Designing a NEW Gym Leader: Ghost Gym!

okay so guys guys we are back we're back and we're going off script kind of kind of we tried pure off script just like in the good old days but wow that's a lost recording now you'll never know it's just you know it's for your benefit it's not i mean it's easier to edit i guess but it's uh it's really for you guys because boy do whatever their tangents um we have bullet points now yeah let's see the first bullet point we're back done okay that's the most important we got it so today yeah we are going to be making the first gym leader for the maza region now this was really requested and we have a lot of pokemon now at this point but we haven't really explored any other elements that go into a pokemon game protagonists we don't have this we don't have an antagonist we don't have them we don't have the rival we don't have a rival well maybe that'll change so we have a lot of different things that we want to start addressing now but like the first video in this series this is going to be sort of a brainstorming workshopping session rather than like a presentation of a finished product like with some of our other pokemon videos our concept has actually changed pretty significantly since that last recording so um we are going to uh we're going to talk shop with you guys today we're going to share some of the ideas that claire and i have been bouncing off of each other and we'd like to get your input as well and i guess we're pretty much ready to just dive into it yeah so let's get to it but first i think before we really talk about our ideas for this specific gym leader we also have to talk about the overall themes of the maza region because gym leaders used to be very simple both in concept and design yeah concept execution design there were technical and resource limitations for the early games but more recently especially in sword and shield and sun and moon the designs and the characters have become a lot more complex so i feel like we can't design a character in a vacuum no we have to have bigger themes they're relevant to the overarching themes of pokemon game and of course everyone enjoys every video game at different levels but i think that especially for adults or people you know over the age of like let's say 15 um they look for something a little bit more in a pokemon game you know they're not just there for the immersion that you can get when you're a very little kid playing pokemon games they want to have something that uh with a little bit more substance i think newer pokemon games do provide that in a lot of different ways than they did in older games and it's almost like the franchise is aging with its fan base which is really cool yeah that's definitely really cool and it's interesting because i think we all still have a lot of love for those early concepts a lot of nostalgia tied in but there aren't really a lot of hold overs from the hallmarks of those designs and the newest designs so it's really evolved no pun intended and there are that's good there are i think that in older generations they do explore the characters in more ways outside of the core games like there are manga and the anime you know they they fill in the missing gaps that you don't get from the games with a lot of other pokemon content which is nice but i think what's cool especially for me a fan of pokemon who doesn't read any of the mangas i don't watch the tv show anymore um you know to have that content right there in front of me while i'm playing the game it feels more fleshed out yeah it adds another level because we were talking recently about there are a lot of things that we felt were missing from sword and shield but i think one thing that they did really well was give us a ton of new human characters that were engaging and had a lot of unique motivations the world felt very defined yeah um and i liked that a lot i appreciate that and i would like to bring some of that into our faith so pretty much the only holdover from the original games is that a lot of gym leaders like to have visual cues to specific pokemon that we use we're still trying to keep that in mind but for the most part we want something really fresh and new yeah i mean you can look at older specifically ghost type gym leaders you have uh fantina from diamond and pearl is so crazy it's like what is she up to i mean she's an elegant are you appreciative that is a woman in a dress she's got the drifloon edge right seriously she's got that then you got like morty from gen 2 who he has a scarf he has a scarf like he is not even referencing any specifics no he's just a cool guy like he doesn't think he just has hunter gasly and gengar and then you have agatha the first she was not a gym leader she was a female she's just an old lady she's just an old lady her old design really ties in nothing very classic uh she doesn't do anything she has a purple dress they they redesigned her clothes yeah i mean yeah there's that tie-in and they redesigned her in pokemon let's go and i feel like i like that one a lot more it's a little bit more dynamic in the shapes and they do do another pokemon tie-in where her kane has a gengar face so anyway uh so going from agatha we can look at acerola and alistar who are the two most recent ghost type gym leaders and things have changed a lot yeah um and i i mean i technically acerola is not a gym leader she's a trial captain and something that a game franchise is all this pokemon has to do is switch things up a little bit um i don't know how you guys felt about trials in uh sun and moon as opposed to gym battles but i think it was a fun way to deviate from the same things that we see in every single pokemon game obviously pokemon games are very very formulaic but you can only do the same thing over and over again so many times before you're going to lose your fan base yeah so they really they have to keep it fresh they have to switch up some things and i like to see that they're pushing the boundaries of what a pokemon game can look like and we want to keep doing that with our region also speaking more about the specific themes that these characters exemplify for their respective games you have in uh sun and moon you have this transition from their uh regional customs of having the trials into the sort of global standardized pokemon league how they sort of want to add in this pokemon league into their region the professor wants to add in a an official pokemon league and