Redesigning NAHIDA | Genshin Impact 

AAAAAA THAT'S INCREDIBLY SWEET OF YOU!! But yeah Venti and Zhongli's set the bar SO HIGH, venti is a friend shaped and wholesomely determined like monstadth, and zhongli is ancient, cultured but still a sweetie like liyue, they're designs are so clear and very iconic. I'm actually working on a raiden shogun/ei redesign, that im probably gonna make into a video, (alot quicker and less thought out than this video just cause i wanna cut myself some slack), is venti is your best friend, zhongli is your friend who maybe-previously-betrayed-you-but-it's-not-your-fault-and-he-had-a-good-reason, and ei is an emotionally broken but VERY SCARY antagonist and she very doesn't look the part. I've had complaints about her design for a while and i've been sleeping on them for MONTHS

​@@tea_n_ink I'm looking forward to your Raiden redesign! Honestly I've always thought Scaramouche's OLD design is so much more deserving of the Electro Archon title than Ei's design. I think his design ticks all the boxes for what an Archon's design should be: 1. His design screams Electro. Even if his color scheme had red in it, it still looked so Electro that pretty much everyone in the community back then thought he was Electro. Plus red lightning is a thing in real life (they look so much more intimidating than normal lightning tbh) and Herrscher of Thunder, a.k.a Raiden's counterpart in Honkai actually uses red lightning in her attacks 2. His design would better reflect the Electro Archon's role and personality. When I first saw Scaramouche as someone who just discovered Genshin some days ago and had no idea who he was or what his role in the story is, I instantly thought that he was an arrogant person who is of high status in some way. Like he was someone who is meant to be seen as above everyone else. Even when he was acting nice towards us, it still felt...fake since to me, he still clearly looks like he was meant to be an antagonist. The colors of purple, red and gold perfectly evoke the "royalty" aspect of his character. He also looks more youthful and "immature" than Raiden which would fit the god who follows the idea of Eternity and has also made some really stupid decision (lol). Raiden's design doesn't leave that much of an impression on me. When I look at Raiden...I see...I see a Japanese lady who's dressed in purple...and that's it...

@@whatever5401 RIGHT???? I didn''t mention Scara cause Venti and zhongli are the ones setting the very high bar for archon designs (much to mr fangando's dissapointment he does not fit this category). He's as scary and distructive in his misguided ambitions as his mum but his design is MUCH clearer. When brainstorming for idea's on Ei's design i kept catching myself wanting to give her a hat to make her glare REALLY scary, and then realised "NO DAMMIT I CANT TAKE WHAT MAKES SCARA UNIQUE, EI'S ALREADY TAKEN ENOUGH FROM HIM"

Thank you sm! i was worried i would fall into the trap of orientalism, but im glad to know you liked it!

MY GOSH I'M CRYING, thank you sm!!❣💘

♥️♥️

bgernbnbjkrejkgjkb dafaSHADUP 💝💘❣💓

these are some pretty valid criticisms, I feel that I'm still justified in giving Nahida naturally dark skin, since Arabs are one of the most common ethnic groups in the middle east, and are typically dark skinned-brown people, they dont get their dark skin from being tanned. This video's been out for a year and if i redid it i would DEFINITELY be nicer about the colours since i was using concept art against a grey background and not considering the environment of the game and what she'd look like against that, and the turquois colour scene just deletes all the cool green elements, in favour for one i personally liked more, rather than one that actually served communicating she is the god of dendro. Also you are SO right for liking the green elements of her design, i should have keep more of the patterns from her original outfit cause they slapped

awwww that's very sweet!

btw if u had two messages don't mind the first one i deleted it by accident. But i haven't heard about the snow faires one before, but more about Saraswati and how the goddess was described for having skin as white as snow. might have missed that if the video mentioned that idk

@@yours__ Yes, I probably messed up with clarification, because I've heard something about snow skin in tiktok or somewhere else, so maybe fairies are a completely different story

@@whoevencares123 Yeah when i was trying to look into Middle eastern and southeast asian fairies, i couldn't find much at all apart from her being based on kusanali jataka, who has no correlation to snow. So i assume it was made up

Woah i didn't even catch that that might be a reason. I think after making the reason i was kinda kicking myself for not trying out an irminsul inspired pallet, but i never considered the aspect of kusanali and Rukkhadevata that is "being born from and protecting irminsul" (having a design where where she looks like a budding branch feels like missed opportunity noooo). But i 100% get what your saying, i probably wouldn't have gone with an irminsul pallet just cause i'd prioritize the aspect of kusanali that is the dendro god of sumeru, but this is such a cool take! (also thank you for being very respectful of my redesign and ideas, even if you disagree with some aspects)

@@tea_n_ink Personally. With the updated story. It would have been nice if Kusanali, instead of just taking the likeness of just the Dendro archon. Out of respect to King Deshret, who sacrificed himself for his people. Her appearance could have been a merge of both archons. That would have been a nice foreshadowing for the fact that they were never enemies to begin with.

