Hana's Character Design

When Bountydog suggested the idea of a Mascot character for Anime Feet. My initial thoughts were to choose a popular anime character to represent the blog. (I think you guys can probably guess who I would have gone with ^_^;). However, Bountydog had a more ambitious goal in mind. He recommended that the Mascot be an original character based on some of our anime favorites. As a result Hana design has a lot of different anime inspirations. If you guys look at the initial character sketch for her, I'm sure you can instantly recognize some of the characters she was based on but here is the full breakdown for her design

Powers

We worked with the idea that the Mascot would be a fire girl since both of us really loved a lot of women with fire based powers. Hana's power set and the codename for the mascot project itself  "Cinder" are a homage to all the hot fire women out there including Sailor Mars, Flannery, Azula, and Kyoko.

Hairstyle

When I look at Hana's hairstyle now, I can't help thinking of Azula but Hana's hairstyle was actually initially inspired by Quistis Trepe from Final Fantasy.

One difference that I asked Bountydog to incorporate was to make Hana's bangs shorter then Quistis' so while Quistis' bangs run down past her shoulders, Hana's would come up to her face and neck. Bountydog also added some really awesome tweaks of his own to the character's hairstyle too to reflect the character's power set.

Though not 100% finalized, Hana's intended hair color is meant to be a dark purple similar to Psylocke's or Zhalia Moon. I think it would give her exotic feel to her character.

Clothes
With Hana's dressing style there are basically 2 main inspirations...Pokemon's gym leader Flannery and Naruto's Ino Yamanaka. I really liked Flannery's grunge look and as a result Hana shares Flannery's fashion style preferring to wear a comfortable t-shirt and jeans which help to give her a sort of tomboy feel to her.

Both girls outfit's provide a sexy glance of their stomachs something that Hana's costume also shares with them as well. A lot of the accessories Cinder wears are inspired by Ino such as the mesh on her arms and her earrings.

Jeans/Shoes

Sort of an extension of Flannery's grunge style, I thought the ripped jeans would reflect some of her rebelliousness. I sent the above picture to Bountydog as a sample of what I wanted her pants to look like with the specifications to reduce the amount of holes in them giving people a somewhat teasing peek at her legs. Hana's jeans are also baggier allowing her than the sample allowing her to move more easily. Bountydog liked the shoes in the sample picture and added them to the character as well. :-)

These combined aspects lead up to her current appearance...