Character Revamps: Wreaking Havoc

I seem to be on a streak of character redesigns (and annoying/bad pun-based titles) lately. As I had anticipated and previously reported on, the new hairstyles have seen some usage amongst my main eight characters, with Calph and Ferok'ia receiving the Shaecut and the "goth mop", respectively.

However, if you've visited my duly-updated Characters page recently you may have noticed another character has received something of a redesign if you have good eyes and somehow have his image burned into your memories.

So really, nobody will have noticed the redesign.

All the more reason to delve into it!

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With Jedi Guardian Rahnga officially declared "deceased" over on The Harbinger, Commando Ziodus is the longest-serving active character of mine, and his looks have remained largely consistent over the four-and-a-half years that he's been in-play.

Ziodus in bad graphics 2013

Aside from losing his quite frankly bizarre tattoo, which I think I gave him just to break up his face a little bit to distract from his totally-shaved head, and changing the colour of his beard from one shade of brown to to another dark-reddish shade of brown before February of 2015, this has been the "quintessential Ziodus", if you will.

Ziodus in late 2015 and slightly better graphics

Until 2017.

On Friday the 5th, when I was going through and taking new screenshots of the other characters to supplement the new image for Calph and the first 'official' image of Ferok'ia (I noticed that the visual quality of the older images was nowhere near as up-to-par as these new ones, despite being taken on the same computer), I decided that Ziodus finally needed a bit of a substantial design update.

Something which you may have noticed in the previous pictures is just how pale his skin is; this is an unfortunate remnant of the time when I only ever used Skin Colour 1, which is basically as white as snow. Other characters had been receiving tans to develop more natural-looking skin, and Skin Colour 9 has swiftly become my 'default' skin colour as a result.

I don't know exactly why it took Ziodus so long to get this rectified. Maybe he thought getting a tan was unprofessional for a soldier, or maybe he was actually clinically dead this entire time and I hadn't noticed.

So, the skin colour has finally been sorted out, but still I wanted more.

I decided that the time had come for ol' Zio to actually grow some bloody hair at long last. Well, not bloody as in that sense of bloody, even though he is a soldier...

Okay, so some idioms don't suit some professions, I get it.

Ziodus in 2017. Please note that the armour has had a secondary Deep Red dye installed; as good as the graphics are nowadays, they are not responsible for making the Havoc Squad armour less of an eyesore

Oh, and I also decided to get him another tattoo, because why the hell not?

As I hope you agree, he now looks significantly better. The shaved head was not exactly endearing. Plus, it reinforced the point that I have had an annoying tendency in the past to accidentally create a character who ends up looking very similar to a pre-existing character; in Ziodus's case this is especially ironic since he initially seemed to be a younger version of Imperial General - and ultimate Trooper nemesis - Arkos Rakton.

I find it amusing that I decided on using the hair which he is now using, since this is the hair which still current record-holder-for-oldest-character-even-though-he's-now-gone Rahnga had possessed; Ziodus has basically become 'the new Rahnga' in more ways than one.

Although now he's basically a clone of Tharan Cedrax except with darker hair and a tattoo. Sigh...

Also, since the Zakuulan Assault Cannon MK-I was released in the Tier IV Crates, I just had to get it since not only is it a design I've been wanting since the game launched (yet was never realised until now), but its colour also complemented Zio's gorgeous new armour colour very nicely indeed.

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I'm rather fond of Ziodus's updated look. I think I've been acknowledging to myself that he was in dire need of something of a face-lift because I kept his head hidden beneath his helmet pretty much all the time and just hoped that I'd forget about it because "hey, he's a career soldier, he should have no reason to take his helmet off on the field, right?"

Even though this update has happened, he'll probably still keep his helmet on mostly full-time because of my above stance.

That said, all I've done to his actual face now is stick him in a tanning booth, give him a new and perhaps unnecessary tattoo, and force him to actually grow some hair. Not that substantial when you really think about it, but in general I just really like how his look just 'comes together' now when all elements are considered.

However, even though this is really a superficial update, this does mean that there is now only one of my eight 'main' characters who I consider to need something of an update; Twi'lek Sorcerer Vahnora. I've always found Sorcerers rather difficult to find gear for, and Vahn's written childlike personality doesn't really help matters much either. I'm sure there's stuff out there which I can use; I just need to devote a fair amount of time into revamping her.

More updates to come on that in the future, I hope. We shall see.