you as the player become the new champion of that region to represent the new pokemon league but then i think sword and shield is the most on the nose oh yeah it's just it's the uk like they have your gym leaders in this story are so centered around the sort of glorification of sports how in the uk there is such uh heroism that is associated with players and athletes not even like just heroism but like hero worship yeah that is reflected i think in different ways with each of the gym leaders which is really cool and especially with the ghost gym leader alistair is sort of exploring yeah he's exploring um the effects that stardom have on someone who maybe does not want to be a star he is essentially a he's just a champion superstar athlete who never shows his face like imagine what that would be like in real life if there was you know a ten-year-old kid who was the best soccer player in the world but he was so scared to show himself in public that he wore a shy guy mask so since we just said in sword and shield the main theme of that pokemon league is athleticism stardom and the pressures that come along with it so alistair is an example of kind of subverting that theme and seeing a negative aspect of it so he's a shy kid but he's still dressed like an athlete right he has to wear that uniform um and he has to sort of conform to this theme that all of the other gym leaders in his region um have set for him now when we first started doing sketches for this all we really had in mind was that it was going to be a ghost type gym leader mm-hmm and that it was going to play off of regions right where we draw a lot of inspiration from mexican culture yes um so right off the bat we were like okay so obviously dave the dead like we want to um sort of bring a new twist because a lot of you know in a lot of western cultures and in japanese cultures too um the idea of death is mournful it's sad it's loss it's you know despair a lot of gray tones a lot of purple tones a lot of dark muted colors sort of represent those themes but we can totally subvert that in our region because in the mexican culture death is not a sad thing the way they celebrate it on the day of the day celebration of life rather than a day of mourning and most importantly it's remembering the people that you had in your life and not you know losing them because they are no longer with us physically it's also great for a starting point for a design because it's so colorful and has such iconic imagery yeah so we started this process by kind of just sketching out ideas claire and i both did two sketches to sort of loosen up and uh explore some visuals that we could use to um represent the themes that we were just talking about so day of the dead um and sort of bringing a more vibrant more life-filled um take on death ghost types um and bring that in to uh our designs they kind of had one design that was more rooted in a very traditional approach to the day of the dead and adapting that imagery and then one that was a little more youthful which is interesting because i had one design that was kind of just an old lady and was less celebratory and sort of played more into the ominous side of death she doesn't really look happy she doesn't really look excited she's got kind of the sinister look kind of defeated kind of sad kind of grim and i figured i'd throw that one in there too just to try both ends of the spectrum because then my other sketch was this very young very colorful character that was still wearing like the face paint for day of the dead that had the roses in the hair and all that kind of stuff but she was wearing more of like um a modern street wear kind of hip-hop look where she's got like the baggy pants and the uh the poofy crop top hoodie and the big high-top shoes and sort of using that hybridization of modern youth culture and traditional uh mexican day of the dead themes and so that kind of got us started talking about how young people the newest generations really embrace traditions that are very old and the differences between generational celebrations of culture and heritage and as we were talking about that we realized that we needed to have a stronger theme for the region because usually when you're designing a character if you want a really strong character design you have to have something more than just visuals to create that character design out of you need to have something that you can say out loud first and then explore that in a bunch of different ways visually yeah we realized just having mazza as our backdrop wasn't enough context for a compelling character right because like we were saying we really like the gym leaders in sword and shield and they part of what makes them such a strong group of characters is they all share one common theme which is that they are working as a group to both entertain and improve themselves those parts of each one of their character designs can be explored in different ways so you have a character um like alistair like we were saying who shies away from the spotlight and then you have someone like reyhon or leon leon really embraces the showboat right who who really likes that kind of attention do you have like opal who likes the glitzy right she's she's sort of been there for a long time she's used to that kind of lifestyle and then you have characters like nessa and b who take it very seriously and are less interested in the glamour side of it it's really a robust cast with a lot of variation between all the characters and it just gives the league a lot of depth overall so we realized after doing these initial sketches we needed something like that or these characters would just feel flat so we thought about the inspiration for the maza region and since day of the dead was fresh in our minds we decided maybe themes of family heritage tradition and generational differences would be a good way to go yeah and specifically the generational differences you know the way that the different generations experience and celebrate their cultures and share their cultures because i think that that's an important thing to explore in a much more broad sense it applies to all sorts of different cultures and it applies to yeah i think it's something like you know no matter where you live you're going to be able to identify that and link that basic theme to your own life yeah and i think it can be explored in a way that is very engaging for everyone we stuck with that theme we thought okay how