Touken Ranbu inspired Original Characters

Ok so Major project 2 isn't gonna cut it. My internships open up next semester and here I am taking free electives for psychology and marketing. Honestly these weren't my choices to begin with, I wanted to take acting and dance but curse the OMR for opening up at 12am instead of the usual 10am.

Any how now we have to deal with our graphic designer and immersive design kid dropping out, so making our ttrpg is tripling the amount of work. We here at Light of the Extinct (LOTE) studios are now facing a crisis. We only got 3 members left and we had a 98 page slide for our proposal last semester. Honestly this ain't gonna make the cut, I am aiming for a character designer position or concept...I ain't choosy. So I had this idea when I was rewatching "Touken Ranbu Hanamaru" my absolute favorite anime from 2016 second to "Bungou Stray Dogs". Just like my character design module that I did, I would make my own characters inspired by the anime and game.

Research

Alright first things first, research. All of the characters in touken ranbu are swords from Japanese history, as such it would be appropriate if I made my characters based on swords too. So I searched up some famous swords from Japanese mythology where I came across the article containing the legend of Masamune and Muramasa. It was funny at first because sources say these two sword smiths had lived during different centuries, Masamune in 1264-1343 and Muramasa in 1501 - around 1673. Well despite that the legend persists.

Initial rough sketches of costume + Research

I actually started sketching out their faces first, in my sketchbook. It took me a combination of 2 types of hairstyles to get me satisfied with Yosamu and 1 try for Yawarakai. I wanted them to have consistencies within their design but different shape language to represent their contrasting personalities. I also needed to make them cohesive with the rest of the touken ranbu cast. Despite the game's lack of prominent art style (due to multiple different artists being hired to portray these tsukumogami in their own unique way), they still had a look to them that made them recognizable as touken danshi.

This is what I found;

1. Japanese traditional clothing or references to it (A must)

2. Taisho/Meiji Era military uniform motifs (allowing for a great range of movement)

3. An amazing amount of attention to detail. ( Take the shinsengumi swords for instance...you can tell whoever designed Yamatonokami Yasusada was a history buff)