Hello, I'm Phoebe, one of the artists behind our game. Mostly I've been doing conceptualizing and modeling for the player, aka Shade, and NPCs. I actually finished the player character a little while ago, and I'll walk through the process of how that got done. First, we have the concept art for Shade. I drew it on paper at first, and it was inspired by characters like the main character in Hollow Knight, while also having the proportions like a character that belongs in A Link Between Worlds. I really liked the idea of wispy, ghostly-looking  effects on the bottom of the trenchcoat, which I tried to translate into the final model, with mixed results. 

There was some debate on if Shade should have legs and be able to walk around, or if they should have more of a traditional ghost look where they float around. Eventually we settled on two legs, because that's what our animation was most comfortable dealing with. 

After I had the initial concept down, I got straight into modeling. I did my modeling in Blender, for the most part. The character was modeled directly off my initial concept art, so a few changes had to be made because there wasn't enough time to add them, like the headband. After getting the base proportions down, I duplicated and remeshed each part of the model in order to sculpt details to bake into normal maps. 

Since our game was a bit dark, I made sure to use emission maps to add a a bit of a glow to their hair, thus making them more easily seen by the player. I had planned on Shade having more of a human-looking color palette, with a more natural skin tone.  However, once I started adding emission maps, I realized that they'll look much better, and more ghostly, with darker skin. 

The model as a whole took a bit more time than I had expected it to, but designing and modeling it as a whole has been very fun. Other plans are in the works as well, like a model for Death, an important NPC in the game, and 2D cutscenes to use as an intro to the game's story. 

Hope you enjoyed a bit  of insight into the process of modeling a character!