster’s followers. Add that with her expressive face, and she was shaping up to be a fun character!

Now came the big kicker: Would she fit in the Undertale universe? Could you see her among a crowd of monsters? I had to shift her design a bit to work with that thought process, but in the end I finally felt satisfied with her, and began spriting.

Overall, it took about two weeks to fully realize Cheerie as a character. It was a huge challenge to make her feel at home in Undertale, but if the love she has been getting means anything, I am glad that the nervous birb is being welcomed into the fandom with open arms. And I hope that the other characters following her are accepted just as well, and recapture that wonder that many of us felt when we first heard Sans crack his first pun.

Til next time, thanks for reading!