Meet: Kamea

Kamea is the protagonist of Sanctuary.   (\k(a)-mea\  is pronounced ka-MAY-ah). The name has Hawaiian origin which mean 'the one and only'. Just like the name suggests, she's the last one of her kind. The inspiration came from my sister and her obsession liking of unicorns, and it spins around the concept of the story called 'the Last Uniconrn'. In this case the unicorn has a more human like form, but still keeping the horn (obviously). Her tribe used to be a very passive yet powerful one; always in tune with nature and in favour of controlling wind powers.
She's 16 at the time story starts, and not so long ago she found herself running and hiding with a few other remaining members of her clan. The numbers on her clan began to decrease once the value of their horns began to raise on the black market, under the false idea that it granted eternal life.

She's a very kind person, but she's shadowed by a bunch of insecurities and complexes created after years of prosecution and  living in fear. She doubts her abilities and questions every step she takes. Tasks like taking decisions are always a big challenge for her, and she always put others in front of her own needs.

Because she spent her last few years running away, she never completed her training and her skills are far basic, compared to what the capabilities of her tribe can achieve.
Now that she's the only one left alive, she will have to fend for herself and maybe master the techniques on her own.

In respect of her design, I wanted to reflect some of my sister's qualities like the hair, height and skin colour and mix it up with loads of fantasy features. The initial concepts that I made at the beginning where helpful to ask people what their opinion was about the designs and curiously most people ended up liking the ones I based on my sis (4 and 5). Colour wise, I didn't wanted to restrict myself to a simple pallet as I was everything to be full of colour, although in the final pixel art the gradients might be a bit shaper. the golden handcuffs and the collar where placed by the magician to suppress her power, although he ignored to put a constrain in her horn (maybe he didn't see it?). I ended up playing with shadows and transformed them into crazy purple/pink light, just to play around with colours. She's got very small feet and is always walking on her toes; from far away it looks like she's got hooves.

About her personality, I didn't wanted to make her the typical 'I can do it' type of heroine nor the clumsy and funny one. Having my own insecurities, I wanted to explore and create a game that not only spins around the 'goal' of the game itself, but that evolves around a psychologically complex character and how this character would react to all the situations around. On this first level it only involves the main idea of her having to communicate to strangers (which is one of my worst enemies) and finding the courage to embark on a new adventure by getting her and the others our of there. Will she be able to make it?

More characters to come soon...