@@usonohoshi6165 The reasoning of why Rukkadevata made a copy of herself I believe is that to make the job of the Irmunsul easy in replacing the colective memories of her to Kusanali. Also Hoyoverse has a favorite child amongst their games: Honkai impact 3th. Four gods are modeled after a character in that game and have some paralelisms. Venti is the one with more creative liberties, being a gender swap of Wendy but that's where the similarities end. The Heavenly Principles are modeled after Kiana Kaslana, the protagonist of Honkai Impact, more precisely, she is modeled after her Herscher form, who has a intensely distaste toward the human race. Raiden Shogun is modeled after Raiden Mai, best friend, or lover (depends mostly on your interpretation of their relationship) of Kiana. And her arc is similar to her Honkai counterpart she seek to comeback to a time when both girls were happy without worries like Ei wanting to Inazuma to stay the same and don't change. Kusanali is no different. Her appearance is inspired by Theresa Apocalypse. A clon of Karla Kaslana, long distance relative of Kiana and long since death person. And like Kusanali she was rejected from her creator Otto Apocalypse for not being Karla, the one that he is obsessed by. With that said there is two arcon that the community expects to be also counterparts of Honkai characters. One of them most likely will be the arcon of Natlan, the other PoC region: Himeko, Theacher, mentor and parent figure of Kiana. The reasoning behind this is her last version that was release in Honkai was a fire theme one called Vermillion Knight.

@@charly5245 I don't play Honkai. But I have seen fans of both mentioning this. It actually is kind of funny how Hoyo basically spoils their own future characters(specifically their Archons) by looking at their other games. But I'm going to assume that their similarities is only in design and not in like the deeper lore.

​@@charly5245 in my personal opinion, i think it's a bad decision to base genshin characters directly off honkai characters, it's good to draw inspiration from elements like colour schemes, silhouettes, and shape language, committing to replicating a character means that their unique personality, setting and attributes are less clear or original. You mentioned Venti was very loosely based off Wendy, and his design is fantastic cause they allowed themselves to not commit too hard to just designing "her but a guy", his setting and personality shine through so much more. (just food for thought)

AAAA THANK YOU!! That means the world to me! I'm a big nerd for historical and world fashion, this video was SO fun to research and draw for :D

@@tea_n_ink It’s so much better than seeing the recolors on Twitter and people getting mad. I feel like I really learned something new. Maybe you could redesign other characters or do analysis on Genshin’s character designs and cultural inspirations!

THANK YOU SM!!!

im just here to remind u.. zhongli is disgusing as human hes trying to not hint that he is or was an archon

THAT'S SO VERY VERY KIND OF YOU!!

yeah it sucks that there are probably laws preventing them from giving character darker skin, i probably should have acknowledged that in the video and also included that within the magical world of concept art (and not a real corporate environment with tech, time limitations and a marketing team dictating what character are allowed to me) im allowed to do what i want, but actual companies might have limitations and people above them that suck You are DEFINITELY right, about the background of my splash art not working. I kinda got stuck for ideas and was taking forever to get it done, and also at the time of conceptualising the splash art, didn't know anything about her gameplay and official slash art, so it kinda looked vague cause i didn't wanna make up what her gameplay would look like.

Thank you sm!!! this was so interesting to read, it's nice that because the regions are based on real countries/collections of countries which means i have a reason to look into cultures i otherwise wouldn't be familiar with, the unfortunate part is that it's often because those places are HORRIBLY represented (Sumeru really fucked up by naming several characters after real historical/mythological figures)

My guy does not know what's she's supposed to be

@@Remisaku what do you mean

@@TobyStan First, Sumeru is divided between jungle people (who are fair-skinned and used to be ruled by Rukkadevata), and desert people (who are brown-skinned and used to be ruled by "Scarlet King" Deshret). Cyno and Dehya are desert people, as are all Eremites. While most scholars are jungle people. There is some racism between the two groups, and the current crop of sages (academiya's scholar-rulers) are making it worse. Nahida is a god of both kinds of people, so it might be interesting to give her a piebald look or something like that. Second, Nahida is not related by blood to either of the two groups. She is decidedly non-human. Her closest relatives, besides Rukkadevata, are Aranaras, a race of small and cute plant-people, and Irminsul, a mysterious magical computer tree. Other archons, like Venti and Zhongli, are probably more closely related to her than both the desert people and jungle people. It is not clear if other long-eared people, like Klee and Layla, are her relatives, but they're all fair-skinned. Irminsul itself is usually depicted as silver with blue streaks. The branches that Abyss Mages drop, are branches of Irminsul. As Nahida is both avatar and system administrator of Irminsul, it would make sense for Nahida to look more like it. Third, Nahida spent about 500 years locked up in her sanctuary. She has every reason to be pale even if her genetics allows her to get tanned easily. Finally, all the archons have highlights of their elemental color in their hair. These redesigns of Nahida really lack them. I guess this isn't really part of the answer to your question, I'm just venting at this point.

