Ferry
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The PAFL That Never Was. Part 1: Characters
🕑 Added 2023-08-13 21:08:03 +0000 UTCBehind the Scenes. August 2023
A lineup of early character designs made before the first video
Hi! This is my first ever Patreon post:)
If youâre reading this, I couldnât be more grateful for your support. Thank you so much! I assume youâve found me through my PAFL vocaloid series and joined in part to learn more about its lore and characters. So talking about how PAFL itself came to be seems like an appropriate way to kick off my posting history!
Short intro
Parties Are For Losers is the result of many unrelated characters and ideas gradually amalgamating into one world â as is the case for many such projects.
Because of how long itâs been, I wonât be able to show much of the early materials, particularly old fully-fledged artworks (and there were a bunch). So alas, in parts weâll have to make do with old sketchbook photos, artistic recreations and imagination.
This is gonna be a long read, so strap yourselves in.
Another early (and very messy) character lineup. Why is Dima's nosebleed a constant
Anya & Dmitry
The main trio of Punch It, Punk is probably the oldest character group in the cast.
The very first version of Anya. Recreation
I drew the first Anya when I was around 14 myself â sadly all images of her oldest iterations have been left in Belarus.
I wanted to write a murder mystery story where each character corresponded with a Zodiac sign (youâll never guess what I was into at that age), and Anya was Saggitarius. She was a cool girl, chill and reasonable, way different from her current personality â although her base design was very similar.
Compilation of old Anya doodles circa 2016-2018. She used to have freckles
A little later I got overcome with teenage angst and made Anya a much angrier Asuka-like character. This iteration was a lot more similar to her PAFL self, although she was a bit older, significantly smarter and kinda sadistic.
I had a very edgy story in mind: a wannabe murderer looks for a camgirl to kill on 4chanâs /soc/ and actually manages to have one agree to a meetup. But when he sees her for the first time, he instantly falls in love. The camgirl, on the other hand, turns out to be the more violent one of the two. As youâd probably guessed, the killer was proto-Dima.
I remember when the End of the Fucking World series came out - I was shocked at how similar it was to that idea, though by then Iâd already moved on from it. It was actually a bit uncanny, but hey, edgy minds think alike.
Main characters from The End of the Fucking World
By that time, Anya was still as angsty and violent as ever, but gained a more prominent manipulative streak. A lot of her negative traits from this era later migrated to Yura. Dmitry turned into a regular runaway kid from an abusive home named Denis.
His personality wasnât especially different from his current introverted self, though he had none of the snobbiness and all of the âscared dirty dog ready to kill in self defenceâ. At his core, he was actually a pretty normal teenager and a victim of circumstance.
Still awkward and quiet, but more athletic â I remember one of his old character notes was âlikes joggingâ.
Dima/Denis sketch from around 2017
The main story of Dmitry and Anya started to form around that time, with him rescuing her from alleyway thugs, getting beat up, and then nurtured back to health at Olyaâs place. There was even a "running away from home" subplot planned for them. Though, it would be initiated by Anya as opposed to Dmitry.
Olga
Olya changed in small but significant ways since her first appearance - sadly, I donât recall the exact specifics of how and why she was designed. Her calm and unbothered self floated between miscellaneous story concepts from drama to sci-fi until landing in the vicinity of the two angstiest children on earth.
Compilation of Olya doodles circa 2016-2018. Note the two fully functioning eyes
If Anya was Asuka, she would take on the role of Misato, packaged with all of its problematic undertones.
Olya was a younger character, somewhere in her late teens, but the behaviours that version of her portrayed were inappropriate nonetheless. Nothing overt, but still enough to feel uncomfortable. It was very much intentional, but I donât think I had enough life experience to handle such heavy topics with a proper degree of maturity.
Colour block jacket Olya. Recreation (not sure how accurate, but it looked something like this)
As I developed the characters into their current selves, things got a lot more digestible. Olya kept her dissatisfaction and self-worth issues, but became an actual adult that the kids could rely on.
In terms of design, the biggest change was probably her ditching a colour block jacket that was very similar to the ones worn by Dmitry and KT. And gaining a big olâ hole in her head, I guess.
Sanya
Much like Anya, Sanya came from a very edgy place. Her thing was being a yandere in a VN that had all the girls be messed up in some way - a revolutionary concept for my 13 year old brain.
