ORIANA THE GOLD

Howdy dowdy deedlee doo, another design post! This one's different, because it's also an ulterior moment time where I get to ask YOU to help decide on some things lol.

As the headline indicates, this is about a character called Oriana--if you've been reading my stories, you may remember her mentioned in relation to Astemar. She's basically Astemar's giant robot, called a Maschine (named after the hardware, since Astemar's a singer--but also, selfishly, a loophole as well to have similar pronunciation to Mashin of Rayearth) (it's all connected to Rayearth). For the longest time, I've struggled with her design, as I generally made joke of her in the SITA page that she's meant to evoke a Mamoru Nagano look--as I love his mecha designs a lot.

Unfortunately, and obviously, I am not Nagano level. That's a once in a generation talent.

I needed to make the mecha design easier for me, especially when Oriana is not the only one featured in Astemar's story/stories. But she is the main one for *now*, so of course, I needed to figure her out first. I came up with an easy solution, partly due to constant deep dives into mecha history, thinking on the evolution of simple to complicated (super robots to real robots and then eventually, design vs design of the two), and wondering if I should go for the simple robot one--there's a great deal of memorable robots that are not Masami Obari-levels of details, and much more easier to draw. It's only until I watched Bravern and read about how supposedly it's about that same dichotomy of real vs super robots (more narratively than design, as it's still a Masami Obari joint), that I...kinda nurtured the idea too? I think it fits Astemar's own evolution of her magical girl alter ego to have her own mecha go from super robot to, well, not real robot (real robots are meant to be military/real world!), but certainly from simple to complicated.

As complicated as I made it for me, anyway.

Here's the basic lines for all of Oriana's forms. 1-3 takes place along the years where Astemar is 6 to 14, and 4 is from 14 to present as it's meant to be a "final" form. However, and I haven't designed this part out, Oriana also has a "portable" form and this portable form remains the same in both cases, design-wise.

Oriana The First:

Oriana The Second, later getting a fancy cape! (To match Astemar's eventual cape)

Oriana The Third--where I decided to try being Nagano while also going "how about no." I always loved the design aspects found in OVA Iczer-1's robots, where there's "hair" shaped into the helmet. You can see I did it above, but for the final form, I really wanted it to look like hair flowing. It wasn't working out and after I took a look at Maria of Metropolis fame, it's where I changed gears slightly to mayhaps call back to her a bit. (See wrists.) Apparently about give years before the movie was made, Tutankhamun's sarcophagus was discovered and supposedly the face plate was an inspiration? I don't know, dudes, all I know is, I tried taking a look at the face plate myself to kinda get a 3D idea for Oriana's new "hairstyle."

Now...the colors.

You may have noticed the header says Oriana the GOLD. Astemar's image color is gold and that carries from her past life as Astraea to the present day in all her forms in some shape, manner or form. I still haven't really decided if the gold image color comes from Oriana or if it was always there with Astemar and it's all just typical plot conveniences...or maybe leave it a mystery, who knows? Point is, Oriana in all her forms should be some form of gold.

I hadn't had as much trouble for 1-3 in terms of colors, but it's 4, the final form, where unironically the colors from Astemar's final Astraea form fit her much better than gold. But you'll see what I mean eventually.

Here, the polls are...well, I guess I'd have to pick and choose who I want you to vote for in terms of colors. I was about to make this overly complicated for you (and I'm running on fumes here, be thankful I didn't xD) but instead I may have to either do three polls with their respective separate posts or one poll here, and then the other polls on social media when this post becomes public. (The free tier should be the public one but something isn't working out in the backend, so I'm gonna try to make *this* post public after early access has passed.)

ANYWAY, again, fume typing here. I have here some color choices for Oriana The First, all of them with minor changes between all of them. You might notice a basic general palette intended, but what I really want to know is which one WORKS. Because I have my fave but I also am generally sleep deprived, so who knows if my taste is even normal anymore.

I'm only doing Oriana The First for now, because the Second's colors will be based on that one partly. So let's gooooo--

CHOICE A

CHOICE B

CHOICE C

CHOICE D

Now...(please) vote! Especially when this one won't make or break democracy for the free world!