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Akril15 — 'Accurate' KQ7 Protagonists
Published: 2008-01-03 23:53:18 +0000 UTC; Views: 3088; Favourites: 26; Downloads: 33
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Description
King's Quest 7, despite its shortcomings, is my favorite of the series. I fell in love with the graphical style, and seeing those characters inspired me to start seriously drawing humans for the first time ever.Recently, however, I was informed that surprisingly little care was given in the design of the two main characters, Valanice and Rosella. Valanice was designed more or less from scratch, and the only reference for Rosella was pictures of her from the preceding games (rather than original design sketches/character sheets). This explains why the pair looks so different from their previous incarnations.
So I thought it would be fun to draw Valanice and Rosella in a roughly KQ7ish style, depicting them more like they were in the preceding games, not only keeping their physical appearance the same, but keeping their wardrobe roughly the same as well (with the exception of Alexander, the royal family's clothing tends to stay the same throughout the course of the games [Graham's in particular]).
Valanice: Firstly, her eyes have always been blue. Not green or turquoise, blue. R:0 G:0 B:255. #0000FF. Even when the graphics were too low-res to show it ("She has the bluest eyes you've ever seen and soft creamy skin." --KQ2).
And her hair has always been auburn ("Her long auburn hair tumbles in luscious waves down her back." --KQ2). I interpreted her hair's in KQ7 to be due to a loss of melanin (since redheads' hair turns sandy rather than gray as they age), but since KQ7 can only occur a short time after KQ6 to have Rosella still be less than twenty, this seems a bit implausible.
Also, prior to KQ7 (except for her Princess Leia hairstyle in KQ4) Valanice has always worn her hair down or in a bun, and her wardrobe has always been primarily either blue or violet. She also wears roughly the same type of dress in KQ4 through 6 and the same hoop earrings in 5 and 6.
Rosella: Though I'm not saying that Rosella deciding to have bangs in the brief interlude between KQ6 and 7 is an impossiblity, it's quite a change from her parted-in-the middle look that she has in all the other games. Though her dress's color changes from white to light blue from KQ4 to 5, it still has a similar design.
She even seems to wear the exact same dress in KQ6 that she wore in KQ5. The gold choker around her neck is present in both of those games as well. The only alteration I made to her dress is shortening its length somewhat.
I also showed the two characters shrunk down to the size of KQ7's characters, placed on a background stolen from the game, more to see how they look in their "natural environment" than anything else.
I love rambling about minutae of obscure games. I just feel so alone sometimes, though.
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Comments: 30
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I love both these redesigns. For someone who fell very much in love with Rosella's original design, seeing how she looked (and sometimes acted, quite frankly) in VII was hard. I loved Rosella's peasant dress, and even her original Princess dress was much more simple, and clearly allowed her to be somewhat active around Daventry.
What you've done with Valanice is fantastic! She's beautiful. The only other design I've been fond of (aside from KQ II and VI) was the KQ II and III remakes. But here you've kept the same style of the game, and she just shines.
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In the defense of the game, There were REALLY trying to redesign the game for a modern audience. To be honest, the costumes needed updating, and although I can't comment on eye colour. If they were given room to play then... In any case, the retro fashion of the older games was fine for them, but they needed a step up for the higher resolutions. The Disney feel demanded Disney dresses, and this is exactly how it turned out sadly. I prefer the older games, but when you aim for a genre, that's what you get
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They could have updated everything and still left the physical traits -- hair and eye color -- alone. As shown by this piece!
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Could've done. They changed alot of King's Quest canons in KQ7. I never understood the old school fan rage about it till I played it and was all NOOOO!!! WHY YOU CHANGE THAT?! *cue rage face*
There was a few irritating aspects to KQ7 but it was OK in the end in hindsight. I just wish the graphics worked better fullscreen on modern monitors. the Lineart render from SVGA to WXGA or higher is really nasty (oppose to KQ6 which looks gorgeous no matter the resolution). Perhaps that that's the game engine's fault though and not the game. If it anti aliased it I might like it more >.>
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Most of the retcons and changes didn't bother me as much as Valanice's hair and eyes. I'm a lore/story junkie, but for the most part I felt that the gaps caused by the changes could be filled in with a little creativity. Edgar has different parents now? Oh, Lolotte must've kidnapped him too! These trolls are nice and speak? They must be a different race of trolls! And, if we're going to be honest, this was not the first time there'd been gaps left in our knowledge of the world -- two trolls who both spin straw into gold? 
👍: 0 ⏩: 0
I know what you mean, I hate it when people mess up how characters are supposed to look like.
Alexander is a perfect example, since alot of the time he's drawn as some ordinary looking guy with brown hair and brown eyes. Wrong. He's a very beautiful prince with raven-black hair and with a nice pair of blue eyes like his sister, Rosella, has. In the KQ3 Remake they depicted him very ugly-looking. The brown hair and brown eyes thing, he looked alot like Connor from KQ8. I hated it. He wasn't a very attractive prince.
