Designing Yana for Game Over Level 8

Yana’s Game Over Level 8 redesign started with a problem I think a lot of character designers run into: how do you use a familiar anime trope without making the character feel generic?

Yana fills the yandere role in Level 8’s dating sim world, but I didn’t want to rely on the usual visual shorthand. Pink hair, red eyes, and black clothing would have been easy, but that combination has been used so often that it no longer felt specific to her.

Instead, I rebuilt the design around her personality.

Yana from Game Over Level 8, redesigned. I love her nails!!

Yana is outgoing, theatrical, eager, self-absorbed, and completely obsessed with getting the dating sim’s “player” to choose her. Her design needed to demand attention.

That led to the mint-green hair, exaggerated chopped bangs, oversized teal raincoat, white go-go boots, bold belt, and sharp silhouette. The outfit pulls from 1980s fashion, but I pushed several of those elements much further to match her personality.

The oversized shoulders were especially important because I wanted them to feel almost horn-like in her silhouette. The highly reflective coat also separates her from the rest of the Level 8 cast, since none of the other character designs use that much highlighting.

One of my favorite parts of manga character design is finding ways to make silhouette, color, pose, and clothing carry personality before the character ever speaks.

I went much deeper into Yana’s design choices, including her original concept art and several details hidden in the finished costume, over in the Adventurer’s Guild.

If you want the full behind-the-scenes breakdown of Yana’s Level 8 design, check out the complete post here: https://www.patreon.com/c/ottermagedesigns