Let's Rework: Final Fantasy VIII - Part Six

 This post was initially intended to be about redesigning Rinoa and Seifer, but while I was redesigning Rinoa I realised that there's a lot to talk about. So Seifer will get a post to himself when I'm done with the next gameplay day.

 Let's Redesign Rinoa

 I've found redesigning Rinoa to be more difficult than either Selphie or Squall.

 It's hard to really put my finger on why, I think it falls between not really liking her design, and not really hating it either.

 It's bland, at best.

 It doesn't have any elements I particularly hate, either. There's no panty shots or hideous jackets to fix, the closest thing to either of those is this weird piece of fabric around her waist that I spent the last few years thinking was a skirt.

I think I can see where the gusset of her shorts is

  On closer inspection, it doesn't appear to be a skirt. Or, if it is, she's definitely not wearing it as one.

 It serves a visual design purpose, it's there to break up the black, but I can't see why she'd be wearing it.

 She's still dressed in a sensible fashion (more so than Selphie and her miniskirt), but it looks really odd.

 I've had a hard time working this into my design, and I'm not totally sure that I've kept the essence of her character design in my reinterpretation.

 Also, I gave her a pony tail because no one wants hair in their face when they're shooting razor sharp chakram from their wrist.

 As you can see, I really hated my first attempt and abandoned it partway through.

 I went for a sportier look for Rinoa because she's a civilian who would probably think that sportswear would be a good idea for combat.

 Speaking of design choices informed by character, I'm mildly surprised that they didn't utilise the fact that she's rebelling against her father more in her design.

 There's a lot of ways in which this could be achieved. These include, a punk look, a hippie look, a sexually provocative look and many, many more. Her father is a general, there are so many ways that she could dress that would make a man in his position embarrassed.

 As it stands, she's dressed in a very bland way that says nothing about her character.

 Heck, her mother was a lounge pianist turned singer/songwriter, why is there nothing of that in Rinoa's character design? For a girl who distances herself from her father, seems to partially blame him for her mother's death and uses her mother's surname, she has no visual indicators in her design that she was ever particularly close to her mother.

 She doesn't wear the same colour nor does she wear a keepsake of her mother's (that I know of at this point in the game).

 I know that not everyone does wear a keepsake of a dead parents, but this is an easy way to show her connection to her mother and help make it more clear why she's at odds with her father.

 Rinoa's design is bland and shows a wealth of missed opportunities.