Lowpoly A.B.A
Originally appearing in Guilty Gear Isuka in 2003, A.B.A is something of a fan favorite in the Guilty Gear fandom. Despite only being playable certain revisions of XX before her addition to Strive, her unique design and aesthetic made her very popular even among those who didn’t play the games she was in.
As an avid +R player myself, I have plenty of experience playing against A.B.A, and… it may well be easier to like this character from an outsider’s perspective. Regardless of my qualms with the matchup, A.B.A is easily one of my favorite Guilty Gear characters from a visual design perspective. Something about plastering a character with locks and keys while they’re already lugging a giant key around is so on-brand for Daisuke Ishiwatari.
Order Sol’s ridiculous hair really elevates this drawing to another level.
On that note, another huge factor in A.B.A’s appeal is her pairing with Paracelsus, who almost feels like a mascot character of sorts.
He’s such a perfect blend of goofy and strange, and his thousand-yard stare is nothing short of comical. He has so much character showing through his expressions and smears as A.B.A swings him around with wild abandon, so it’s no wonder he’s so well-loved.
live Octopath Traveler 2 reaction
Now, let’s talk about the production process!
I know how to render, anyway!
This model came immediately after production of the Vagrant Story-style Elf model, and served to blend the lessons learnt with more of my personal artstyle, and the style of some of A.B.A’s sprites and renders. I’m especially proud of the texturing on her shorts, bandages, and… medical bib? She is all about blood, after all.
Taking her to the salon
I’d also like to talk about the hair! You’ll notice that her head is quite large compared to the Elf, and this was done in keeping with Guilty Gear’s general proportions and artstyle. For this model, I wanted to put especial care into the presentation of the hair to give off the right impression, and to achieve that I made liberal use of cutout textures.
Here’s what the mesh actually looks like…
And this is the final appearance with the cutouts applied!
In general, deciding between the application of cutouts versus matching the actual geometry of the mesh to the desired shape can be a tough call. Sometimes, you can even mix and match by having a cutout mesh warped to put the pixels at a more favorable angle to line up with the desired arc. Thankfully, A.B.A’s hair provided some pretty natural cutoff points to separate parts of the hair mesh, making it easy to make her front hair-plate look quite nice.
When it came to her side profile, I found the base mesh gave a bit of an underwhelming silhouette.
Not bad, but it needs a little something.
In this case, I applied tris that were explicitly matched to the desired shape and completely filled out without any sort of cutout effect.
There’s that signature anime hair flair!
This created a wonderfully striking and almost aggressive impression to her profile view.
And the star of the hour…
Of course, A.B.A just wouldn’t be complete without Paracelsus! I actually don’t have too much to say here- the mesh is, perhaps expectedly, very simple, and the texturing process wasn’t very complicated either due to his relative uniformity.
I did rig him up a bit to give his head a pivot and make each link of the chain poseable, but aside from that, modeling Para was short and sweet. Oh, and did you notice?
Yup! The teeth are cutout textures, all to save some precious tris!
Closing thoughts and gallery
And that covers it! Here’s a few more renders to close out:
Never before-seen documentation of A.B.A’s second eye.
I intended to make her face appear tired and a little sad like
many of her sprites, but the expression actually feels quite sweet.
It certainly fits her personality in XX.