Akira kali: heavy metal devil bard

Character art and token for Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition
Digital, 2019

Designing Akira Kali: Heavy metal devil bard

Dungeons & Dragons inspires many diverse and rich characters and allows for so much room to play . Throughout the process I sought feedback from my teammates who helped to push me in the right direction in terms of my research and reference. The visual design for this character went through various iterations, so to arrive at this solution I listed some key words: charismatic, youthful, heavy metal, harlequin, conceited.

This character is still quite young and immature, but has a history of charming people to get what she wants. I gave her full red lips, defined brows, and hair that falls in voluminous dark waves like Megan Fox to make her appearance seductive and big eyes with a sweet heart shaped face like Christina Ricci to give an aura of innocence to her come-hither gaze. She is sitting in a window sill to show she fancies herself to be a romanic figure and to show her personality lacks energy.

For her costume, I decided to combine the attire of a fantasy bard archetype with leather, studs, and spikes that evokes someone in a metal band. The studs are a brassy gold colour to indicate Akira’s fondness of luxury. Her vanity comes through in her immaculately clean and well cared for clothes and via her cherry red lipstick and perfectly manicured and lacquered nails.

about the character

A vain and perpetually bored diva, Akira was born in Genrell's capital city of Lordhold to a laundress and a lowly gangster thug. Forever disdainful of her low-class parents and longing for a life of high society Akira spent most of her teen years charming gold out of old wealthy gangsters rather than working an honest job. After being expelled from the local bard college at the age of nineteen for laziness and lyrical incompetence, she wasted the majority of her dwindling funds pretending to be a merchant’s heiress for a few months. In a last ditch attempt to flee poverty, Akira ran away from Lordhold to seek out a team of Genrellian mercenaries who would inspire her to write an epic poetic saga and become the richest popular bard alive. Little did she know that she was about to get more than what she wished for. A goddess had chosen Akira’s new companions to be her champions and —to Akira’s dismay— Akira with them.

Thus Akira copes by unintentionally flirting with evil (often literally) and pining after every prince she meets rather than face her own insecurities about whether she actually can get off her butt and be a force for good.

Special thanks to the Champions of Koetyva (including, but not limited to, Simon Giffen and Bobby Gorefield) for their unwavering support and patience, to the folks over at Twitch.tv for keeping me company, and especially Jonathan Elliot for giving me that last push to the end.