
Artist's commentary
Milla Basset the Hound
I have a lot of gripes over Milla’s original design in FP1. The alternating asymmetrical bracelets and the green pieces on her long ears are pulling attention away from her face. Combining with the grey outfit and the leotard with the thick, vertical white-and-green stripes, the design was really distracting. Above all, I do not approve how the outfit has holes to expose her inner thighs.
In the alternative version, I first added black details all over her body as visual and physical paddings. This gave the design a better visual rhythm. I replaced the flashy leotard with a black one, and added a green flower knot on her chest to draw attention back to the center.
I also added a backpack to the outfit to hold her belongings, because she was “a stray dog” before meeting Lilac and Carol. A backpack would help her carry her stuff around.
Milla’s normal costume needed to be similar to the original, so I kept the questionable structure there. But since Milla was too young to wear a revealing costume, in the next alternative design, I replaced the inappriate part with a black romper. This later became the base of Milla’s Freedom Planet 2 design.
My attention was changing on the course of drawing this series of FP1 characters. When I was drawing Lilac, I paid attention to the design language, trying to find a way to transform the original design into my typical style. When it was Milla’s turn, I began to pay more attention to the expressions and gestures — I wasn’t good at them, either. As an art exercise, I gave Milla an extra expression and pose for each costume.
I had an obvious bias for Milla when it comes to drawing Freedom Planet related stuff. On one hand, it could be that the smallest kid gets the all the love from their parents — I always saw Lilac as the otherworldly cool classmate, Carol as the annoying, rebellious younger sister, and Milla as the smart and well-mannered little daughter. On the other hand, Milla has the most anime-styled hair and facial structure, maybe it was easier for me to draw her than others. In a long period of time, I experimented many ideas of how to draw better faces with Milla as a base model.
Milla’s leotard is a part of her “normal” costume. It has nothing to do with her other alternative costumes.
I really liked this costume combination with Milla’s outfit tying around her waist. She looks sporty like this, and the color looks nice too.
This one is my favorite. Milla’s expression and pose looks cute and natural, which was not something I could reliably do back in 2015.