can we bring that into this world of pokemon battles and gym leaders and how can the player progress through this exploration of that theme the way that pokemon games have done in the past and speaking about that theme of traditions it kind of actually plays into another thing that we wanted to do of sort of respecting the older traditions of pokemon while still introducing something uh new to the franchise and when we're talking about the traditions of pokemon we mean just like the basics of the game like you have three starters you have a fire a water a grass starter you have a rival there's going to be eight gems that you will progress through and each one is associated with a type and then you get to some kind of elite four there's a lot of mechanical consistencies throughout the games there are also new ways that game freak can keep it fresh essentially for lack of a better word so in the last two games specifically the way a pokemon league has has especially been really different so we started with how is the league going to be innovative in this game and we thought about our theme of tradition and generational differences and we decided that the pokemon gyms in the maza region would be traditionally passed down within specific families no one else is invited to be a part of that custom and maybe this system worked in the past but now it's kind of polarizing and outdated yeah so um we're going to introduce that thing we were thinking we were going to introduce that theme with a character who is directly affected by this tradition a young girl who has inherited her ghost type gym from her mother her grandmother and families and generations before her kind of without her saying that she wanted to do it she's sort of the first person in her family to say listen maybe i don't want to be a gym leader rather than feeling like it's an honor to her it feels more like a burden and the player character is going to meet her pretty soon after she's inherited the gym right so we're imagining that this character has just come into uh maybe her first year as a gym leader and is sort of unwillingly thrown into this position of responsibility and power she feels like she isn't able to communicate her objections to her family yeah and she can't really say anything she doesn't have a choice she's still very young and um actually we were basing part of this idea off of an initial concept that we had for maybe the gym leader being and two people two characters uh an old lady and her granddaughter and we were like yeah maybe not um both characters fighting both characters at once but maybe including that relationship between one the gym leader and either their granddaughter or their grandmother um so what we ended up doing was that the grandmother had once ran the gym um as she inherited it from her mother and now she's passing it down and expects the same from her granddaughter so the grandmother will still be an important character in the story um but she will not be involved with the player in terms of someone that you battle maybe maybe she will come back later maybe she'll come back a lot of this is still again it's like we're workshopping if you guys have ideas in the comments feel free to you know say something because we'd love to incorporate good ideas so uh we have this sort of established idea in our head now that our ghost type gym leader is going to be a young girl who has come into this gym as part of a family inheritance it's her responsibility but she isn't happy with being the gym she doesn't like it she's fair she has other aspirations and she also very importantly feels like there are other gym leads there are other trainers that are more deserving of the position than herself she feels like she's not a strong trainer she feels like she doesn't understand battles as much as other trainers might she feels like she has a lot to learn yeah and she feels like she's not being given the opportunity to improve herself because she's just expected to be good and be a gym leader so this character has all of these underlying frustrations when she has to battle both the player character and the rival and obviously to progress the story she's going to lose both battles but for this character that's kind of a eureka moment going backwards a little bit to um setting up the player character and how the player character will interact with this first gym leader at this point the player character will have already lost a scripted battle against your rival the trainer that you get your starter pokemon with like you do in every game that uh comes before this one you start off you get to start a pokemon from the professor someone else gets to start a pokemon from the professor you battle but in our game we were thinking it would be kind of like you got one shot almost like this person is just really good and you lose like you you've you always get the impression that the the rival might be stronger than you but in this one there is no doubt there's going to be a scripted battle where your player character will always lose to the rival after this happens your character then moves forward and beats the first gym leader who is this ghost type gym leader and she is also already lost to your rival now um she's on a losing streak already got these frustrations she's she's lost let's say that she's also lost every other battle um for from every other trainer that has already come in she expresses that to the trainer and at this point now she uh confronts her grandmother she says listen this is this nth time that i've lost in a battle against a challenger i am not fit to be a gym leader i don't want to be a gym leader and i'm stepping down for my post and she kind of puts it definitively and you the grandmother has this sort of revelation after seeing her battle against you the player character that her granddaughter gets a lot of inspiration from your player character she looks at your player character and says wow you could teach my granddaughter a lot and so your granddaughter expresses how she wants to train and grow and improve herself alongside you as the player character and in so doing she becomes your new rival she is your actual rival and at this point the grandmother will accept her granddaughter's choice and her decision to move forward from the gym and uh give her a token of this approval by giving her the third starter pokemon so you have a starter pokemon your vega rival will have taken the starter