SLARPG Behind the scenes: Zinnia!

I was considering spacing out my behind the scenes posts to get through more of the early game stuff first, but you know what? Screw it. Let's talk about something I know y'all wanna hear about.

Let's talk about Zinnia.

(THIS POST CONTAINS VERY HUGE SPOILERS FOR SLARPG AND SHOULD NOT BE READ UNLESS YOU'VE FINISHED THE GAME. YOU'VE BEEN WARNED.)

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Original conception

The idea for Zinnia came from a few places. For one, dragons are cool. This is a given. I like it when games let the dragons be your friends, rather than just being big monsters to slay. It would have been a missed opportunity to not have a nice dragon somewhere in the game, so this was in the back of my mind.

The specific dragon that ended up in the game came out of brainstorming for Verena's story. As seen in the 2017 plot outline, I knew the rough shape I wanted Verena's story to take, but I didn't know how to get there. The specifics of her past that hurt her so deeply, what her real goals were, what exactly would shake her out of it for the resolution I had in mind. I had many, many late nights where I would suddenly get an idea for Verena's story shortly before bed - a different take on her backstory, an element of her and Javis's plan, some dialogue, etc. - leading to scattered notes from which her whole story was eventually assembled. Among those was one designed to give her more of a connection to the world: if Verena taught the mortals magic, who were her first students? Could it be possible that one was still around, someone to anchor her better to the world emotionally? Who could also serve as a source of exposition? And if they need to have lived for a thousand years, then what species works for that?

She's also sort of an allusion to Final Fantasy - although maybe not the one you're thinking. One of the first RPGs I ever played was the GBA port of Final Fantasy I, which was and still is a foundational game for me. Zinnia is, in part, an allusion to Bahamut's role in that first game, where he's a mentor of sorts to the party. You meet him in his cave, and he sends you out on a trial for which you're rewarded with upgraded classes. While the details are different, this should sound familiar.

Ultimately, these ideas coalesced into the rough idea for a dragon character with no specified name or gender, serving as both a friendly mentor for the party in their time of need as well as Verena's first student from a thousand years ago. In 2017, that was pretty much all I had.

Over time, I came up with more details about Zinnia as a person, what she'd been doing for the last thousand years, and the significance of her relationship with Verena. (I also came up with the central gag of her introductory scene very early.) My big breakthrough came when I thought about another factor: if Verena wasn't really one of Reverie's gods, but became worshiped as one... how did the actual gods feel about that? And so the centerpiece of their shared backstory that gives it their emotional weight was born.

However, because she only appears late in the game and I was stuck in Acts I & II for years, she didn't have a design for a long time. For a while, in my notes, this character was represented simply with this photo:

Come 2019, though, I decided to finally bring the character to life.

Designing Zinnia

Most NPCs in SLARPG were designed by Anthony with varying levels of creative freedom, but I had very particular tastes about what type of dragon I wanted Zinnia to be. Instead of micromanaging Anthony to get him to draw the exact dragon I saw in my head, I took matters into my own hands. She needed to be less Skyrim and more Dragonite - round shapes, a long neck, very huggable. (While I would easily cite designs like Dragonite and Goodra as visual inspirations for Zinnia, her name is actually not a reference to the Gen 3 Dragon-type trainer, believe it or not. I've barely touched Hoenn. It's just a name I like.)

Before landing on her final design, I went through several iterations of head and hair shapes:

I also tried a few other outfits before returning to my first choice of mom jeans and a plain sweater:

First up is an unfinished robe of sorts, meant to look slightly more appropriate for a wise old sage - although the gag of Faith's reclusive old magic mentor being hyped up and then you meet her and she's super chill and casual and wearing pink fuzzy slippers was always mandatory. Leaning into that more, I tried giving her a plain hoodie and track pants like you caught her on laundry day, which ended up just turning her into Sans. And last I started trying like... a coat of some sorts? I don't know what I was going for because I gave up quickly on that one lol

(Side note: the general lack of good outfit reference material for fat characters, particularly fat women, continues to be the bane of my existence.)

The final result was this, with Melody for scale:

Assorted notes about Zinnia's design:

• I considered making her red, but yellow was the first color scheme I tested out and I liked it. It makes her look friendly and approachable. I may have also considered giving her black hair, but went with a very light blue instead to avoid making her look too much like Honey the Cat.

• Zinnia isn't supposed to look particularly old - her hair is naturally that color, like many other white-ish haired characters in the game (Melody, Jodie, Faith, etc.). As she says herself, she's hardly aged since she hit her 30s, and her hair is just as light in the flashback illustrations where she's in her 20s. (To spell it out, the thematic subtext here is that Verena and Zinnia have basically been stuck in stasis since that fateful day they were separated a thousand years ago.) She's supposed to be more middle aged, "mom" than "grandma," but she's literally over a thousand years old, so...

• I wanted some visual links to make it clear that Zinnia is Faith's mentor. Like you look at Zinnia and perhaps realize that Faith takes after her in some ways. Zinnia's beaded necklace echoes Faith's beaded bracelets, as does the fact that they both wear their hair in a bun. Faith's bun is higher because she's more active and uptight, while Zinnia's is lower because she's more passive and calm.

• The runes on said necklace spell out "magical," although this detail was dropped for the sake of simplicity later.

• Yes her mugshot is literally a cropped and shaded version of this drawing

While some in the Discord have noted similarities to Claire that I won't deny - I'll point out the shape of her bangs, for instance, and of course they're both yellow with horns, glasses, and droopy ears - Zinnia was actually more supposed to be an echo of Melody. The fat body type, the eye shape, the gentle demeanor. The similarities between their staffs should be more apparent in this concept art if it wasn't already.

Zinnia can be interpreted as sort of a vision of a potential future for Melody, in both good and bad ways, that she encounters at the lowest point in her arc. She's a wise and confident magic user, as well as a deeply empathetic person who wants to help people however she can. She's the person who's been there and done that and can (theoretically) help Melody and co. through their current predicaments. But there's a deep sadness to her that you see as you learn more about her. She's a person who's largely hidden away from the world after being hurt so terribly - and, like Melody, she believes that she brought that hurt on herself by trying to truly open up with someone else for the first time in her life.

(Also, like Melody and Claire, Zinnia is trans. This is never explicitly stated in the game because I couldn't think of a good place for it, but some folks assumed she had transitioned based on the fact that she appears to not have boobs in one piece of flashback art. To be honest I actually can't remember how intentional that detail was lmao)

Bonus

The sprite for Zinnia's large form was actually originally slightly bigger, but had to be scaled down 10% to avoid clipping issues with other sprites in the scene. (Original on the left, final on the right.)

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I love the entire cast of characters we created for SLARPG, but Zinnia is definitely one of my favorites. It was agonizing to sit on her for so long before release, but I'm very happy that she's finally out there and that people are responding so positively to her and Verena's story.

And that's all for this month! This was a big one. As always, thank you for your continued support, and stay tuned for more behind the scenes content next month. If you have specific things you want to hear about in posts like this, let me know in the comments!

(Plus: don't forget to check this month's general update with information regarding Patreon tier changes!)