It has been quite some time since I designed Sister Diawara and the other characters, aside from a few alterations to her outfit, she hasn't necessarily changed that much as compared to the rest. Her incredibly colorful outfit contrasts to her calm demeanour, I was especially inspired by a photo of a Cuban priestess who covered herself from head to toe with all sorts of jewellery. And for a moment, I was almost tempted to give Diawara incredibly long decorated nails too (Something which the Cuban priestess also happened to have), but decided against it as she still needed to stay mobile. Sister Diawara was also initially depicted as barefoot in the older concepts. And while it cannot really be seen in the latest character sheets, Diawara now sports a pair of sandals.
Father Alex in contrast to Sister Diawara, was my least favorite character design of them all, while I eventually stuck with a look for him during my first version of the project, I just found no appeal whatsoever to him. As a character, while he couldn't necessarily keep his cool, he was still a kind man that did his absolute best to keep the other survivors safe, and is someone that they can still turn to for reassurance and comfort. And so next to Jessie, Father Alex would have been the most human character in the cast.
Before adding the beard, I found myself double checking on whether priests were actually allowed to keep beards (Seeing as so much images showed clean shaven priests). Aside from making him fairly distinguished, I believe that this was one of the things that finally made Alex a little more interesting and appealing without having to make him appear as outlandish as Sister Diawara. His look was especially based on actor Jake Gyllenhaal. And while I wasn't going to necessarily flash out all of their backstories, I wanted to show that each character had so much more to them than what is shown on screen.
Jessie went through the most changes out of all the original characters. Seeing as she is the main character, it was important to make her more pleasant to look at whilst playing as her (You know what I mean). Originally named Felicity, I felt that it sounded a tad old and that it just did not suit her, and so, I decided to name her after my best friend (Who happens to be a boy).
She has also changed a lot appearance wise. Her hair was made much shorter, and there was an attempt to give her a slightly more stylish or at least more appealing looking wardrobe (As compared to the toddler-style outfit she wore in the older concepts as shown below). The game also happens to take place around autumn and so it made sense to dress her in something warmer as well.
Felicity's mother, Helen Marshall was a inspired by a mixture of several female Silent Hill characters (Dahlia Gillespie, Claudia Wolf, Magaret Holloway and Lilian Shepherd). When tweaking and polishing her design a little more, I referred to photos of actresses Alice Krige (Who played Christabella in the first Silent Hill movie) and Julianne Moore (Who played Margaret White in the latest Carrie flm adaptation). It was obvious that I had wanted to depict her in a catatonic state by the time the game's storyline actually starts, and it was just a challenge balancing out the unnerving and... well, motherly aspects about that will still make the player want to seek her out throughout the game.
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