pokemon that has the type advantage against yours and then this new rival who was initially the ghost type gym leader will also get the third starter pokemon that will have the type disadvantage against whichever starter pokemon you picked which is upsetting the tradition in the region and upsetting the tradition in the way pokemon games are played yeah so we're thinking this would be a fresh way to just switch things up um and we also made two designs for the gym leader right slash real rival so we we explored the idea and again we're still a work in progress here but we explored the idea of when you meet this character she's sort of dressed in a much more traditional um kind of uh fashion that looks more like the way you know a lot of people think of day of the dead kind of a frilly very decorative dress a lot of ornaments the face paints her hair is all tied up and she's got sort of this family emblem on her chest that i kind of designed to pay homage to the la yorona pokemon and that whole evolutionary rhyme because i'm assuming it's the only ghost type we've designed so far for this generation um she would probably have one of those as her pokemon there was also something there that we had discussed earlier where like lil arena plays with with little girls so she she grew up with this pokemon that's like her another part to her family heritage right and maybe it's been in her family for a long time um but then after she sort of rejects her title as gym leader she takes on a form that's much more reflective of her inner personality she literally she lets her hair down she she feels free to express herself yeah she's got more casual clothes but she's not completely abandoning the visual themes that are part of her culture she cares about tradition she just wants to express it differently right modernizing the day of the dead symbolism and imagery is just her way of celebrating it which until that point her grandmother hadn't understood and so really that was like kind of the most different thing that we're going to be doing with this first gym leader is going to be more than just a gym leader it's going to be she's going to be your rival and um alongside uh or not alongside right because the other rival is going to stay as the gym leader that's something we haven't we're still thinking about that i was thinking that it's important that this new that the first rival actually expresses um a desire to be at this new gym but i don't know that can be tweaked a little bit but for now we're just talking about the ghost type gym leader and the ghost type gym leader will certainly start off as a gym leader but end up as your rival and there's going to be a very dramatic change in their design between when you first meet them as the gym leader and when you see them again as your rival so that's sort of the key thing that we want to explore with their design and in terms of themes that we want to keep in mind the first iteration of this character is going to be very traditional looking and visually look upset and frustrated and stubborn and unhappy and uncomfortable whereas her second iteration which is much more true to herself she's much more free she's unencumbered she's got a lot more energy she's more excited and she is ready to take on whatever new challenges uh lie ahead for her so we don't have a name for this character we kind of were thinking we wanted something a little traditional sounding like very uh old-fashioned something that contradicts her true personality but maybe something that could be abbreviated into a nickname right so we were thinking definitely something latina sounding but also something that is like it seems too flowery too prissy for who she actually is because she didn't get to pick her name her family picked her name for her and that too is something that she's sort of rejecting as she gets a little bit older you're thinking maybe like valentina and then she becomes val right she starts off you meet her as valentina but then when she becomes more has more self-identity she calls herself by val i don't know there could be something there let us know if you have suggestions yes let us know if you have suggestions and we're also not really settled on a final design yet and we've explained to you what we want to see in the final design but all we have right now are sketches so let us know if you guys have different ideas for how we can change the design from where it is now which of our sketches you like most and which direction you'd like us to take it in in the future um also let us know who should the next gym leader be what type should be gym2 yeah it's very uncommon for a pokemon game to introduce uh the world with ghost type pokemon because they're kind of a difficult type to understand yeah we we figured it would be okay because we have tachuki as a very early encounter for the player the dark type pokemon but you know it's still kind of a risky decision but we thought it would be cool just to set the tone for the maza region so let us know what you think about that also well that's pretty much all we have for you guys today sorry if it was a little bit rambling as much we're off scripts yeah you know it's we're brainstorming as we're talking to you guys yeah and you know things will probably change before the next video also yeah like we said this is the all work shopping so things are always up in there there's nothing set in stone nothing about this game at this point is concrete who knows might even end up scrapping some of the pokemon designs i don't know it's all up in the air so uh leave your input tell us what you think tell us ideas for other gym leaders tell us how we can improve this one how we can change her and what you think of our revolutionary idea of switching up the way the rival mechanics work in the game and how the rivals are introduced to the player character all right guys thanks for watching if you enjoyed this don't forget to leave a like and subscribe if you haven't already we are not a pokemon channel but we do do a lot of pokemon content so uh if you would like to see more of that don't forget to subscribe and stay tuned for more thank you guys for watching yeah see ya bye

Channel: Subjectively

Views: 243,520

Rating: 4.9688382 out of 5

Keywords: pokemon, new pokemon, pokemon dlc, expansion pass, fakemon, mazah region, Subjectively

Id: _Y59ywVnAIE

Length: 26min 59sec (1619 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 29 2020