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windyboi101 · 2 months ago

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Designing Serial Designation T.S.

Hello! If for some reason you have any sort of interest in my Murder Drones OC, Serial Designation T.S., then you can view this post for some insight into the philosophy and ideas behind my designing of T.S. You can see the first 'reference' image of him here.

Most of these inspirations were on purpose, but some happened subconsciously, and I only realized later. :shrug: This post is EXTREMELY LONG! Open at your own risk!

MUSICAL INSPIRATION

One particular song by the retired Dr.Steel inspired me for the idea of this OC, as the lyrics gave me major 'Absolute Solver' vibes:

Left ajar to his hard drive He felt all alive The old robot he used to be dead

There was rage in his brain There was pain in his frame There was love, there was hunger and strife He felt lonely, rejected at times disconnected No answer to the meaning of life So he sang So he sang

The lines about being 'dead' and 'hungry' really just fit Solver as a whole, so the seed of an idea was planted and began to grow into the OC concept I now have.

DESIGN INSPIRATION

I have always been a fan of 'skeletal' and 'lanky' robots. Started far back as Disney's Toontown back around 2010 with Skelecogs.

Here to do business. Source: Toontown Rewritten

I was very young at the time, but these guys terrified me. Their weird toothy smiles and deeper voice than their suited-counterparts cemented them in my brain. More inspirations would come later in my life, around 2017.

Enter: Deadline

Simon Says: Do you want to learn the truth? Source: Popgoes: The Dead Forest

I was (and still kind of am) a huge Five Nights at Freddy's fan. Back in 2017, a particularly interesting fangame was canceled pretty late in development. They released a bunch of trivia on the game and characters, and the 'final boss' was this hooved-monstrosity.

While his design was clearly inspired by a particularly popular cryptid design, I just loved how imposing this robot was. He was giant, he was unbeatable, and you only won the game by terminating the AI that controlled both you and Deadline.

He was so giant he had to crouch in a large hallway to get to you! Source: Popgoes: The Dead Forest

I unknowingly really made some similar design choices with T.S. and I implore you to understand that I was NOT trying to copy the design. A major difference is Deadline's legs bending outward whereas T.S.'s legs bend inward. This was inspired by the next entry. The bones and organic material in T.S.'s design were because of The Solver's abilities, not Deadline's design. What I did intentionally take direct inspiration of was his feet, as I like N's circular 'feet' as opposed to the female Disassembly Drone's pegleg design. Unfortunately, not many Five Nights at Freddy's fangames had these spooky skeletal robots. However, a game I discovered in late 2018, Warframe, introduced a new main antagonist in July of 2019.

"Don't be afraid." Source: Warframe - The New War Teaser 2019 Erra, Sentient-Warlord, Son of Hunhow and Brother of Natah.

Holy shit I love this guy. Sentients are a race of - you guessed it - sentient machines in Warframe that are highly adaptive to all forms of opposition and damage. They started as giant planet-sized creations made to teraform planets and gave birth to 'children' by dividing themselves like starfish. Hunhow even earnt his name as 'Sentient Destroyer of Worlds', and his size explains it all.

Yes, those are entire 4-man-crew spaceships being dwarfed by him.

To sum up the long history, they waged war against their creators and lost, fleeing beyond the solar system. In the New War, they have returned to finish what they started. With this, Erra himself got a small makeover.

Red is my favorite color, and the unnatural, alien-like design of Erra gives him an unsettling figure. His odd grasshopper-like legs have him standing at around 14 ft / 4.26 meters tall. I instantly fell in love with his new design more than his old one. He even has slight mad scientist vibes to him, as he created hybrids from the corpses of Sentient and Warframe alike. Unable to die, these creatures regenerate using the entropic radiation from the shards embedded in the corpses of their 'host'.

Once Creatures made to recreate beauty, now grafted to the corpse of their undying enemy. Source: Warframe Wiki: Archons Lots of spoilers for Warframe ahead: After initially winning the war, enough plot happens where Erra surrenders himself to you in an attempt to save his people and dies helping you make your way to the actual antagonist. Or one would hope. Unfortunately, the Archons were vengeful against their creator, full of spite for the weapons they had been made into. (Sound familiar, Murder Drones fans?)

"Narmer offers freedom. Is that so terrible? Freedom from desire and responsibility, alike. Find freedom, and surrender... as I did."

