Protagonist
The main character of the game is called Protagonist. I have chosen to call my character Protagonist because I really wanted to bring in the levelof empathy in the player and how they can put themselves in the shoes of Protagnosit and how that you can really make the character your own in a sense (that and I will admit that after hearing it in Tenet, I found that I thought that was a very clever thing to do).
When it came to making Protagonist, I did a mood board of hazmat suits. I wanted to make sure that I could get the rough idea of a suit right as i had never drawn one before:
It is a small moodboard, but I quickly found the kind of suit I wanted to go for. I was also already thinking of colours off the bat and decided to completely rule out Yellow. I felt like it would be a little too cliché and is the 'default' colour of the suit and thus I wanted something a little different.
As you can see I made two colour examples for the suit. In the end the red was my favourite as I felt like it was complimentary to the purple that consumes the world (I also avoided blue due to Death Stranding). Protagonist is equipped with an O2 tank, a pannel that can show a map and lights on the head which will help you get around. I did a 'default' face for my version of Protagonist so I could then do an Action Piece. I liked that the suit has minimal space so there won't exactly be an inventory system. The overall idea is that the mask will mostly be dark so each person can make their own Protagonist.
This is a quick rough sketch I did of my Protagonist for things like promotional artwork and action scenes. The idea was to also go down a more androgynous route as Protagnoist is gender natural so I will constantly refer to Protagonist with they/them.
I also did a version in green, but the reason I didn't use it and quickly decided not to go with green was because the setting is in lunch greenery and thus while it would be good for camoflauge, it would be terrible when it came to the overall aesthetic. Though you have to be stealthy in some areas of the game, there isn't a full purpose behind them needing to camouflage, thus I thought red was the stronger colour of the three.