First version of Sanya and her sister. Recreation
Sanyaâs story was surprisingly similar to the current canon when boiled down to its bare essentials: an albino with an overprotective older sibling that brings in a guy to help with homeschooling, whom she subsequently gets way too attached to. Thatâs where the similarities end, though.
Sanyaâs personality was less tomboyish, though she still had a rebellious streak: she snuck out of the house at night without her siblingâs knowing. Said sibling was a red haired older sister â I think I saw Haruko Kamio screaming in the rain in some AMV and got inspiration from that. I never even watched Air, but that image stuck with me somehow.
Haruko Kamio from Air. Havenât seen this shot in 10 years prior to googling it for this post
The sisterâs character was kind of a Mary Sue in that she was the popular girl with a dark secret: working a bit too hard for the sake of her sibling.
The main route would have Sanya gradually get jealous of her sister and the MC regardless of the playerâs actions, ending with Sanya beating her sister up with a metal bat. I guess the choice of weapon originated from there, now that I think about it.
Sanya variations. Recreation
I grew out of that VN concept pretty quickly, but Sanya's character stuck with me. Visually, the design was pretty bland all things considered. For a while I wasn't sure about what to do with it, trying to spice it up with overalls (yes) and a different hairstyle, but nothing felt right.
Compilation of old Sanya doodles circa 2016-2018
In parallel with trying to make her design work, I developed her teenage gang leader persona. If I remember right, it was inspired by Hachi's Panda Hero - you can attribute the bags under her eyes and me keeping the bat on her to it.
She was a more aggressive and jaded character, far better acquainted with the criminal underbelly of the city. She was even meant to act as a minor antagonist to Dima and Anya at a certain point, though I'll get more into that later.
Baseball Sanya drawn around 2017
I finally started to get a feel for her design after drawing her in baseball gear; the cap and the ponytail just looked right. Around 2018 I doodled her as a gopnik girl with a samurai-like silhouette - and that's when I knew: yes, that was it!
Gopnik samurai from 2018
When the first song of the series just came out I still had more of her old personality in mind. But then, as I thought more logically about her surroundings and backstory, her softer side emerged.
I always had a bit of a problem with her old character being too tough and street savvy for a young girl that spent most of her life isolated from her peers. Granted, she was slightly older in her previous iterations, but it still didn't sit right with me - she didn't feel like a proper result of her environment.
I think a lot of the character changes I implemented were of that sort: less angst for angst's sake and more consideration for what made them the way they are.
Sergei
Sergei was a very loose continuation of the overprotective older sister idea I had way back when.
The gender was switched mainly to give the sibling a more imposing societal and physical presence - it could not be someone Sanya would be able to even remotely compare to in power and it could not be someone she could easily relate to. It created a bigger surface-level rift between them.
Old Sergei design. Recreation
From the start, his character was very distinct from its first iteration, if you can even call it that. The first Sergei ever rocked a buzz cut and dressed like the shadiest man you'll ever meet, though his personality was fairly similar to the one we know today.
Still stern and restrictive, he had a much colder aura around him. It was hard to tell if he actually cared for Sanya and Olya or not, since he came across as very emotionally withdrawn. I frequently imagined him in front of computers, always, always working.
If the current Sergei is a tough character to love, his old version would give him a real run for his money. Extremely dry, uninvolved, in a sense almost robotic, he wasn't especially fun to either write or watch.
Sergei and Yura from 2017
Interestingly enough, he and Yura were initially closer in terms of age and maturity. As a result, they had a more friendly relationship, treating each other more or less as equals. Wild how that has changed.
Sergei and Sanya doodle made before the production of the first video. First time I drew his new design
Sergei got a redesign not long before me starting work on the first episode to better fit in with the rest of the characters and to make him look less like a dark blob. He also became notably more emotive and protective of the people he cared for, which gave him some very much needed endearing qualities.
Hereâs a silly tidbit: for a long time his name was Victor, but I changed it to avoid Yuri on Ice jokes. Really didn't need those associations between a teenager and a grown ass man.
Katya
Doodles from around 2016. First Katya Iâve ever drawn (left), and a coloured one from the same year
Katya changed little both in terms of design and personality, though her powers took some time to figure out. I always imagined her as this happy-go-lucky street urchin that had something deeply wrong hidden under the surface, a great evil of sorts.
