For now though, I'll just put down some history for 2 characters for the GDD.
Don
Donovan Joseph Sheppard - Don for short - is a designer living in a city flat with his girlfriend Becca Garrett. He doesn't make a great deal of money doing what he does, but he gets by. However, he suddenly finds himself especially burnt out with work as he struggles to keep on top of it. Problems with Becca also start to wear him down until he begins to lose sleep.
When realising the risk he could be causing to himself, Becca sends him to a doctor for help. He is prescribed sleeping pills. However, he chooses not to take them.
These pills also may be used as a mechanic when Don inadvertantly eats them when sleepwalking, sending him into a deeper state.
The name of Don isn't too elaborate, and there isn't any history behind his surname (which will probably be changed later). Basically, Donovan Joseph can be shortened to Don Jo. This is a spoonerism for Jon Do, i.e. John Doe. This is meant to reflect him losing his sense of self during the game.
Blackbuck
Another name that will probably change later. I was considering using animal names for the dream characters but I'm not so sure anymore (If you don't know what a blackbuck looks like, look them up now because they're so darn cool). I wanted this character to be the main entity that Don encounters and the most helpful one. Blackbuck is meant to be genderless, but I'll probably just say "he" for sake of ease.
Blackbuck appears to be almost child-like but is distinctly not so. His bizarre facial features make him seem more alien than human, and he tends to speak in a way that shows him to be wise and thoughtful.
Generally, he's meant to represent Don's ego in several ways:
1) He holds the knowledge of Don's dreams that Don himself believes he doesn't know. However, as Blackbuck is just a conjuring of his imagination, it is knowledge that he unwittingly carries himself.
2) While Don wanders through his dreams, directionless and confused, Blackbuck seems able to guide him through when he is lost. His wide eyes represent the clarity and knowledge he possesses - in other words, it's sort of a literal way of showing that his eyes are open to the world around him.
3) In the way that he seems like sort of like a spirit guide, and the duality of the dreams that Don is in, Blackbuck is also meant to reflect the Soul and the Ego - like God and the Devil (The latter more linked to principles like LaVeyan Satanism than evil hellish things). I wanted to show Blackbuck as inhuman, possibly spiritual, so I looked to Byzantine depictions of Jesus as inspiration. His face - the large eyes, long, thin nose and small mouth - are characteristic of that sort of work and were fitting to the sort of feel that Blackbuck would have.
I don't have a picture of Don (again, the camera thing), but I have a doodle of Blackbuck I did when I didn't have my graphics tablet.
Blackbuck reminds me of something I read about aliens. Some facial features are exagerrated because thats what we recognise most to be human. Its something like babies see people how people see greys. No idea what it's called though, like. The concept.
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