How should Kamen Rider be designed?

[*Jess♥]

I'm not happy with the crummy design on kamen rider of late.

I was writing about it in the wizard thread so I thought I'd move on over here so as not to go off topic too much.

 

how should we design kamen rider? or in other words, let;s look upon the failings of the official designs, then think about the theme of the series and try and formulate some more appropriate ideas and maybe even better designs.

 

I want to first start off with Kamen Rider OOO.

I think the design of this rider fails across the board.

we are given a theme of mummy's and greed. riches and treasure of ancient civilisations.

The idea is that the power comes from coins and those coins are generated from people's greed. it is clear that this is based on the idea of tomb robbers. people used to break into a mummy's tomb and steal the treasure. this would result in them receiving the mummy's curse.

 

so how do they represent the enormous theme of this series. a spandex suit with plastic moulded breasplate with a big circle on it.

money well spent I am sure. what kind of research and development went into that? maybe I'm missing something, but the only thing I can ascertain is the suggestion that they may be trying to represent bas relief with the design.

 

well I don't think this is acceptable to be completely honest, so I started doing some rudimentary research.

I thought I could go with what may have been their motif. I searched for 'mummy' and 'bas relief'. well I couldn't find any straight line and corner designs similar to what is shown in OOO, but I did find some wonderful depictions of old egyptian style clothing and armour. one image stood out the most. that was the scarab.  we all know that the scarab is pretty important part of egyptian culture, so if we extend from that and recall that kamen rider is based on bugs... we can really do something interesting.

 

I included some images I found of a scarab beetle to serve as a starting point for our imagination. I would love to get your feedback.

 

[*Jess♥]

more images

 

[durendal]

Scarabs are somewhat similar to beetles.  I believe beetles have been used countless times on a rider.  Based on what your saying and my understanding, OOO would end up looking like Kuuga.

[*Jess♥]

Kuuga? I don't see it.

yeah, I know beetles have been used a few times. grasshopper seemed to be the original basis. kabuto had a lot of different insect types.

I think it's good to stick with that.

I think though... ways this could develop...

the circle on his chest could stay, it is a good way to use the OOO. but what if the circle was representing the sun that the scarab is meant to roll around.  I can just imagine the kind of cool moves and special effects they could do with that. then if we look at the scarab beetle, it has very interesting spikes on it. The ridges on it's exoskeleton are also interesting. I think the armour could take on that chitin texture and the spiky structures could be included on the armour. the spikes on the scarab's head are below the eyes so that could result in some very interesting design elements.

[odin]

Interesting that you decided to open this discussion with Ozu, this will be fun. I'll try to debate on Ozu's design choices to the best of my abilities since I do believe this series had great designs. Well to start of lets take a look at what you said about using Egyptian influences, the thing is Ozu IS using Egyptian influence although they do it through symbolism, old Egyptian mythology is based on worshiping different deities based on animals Ozu represents this by using symbols of 3 types of animals that are usually worshiped on his breastplate and the animal that goes on the head are based on known Egyptian deities the Taka medal is obviously Ra, the Lion Medal is based on Baset the lioness goddess and finally we have the Kuwagata medal, granted it is not a Scarab beetle but it is a beetle and this represents another Egyptian God called Khepri and interestingly enough all 3 are Sun deities which are associated with life and creation and what does kogami say that desire give? LIFE, other medals associate Egyptian mythology specially the Brakawani combo (Cobra, Turtle and Crocodile) but in my opinion they did a good job choosing the Taka medal as the head for the base form cause RA is probably the most important Deity in Egyptian mythology.

 

Now not all the combos and medals are based on Egyptian mythology cause the putotyrano combo and the Shauta combo animals are not part of that culture, this was probably decided in order to complete the representation of the animal kingdom which we have Avian, Aquatic life, Mammals, Insect, and Extinct or fantasy creatures, i don't know what the deal is with Sagozo tho since the Lion combo is also based on Mammals. Anyways now that I explained about the animal symbolisim I will go with another symbol that Ozu uses in his design which is his are the Core Medal and Cell medal which are representation of what comes out of Yummy (a play on Mummy something that is associated a lot with Egyptian culture) which are monsters created from desire that the Greed create what can be associated with Greed? money Cell medals are Silver and Core Medals are Gold, another thing that Egypt loved to use in their culture. Although it is not part of his suit it is part of his design through symbolism and that is Ankh which is the symbol of eternal life if I'm not mistaken and the Egyptian gods are often depicted carrying an Ankh. You are right about the bas relief since that is also part of Ancient Egyptian art but I think they are also using sunk relief. It is a shame that they did not put a Scarab beetle instead of a Kuwagata but that may be due to them wanting to keep a familiar aspect of Japanese culture in ozu's design for their main audience since if I'm not mistaken Kuwagata Beetles are famous in Japanese culture.