Katya from around 2017
For a while I didnât have a clear concept of what that evil would be. It was something to be hinted at through strange throwaway lines or expressions, but never direct action. 90% of the time she would behave exactly like her current self, but in some scenes sheâd say or imply something that would follow an almost inhuman kind of logic or morality.
Itâs still a very interesting version of her character to me, but back then I didnât know what to do with it storywise.
Katya doodle from 2017
One of the ideas for her brand of monstrosity was heavily inspired by Saya no Uta (skip the next paragraph if you donât want to get spoiled on it).
For a while, Katya wasnât even meant to be a child, but an eldritch being disguised as one. She would be a large mass of flesh that only visually appeared as a little girl to humans. But that was difficult to implement, considering she wasnât meant to occupy a singular space. I wanted Katya to freely roam the city, yet she wouldnât be able to fit in confined areas or rooms that were in any way crowded. It just didnât work logistically unless I wanted to make her abnormal nature obvious from the get-go. Plus, it did feel all too similar to SnU.
Transformation scene from Akira
I had to change my approach. After watching Akira for the Nth time, I got an epiphany: she should just explode into meat, duh! Figuring out how her mutation worked really helped with laying out the initial plot and character dynamics, it was basically the moment at which PAFL as a whole began to take shape.
Plus, while Katyaâs overall disposition didnât really change, she gained an actual moral core and aspirations, i.e. things that naturally come with being human. She also gained some mildly obnoxious traits by virtue of being a 13 year old (no offence to any 13 year olds reading this, that's lyfe).
All of that made her more âprotectableâ, which wasnât even remotely applicable before and worked great for pushing the story forward.
Yura
Not counting Sergeiâs trans journey from anime girl to brooding square, Yura underwent the most radical changes out of the entire cast. He started out slightly older, being around 19, and was named Lev.
Compilation of prep Yura/Lev doodles
He began as a preppy kid that got entangled in gang wars because he wanted to spice up his life - you know, as all of us do. He was a kind of straight man to Sanyaâs and Katyaâs shenanigans, while also adding comedic relief by trying to be prim and snooty in the least appropriate of times.
He wasnât particularly interesting and didnât feel organic in any serious context, so he was almost completely redesigned after Katyaâs concept got more fleshed (lol) out.
Compilation of Yura/Lev doodles after the personality change. Most of this iteration's drawings were digital and are now lost
Lev became a more relaxed and street smart character, gained Anya as his little sister and took up smoking. His mother being a prostitute and him preparing to be a stalker also came in at that point.
He was more mellow than the current Yura, being closer to Sergei and Olya in terms of maturity than to Sanya or any of the younger characters.
He was still a very troubled person. Him being somebody who parties non-stop to drown out his sorrows was inspired by ĐĐžĐœĐŸŃĐ°ĐČŃ, a song by ĐĐ”ŃĐ»Ń ĐŃĐžŃŃŃĐ°ŃŃĐžŃ (the Spotify release is from 2019, but it was first dropped a couple years prior). The design of Kafka (the demon girl you see in the Miserable Story of My Destruction) was also fueled by this song.
Sanya and Lev's first meeting. Recreation, duh
Lev and Sanyaâs relationship was very different, considering he already met her when she had earned herself some street cred. He pushed her to create a new gang, which later evolved into Tsar, Arthur, Ivan and Yana.
As a result, the power dynamic wasnât as clear cut between the two, though Sanya still apparently held some reverence for him for reasons I didnât come up with.
Lev wasnât meant to be a main character at all. He was an important piece of the puzzle, but was by no means the focus of the narrative. Though Iâll get more into it in the next post.
Design sketches for the first PAFL video
The great shift from Lev to Yura happened not long before I started working on the first video of the series. I redesigned him to be more in line with the two girls â the trio had to look good together.
Plus, I never particularly enjoyed his button-up fit. It worked for an older and more collected version of the character, but since I decided to make him a couple years younger and several times messier, a loose-hanging jersey felt more appropriate.
A lot of his old self was still very much there during production, at least in terms of the character development that was planned for him afterwards.
I was still unsure about which direction the overall story would go, so I had to operate on the general notions I had already set up: poor family, prostitute mother, stepford smiler, smug, partying to forget, loose gang ties, stalker in training. Enough to suggest depth without actively digging.
Side note:
Why did I change his name?