Source: Warframe - Veilbreaker Ignoring the design similarities between him and Deadline, Erra's new form is more tragic than you'd think. Rather than being some sort of feral beast, Erra's mind is suppressed by the Sentient that has been grafted onto him named Pazuul. Worse, Erra is still in there, unable to act of his own will. Pazuul leads the remnants of the Sentient's army and preaches of their home system, promising their followers eternity in bliss...if they die for their cause. In one of these missions, Erra is able to break through and speak to the player.

"Tenno… I'm truly sorry… for everything. I saw the truth far too late. She will never forgive me. But you will… won't you?" - Erra

As of this post, Erra has yet to be freed from Pazuul's influence, and I can only hope the day comes we can either remove the parasite on his body or put him out of his misery. Erra was the biggest inspiration for T.S. : The concept of a single body having two minds is not a new idea, but the idea of it being two entirely different entities in a robot? Now that's cool as hell! It also helps that both Solver - Affected Drones and Sentients are highly resistant to damage, regenerate, and are otherwise 'alien' to the world.

It was also super similar to how The Solver works in Murder Drones, which is why I made T.S. a host for The Solver...but not any typical one: a host with no more free will. Similar to Cyn, The Solver is all that remains in the form visible. T.S. has been dead for a long, long time.

AUDIO / VOICE-CLAIM INSPIRATIONS

The audio I use as a voice claim for T.S. is from Dead by Daylight's Singularity character, who uses a heavily modified text-to-speech voice as it insults its victims. I always interpreted T.S. being very, very broken and thus having a voice that does not synthesize correctly like other drones, disrupting the illusion of 'humanity' that even normal Worker Drones show, let alone the personalities of main characters like N and Uzi. I also just really like menacing sounding characters. Singularity's voice is split into two parts: a deep, menacing voice, and the normal text-to-speech with modifications made. I chose the deeper voice, as T.S. is a character that would only exist Post-Episode 8 of Murder Drones. You can listen to the voice claim here. Lots of people like to attribute music to their OC's. I tend to do the same, especially for 'boss battle' themes for my OC, because why not? I wanted something that speaks "danger" and "otherworldly" while still being a track for a showdown. Coincidentally, Warframe has a track with the perfect title- Warframe: Hybrid Abominations

STORY INSPIRATION

I struggled making T.S. a character that was scary and tragic without it becoming overtly edgy and reminiscent of a Sonic the Hedgehog OC from DeviantArt in 2012. I'd like to hope I managed this, and if I am wrong, I would appreciate anyone telling me lmao

I am a sucker for 'Doomed Fate' characters. Characters who never even got to experience their life to the fullest, if at all. T.S. lost the memories of how he was damaged, so he only knows what came after his initial repair. Unfortunately, this would not be long before the Absolute Solver arrived in the form of Cyn at the Elliot Manor, and T.S. would be one of the first victims of its experimentation. One of the biggest inspirations of this fate and 'innocent but doomed' character trope was from Mono from Little Nightmares 2, my favorite game of all time. I recommend you play it yourself / watch a no-commentary playthrough before you read the spoilers I am about to drop:

End of the Hall. Source: Little Nightmares 2

Mono is betrayed by his only friend and is doomed to a never-ending cycle of loneliness and betrayal as he earns his place as The Thin Man, doomed to failing to save himself from his own fate and dying at his past self's hands.

While not an exact match to T.S.'s story, he is one doomed by the narrative itself. He never lives a normal life (or what would be normal for a Worker Drone in the Murder Drones universe), he never learns about The Solver. He never learns why anything that happens to him actually happens, or that it is unnatural for it to occur to him. T.S. simply comes to accept his reality, even if it is one he wishes would end. But The Solver does not win. Even though a small fragment of The Solver survives Post-Episode 8 (which I will elaborate on in a separate post, not this one) and takes the irreparable form of T.S. as it's host,

even though The Solver loses any sort of silly personality or innocence in its coding and becomes focused on consuming everything,

even though it knows what it did wrong last time it faced against Uzi, N, V, and the rest of Copper-9: The Solver will not win. Again, I won't spoil it in this post, but The Solver will not prevail in its last-ditch-effort. T.S. will be destroyed and be forgotten by time and only remembered as another victim of The Absolute Solver. Well, you made it to the end of the post! I appreciate your interest in my character and hope you'll stick around my account for content I reblog or write myself. Likes and Reblogs are always appreciated, as they expand my feedback sample-size so I can continue to improve my work :)

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