@@kotarouinugami1745 Wow, thats actually super interesting! Thank you!! I get the Jungle/desert seperation so I understand why Tighnari for example would be paler (thats why Ive mentioned Cyno and Dehya) but as for Nahida.. especially BECAUSE shes supposed to represent her people, a more darker skinned archon would be interesting. Her design and Sumerus inspiration are based on countries with a more darker skinned leaning population. I guess if the other characters who have a far stronger case as to why they should be darker had been made darker, there wouldnt be much to argue about... But they arent :/ so it just really feels like Hoyoverse is actively deciding against making any of their characters anything but translucent. Sure there could be arguments made but looking at the bigger picture its just kind of obvious what the actual reason is....

Thank you!!!

Yeah if i ever did a redo of this redesign, i would probably have her eyelashes be white. i have no idea why i scrapped that idea

:)

Yeah my main criticism of my own design is she doesn't look like a character from genshin and it's not just my art style. Like if i pictured my design of her in game, she would look very off.

Yeah now that it's been a year since i made the video, the biggest criticism i have of my work is that she doesn't look like a genshin design anymore. This whole project began way back when she was only a leak, so several of the concepts were made without me knowing her story, and the project took so long that by the time we actually had a good idea of her story and personality i kinda just wanted to be done with the video. I completely get where your coming from, the colours were definitely the worst thing about my design by far

@@tea_n_ink Personally, I like the colors. Also I feel like the redesign of Nahida doesn't have to be put away forever, instead she could be repurposed as an OC.(unless you already did that)

oh hey legend

oh hey leg

@@Saiyana hello shawty

That's so unbelievably sweet! i have actually drawn a few more redesigns since, but not thought out enough to be a big video like this, i might try and make some short videos on them tho, cause they're really fun

@@tea_n_ink YAY! I love your style too I’m so happy I found your account recently! I don’t see a lot of Genshin redesigns on other platforms than twitter. I would like to avoid that rabbit hole for as long as I can

while although it feels racist to say that lower skin = darker skin, it's importance as a social status was quite true for past countries such as Asia. For example, a trending anime, "Apothecary diaries", One of MaoMao's most identifiable features is her freckles, which alot of people (generally) found "ugly" --> because it was an indication of working in the fields. glad it's not like that anymore though.

also, as the video said, she was inspired by Saraswati - which also, she was described to be "As white as the moon" so tht was probably an inspriation idk

I did notice that often desert characters would have darker skin and characters from the city of Sumeru would have lighter skin, however it's not really brought up in game and there any some inconsistencies (like Cyno having darker skin and being from Sumeru city), so it's not so important to the world building that me just kinda saying "yeah imma just ignore that" feels like too much of a cop out. Also naturally dark skinned middle eastern and souteast asian people exist (arab people are in the top 5 most common ethnicities and they have naturally dark skin), it's not that every ethnicity from that area of the world is naturally pale and just gets super tanned on account of living there

@@tea_n_ink “Cyno” - his skin is darker because he spends a lot more time outside (desert regions including) investigating things. So there is no inconsistency there. “It’s not so important to worldbuilding” - it’s definitely not a crucial part but just a tiny detail. And tiny details like these make the world more believable. It’s not like it’s a crime to draw Nahida with dark skin. I mean it’s just a drawing. But if you’re seriously trying to sell it as a proper redesign - the more lore accurate it is - the better. “Naturally dark skinned people exist” - yes, but the thing is it’s not just a tan. Because of how these societies worked there was close to no mixing between nobles and lower class. And over time people of the lower class would get more and more darker from birth. Darker skin protects from sun exposure. Which means people with naturally darker skin would have a better chance of survival. Natural selection would do its thing and voila - after hundreds of years you can tell a lower class from nobility by just looking at someone even if he’s just 1 day old. So a person with darker than average skin being a noble in a setting like this is highly unlikely. If not impossible. Unless there’s been a revolt recently and people from the lower classes took over or something. Which is not the case here. A person won’t get a lot darker just by moving to some place, but back then most people couldn’t move anywhere. They stayed in one village for countless generations. So the effect accumulated.