[*Jess♥]

Thanks for sharing your views

so what I would like to challenge you with is how do you think about how these are implemented?

Do you believe the themes you mentioned are satisfactorily represented in a sympathetic design?

I mean, these animals could be present in any aspect of culture, not necessarily Egyptian.

I realise you like the design, but do you think that a more effective design could have been brought about? what are your views on the research I have performed thus far, do you think it could work as a more well thought out design process?

 

The Ankh is a good observation. our secondary character was called Ankh, and his appearance was that of a hawk and was clearly based on Ra. I think the character design for Ankh was good. do you think this was sufficiently represented in the equivalent OOO design?

[odin]

Yes, I do believe they are satisfactorily represented, it is not too complex like Fourze and it is not so vague like Wizard, Perhaps there could be a more effective design although I find it hard to find a way to make it better, from what I have seen from the Megamax riders I think toei wants to boost the popularity of the rider series and bring more audience (specially children) through merchandizing and we can see this specially with fourze cause from a realistic standpoint fourzes may have cool powers but his belt is too impractical but makes for the perfect toy commercial, maybe if they borrowed some design Ideas from his predecessor Super-1 it would have worked better, anyways back to Ozu!!, yes the animals could be present in any other culture but the 3 animals types used for his tatoba combo are the most prominent of the sun deities in old Egyptian mythology, Ra being the most important one then below him we have bastet which from what i have read is the daughter of ra and then finally we have the insect Khepri which is his subordinate, all are sun deities of life and creation and Ozu himself is depicted as a King which uses desire as way to evolve or bring new LIFE as Kogami says in the series.

 

In my opinion your design choices are spot on if you want to keep the general motif of a rider which is traditionally an insect, mostly a grasshopper or a beetle but with the story that they are going which is of the successor of a king to bring life and evolution through desire the choice they made was the right one with choosing Ra instead of Khepri cause Ozu is depicted as a King which Khepri is not, heck he is not even a cult devoted to him, he is only known as a sun deity and Ra's subordinate. Maybe they could have used a different material for the suit to make it look less plastic but considering with all the different suits they made for each form plus the different combinations that he could do I'm pretty sure the budget would have been through the roof if they went that route to make a more appealing suit. Overall, to me the way they made the designs of the suit was great and fitted with the story that they where trying to tell, your Idea of using a Scarab Beetle is a great one but using the script that they did would you just use that design? how would you give importance to the other greed if his design only reflects the greed Uva? that is another dilemma that is worth talking since his main design of changing forms through different animal types that those greed represent gives them a purpose and motivation to go after him. But a good design can only get you so far, to me a story is a lot more important than the look, sure it helps a lot to have a great design but it is useless if you don't bring a good narrative that keeps your audience attention and Ozu has that in spades although that is all a matter of opinion of course.

[*Jess♥]

you made an excellent point.

if they wanted to use Ra, Khepri and Bastet, then that could pose an issue if the design was overly formed from the Scarab shape.

So they needed to have a basic shape and design that could be adapted to the others.

so the basic fundamental design ideal is a good one. yes I think I would like to say that.

The ideal of having a simple design that could clearly show the different forms, this is sensible.

So what of the design of the basic form? if we were to subtract the theme of the animals from the design of OOO, what do we have left?  perhaps the remaining form would not be too different from W? is that good or bad?

If we consider den-o, the base form was interesting in its own right. it didn't look very strong and was awkward, but it was still interesting and clearly showed that it was den-o.  looking at that design with all the gimmicks removed, it was still clearly identifiable.

the basics of good design is usually described as being such that if you remove identifiable marks like colours and text, the design is still identifiable and unique.

I think in this regard, OOO fails. so what elements might we consider if we are to remove the animal motifs and remove the idea of the scarab.

 

ancient Egyptian armour or regalia? combine this with the OOO ? how about including the ankh somehow?

[odin]

Yes, I suppose if you remove the animal theme it would look like a simpler W although you could say the same thing for most of the showa riders and some heisei riders as well, something reminiscent of a Ancient Egyptian Armor or regalia would be an awesome Idea, preferably more armor than regalia although that is just my personal preference, and perhaps the belt wold work to change different single forms although if you do that you would just be recycling Kuuga and Agito's powers. I can't think of a way to incorporate the Ankh in to the suit without looking too religious which is why I like Ozu's subtle design, it leaves room for different interpretations without jamming in its true design influence, don't get me wrong it could still work but to what extent I don't know.