In development: Ol-Moran

Mbatian, AKA Ol-Moran, is our Kenyan hero: A young guy of Maasai descent who stays in Kibera, Nairobi... unknowing of his fierce talents until he's discovered by Tolo - down on his luck, but more than ready to save the world.

Our process begins with our amazing character designer Anton working closely with the game's writer, Arnold, as they figure out together how each character should look.

Once the overall design is completed, things move over to Daniel, our character artist. He takes Anton's design and sketches the character in various poses - working out how he acts and moves in many different situations. As this process goes on, we refine and improve the design as we learn about the character.

We continually use a lot of reference material to inform all elements of the character design process - as you can see in the images containing photos of Maasai people, shields, shukas - as well as references to characters such as Marvel's Gambit and Image Comics' awesome Spawn.

At the time of writing we're still working on one of his most important elements: his energy shield. It's meant to closely resemble a traditional Maasai shield, but made of energy projected from his bracelet. As you can see, that's still very much work in progress. Updates soon!

In development: Ananse

Reawakening's Ananse is a rebooted version of one of Leti's most popular characters, from our past comics and games.

The character is based on the famous Ghanaian folk tale of Kwaku Ananse - the spider-shaped spirit of storytelling, and serial trickster.

In Africa's Legends, Ananse is a young guy from He is from Accra, Ghana, who grew up between the streets and in and out of orphanages - hustling to survive, and making use of his almost superhuman wit and charm. As a reaction to his troubled childhood, he's developed got a keen eye for style.

The process with Ananse started with Arnold developing the story of the character, and Anton working with that to create an initial design.

We already had an existing previous design of the character, who was styled in a mixture of typical Marvel spandex, traditional Ghanaian dress, all in the colors of the Ghanaian flag.

We are developing his look to match the world of Reawakening, as well as the story and personality of the rebooted character - specifically his love of contemporary style. And spandex is so eighties. The result is a super-sharp kente-style suit, augmented with subtle battle armor.

Ananse is still work in progress... so check back soon for more updates!

Style development

For us, concepting is an ongoing process as we try to work out the overall visual style of the game. Reawakening features a vast cast of characters, and depictions of many real places across modern-day Africa, and these places have to be recognizable to our players... and also super cool!

We start the process by selecting and analyzing at reference material from many different sources.