Lev is a pretty rare name, and sounds almost pompous in Russian, meaning literally âLionâ and being associated with Lev Tolstoy. I thought it was fitting for his preppy version. However, it didnât work for his rougher devil-may-care self. Yura, on the other hand, always sounded fun and casual to me, while at the same time being neither too overplayed nor too unusual.
I also try to pick character names that are relatively easy to pronounce for foreign audiences, mostly ones that are easy to read for those familiar with romaji â so the majority of Vocaloid fans. Yura, Nikita, simple names ending in -nya, avoiding Zhs, Gs, and Js, things like that.
This is also part of the reason for why Denis got changed to Dmitry/Dima â Dmitry fit with the XT naming convention for mutants, and itâs pretty hard to pronounce Dima wrong. Denis, on the other hand, would often be read as the western name Dennis despite its slavic counterpart being pronounced closer to Denise. It would avoid needless confusion, and frankly, Dimaâs âdimâ sound is a lot more fitting for Dmitryâs quiet character.
Scrapped mutant
Youâve probably seen this one if youâve dug deep enough into my tumblr archive. This white haired boy was meant to be a mutant antagonist who, if I recall correctly, despised humans.
Scrapped mutant artwork from 2016
His character wasnât especially well defined aside from being generally unfriendly and humourless â sometimes he had a colder personality, sometimes he was more of a hothead.
In a way he fulfilled a similar role to modern Dmitry, what with being very powerful and having a superiority complex, as well as some connection to Katya. At a certain point he was even considered as a version of Lev/Yura who had changed radically after going to the Zone.
In the end, as Dima took on the role of a runaway mutant, the inclusion of this guy became unnecessary. His white hair also made him look too similar to Sanya despite having zero relation to her, which wasnât a great idea from a design standpoint.
Compilation of scrapped mutant doodles circa 2018
Maybe one day Iâll use his design (albeit a little tweaked) for something, but the current PAFL storyline has no place for him. Sorry, lil fella.
***
I think this is about all I can say about older character versions and their development. As you've already guessed, the story that was initially intended for the series was quite different as well.
But this post is long enough as is.
Next month we'll continue with Part 2, where I'll talk about how PAFL was supposed to play out before it became a music video series. Thank you for reading Part 1, and I hope you'll find the next one interesting!
Comments
Xoderota
I love wavy hair Sanya so much... She's a cutie. And the colorblock jacket drawing of Olya made me inspired to make a what would I imagine Olya as a teenager fanart though it will probably take me a while to actually draw it
Suneater
ahh I'm so glad I became a patreon! reading all of this has calmed down the autism burning for more pafl content lol
Jprime2121
Extremely interesting. The inner workings of an artist is truly a Labyrinth of detail
granite
Honestly I get why the white-haired mutant boy had to be cut, but I love his design and will miss it as we go forward. I hope you do find use for him in the future!
oliver
this is rly fascinating and lovely to read. i respect pafl a ton as a overall project & narrative and itâs cool to see the way the story and characters shifted over time -especially because mine definitely shift a lot too & its heartening to see a creator I respect talking about how early concepts eventually blended into a final project that I really adore! kinda helps remind me how thatâs just a part of story writing. also proto-yura being a like straight-man prep type is fascinating for some reason . Cool read!!
SimMiko
You won't believe how much of an inspiration your work is for my own project (not in a copy-paste way obviously), especially now when I see that I somehow manage to go through the exact same steps as you hah. I guess that's the creator's fate. No but really, knowing that your project also wasn't always the well-planned structured thing is a HUGE motivation. Thank you
Ferry
Thank you so much, I'm glad you enjoyed reading it! It was a journey for sure lol, but I imagine a lot of people gradually take their characters like that through the years. I hope it gives more meaning to whatever projects you're currently working on, no matter how small or sillyđ
SimMiko
Thank you so much for sharing this! The struggles with finding the perfect places and designs for the characters are so relatable. I love how the pieces of the puzzle came together in the end and now are PAFL, that's so so inspiring :0 Will wait for the next month's part!
Penguin
ooo rlly cool!!!! love reading about concepts and such so reading this was so so fun!!! interesting to see whats changed and what stuck:3
Violet_Galaxie
WAHHHH SO INTERESTING!! Love it all Im excited to read next month's!
Star Bit Illustrations
This is so interesting to read! I love seeing into the BTS of productions like this. Looking forward to the next part to this post!