LOL....Sorry for my little rant there. It's just always been a pet peeve of mine, Alex having....brown hair? Ugh. No offense to people who do have brown hair (I have brown hair) but I would like Alex to look like how he was supposed to look like.
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Yikes, I didn't know about the KQ3 remake artists giving Alex brown hair and brown eyes. I wonder how in the world they could have gotten both of those traits of his wrong. It's not like we don't get a good look at both of them in the KQ4 intro and outro and practically all of KQ6.
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OMG! Totally! Watch the playthrough on YouTube if you can, someone posted it, however they didn't use the voices, just the text boxes. But you'll see Alex's face portrait and sure enough there he is. Brown shaggy hair and brown eyes.
Infamous Adventures did a good job but the way they designed Alexander irked me quite a bit....Alex also doesn't look very attractive in his picture. He looks quite ugly if I may be so blunt....O.o
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Great idea and I like how it turned out. I wish the designers of KQ7 had paid as much attention as you did.
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Personally, I like Rosella's dress in the seveth game but Valenice's hair always was a bit unnatural look the way it pointed up on both sides like that. I like the way you redid her hair. Much more natural looking.
I really wish my game had gotten so scrached but I played it so many times when I was little that the disk doesn't even work any more. Plus the fact it doesn't run so well on the newer systems. They should really remake the whole series by updating the graphics and making it workable on the new systems. That would be about the coolest thing ever!
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Thank you!
Vivendi Universal has actually done what you were talking about...sort of. They've rereleased the KQ Collection bundled together with a DOS emulator called DOSbox, which lets you play the games without much of a problem. However, they've left out all the extras found in the older collections, as well as the original King's Quest I.
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I found that on Amazon but the new collection only has I-V. I really was looking for a newer version of VII.
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The newest collection includes KQ7, as well as KQ6 (though it only includes the DOS version of KQ7). Maybe it isn't labelled correctly on Amazon?
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Oh, well I'll look for it then. I really, really want to play that game again (and so does my dad). I drew four pieces of KQ VII art yesterday. I just posted the last one. Fun, fun, fun, fun, fun.
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I saw them. I thought they were nice.
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Wow your right. I never really thought about it. I guess I noticed the change in Valanice but never looked into it that much. That was really interesting. And I love the way you recreated them with the same fun cartoon style of KQ7 which is also probably my favorite of the series, and which seems to always inspire me to draw something from it. Guess it just has that sort of feeling.
Anyway awesome picture and thanks for sharing all that. Now I want to go play them and check that out. I think I need another Kings Quest Marathon.
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Thank you very much. KQ7 was definitely the most inspirational game of the series for me as well. I hope you don't encounter too many technical issues during your marathon.
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I love your Rosella redesign! Her figure is so much more realistic. And her face is much less narrow and faux-Disney-like.
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As a dedicated King's Quest fan, I really like this. When I first played KQVII, the only other King's Quest game I was familiar with was KQV, and I had not finished it. So I envisioned that Valanice and Rosella were suppose to look the way they did in KQVII. Then I got the collection and saw how they different they looked in the old games. I love the way you showed Valanice and Rosella here, they look great. I like their hairstyles and their dresses. The colors are pretty and true to the previous outfits they wore in older/other games. I am drawing my KQ paper dolls over again. I am working on making the faces look good.
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Thanks. Doing a certain art project over again after a few months or so is usually a good idea, since your skills will have improved and the project will probably be easier to do, since you already know what you want it to look like.
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by the power of grey skull, I remember this game. it was the only one I actually played and the second one I ever saw played. I loved that game's overall style and character designs. I especially love how all of the interactive characters had the old cartoon style to them
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Well, I can't say I know what you are talking about, but I can say that these came out very nicely! I like how you kept the proportions of their waists very realistic, and the slight touch of personality in their poses.
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The designs look great, especially in that 'screenshot'! I also loved reading your comments, I had no idea about the designs. Though I love Valanice in green, she also looks great in violet so...
I don't know. I love the KQ7 designs, but I also totally see what you mean... especially about Valanice's eyes. They did the same thing to poor Edgar and his baby blues! ><; Argh...
Again, love the shot. You do such a great job with KQ7-style coloring and artwork.
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Thank you. I don't mind the KQ7 designs either, they were just such an extreme departure from their previous looks (especially in Valanice's case) that it was a bit disorienting.
As for Edgar's eyes, I think the change was for the better. Think of it: every single main character that's part of the royal family (with the exception of Cassima) has blue eyes. Edgar's blue eyes suddenly turning brown is a bit odd, but on the upside, it means less redundant genetic material!
Why did the change happen? Um...because he's magic. Yeah, that's why.
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