Ah, the one that started everything: Peppina Ramen!

Her design doesn't have that much behind her. She is heavily based on Peppino with a little bit of flavor of Sailor Moon. But juuuust a little bit. Peppino's design is quite simple and it doesn't have much details. I tried to keep it the same with Peppina, especially because in most cases the magical girl designs tend to get over complicated. I also tried to make her transformation to not look like anime school uniform because that'll be too Sailor Moon-y

Her gem on a chest supposed to look like Pep's nose with mustache

Also an interesting note is that originally she was wearing fancy black boots with black stockings. But that detail got lost under all image filters and naturally evolved into long boots. And I actually like that. I should've made it right from the start

You can still see her old boots design on a couple of old artworks.

The Pizza Charm, transforming into the regular hair clip, was inspired a little bit by The Miraculous Ladybug show. That show also had a magical jewelry that reveals it's true form only when the wearer is transformed. I also thought that Peppina casually wearing a slice of pizza would just look stupid. Also Peppina's hairstyle is slightly similar to Marinette's. I didn't try to make them look similar on purpose. I suppose she was just on the back on my mind when I tried to design Peppina with the Pizza Charm

Marinette Dupain-Cheng

Of course since it's a mahou shoujo anime about collecting 7 chaos emeralds 8 Pizza parts, she needed to have a super form when she collects them all. Firstly with the super form, I wanted to give her a little of Madoka flair. Another part of inspiration for her was (suddenly) Peppino. Or rather that one sketch of Mc.Pig where he drew a power-upped version of Peppino (the lvl3 one). So that's why instead of an apron and a short dress, she wears a chief-like attire. She's ready to get that pizza cooked once and for all

Madoka and Super Peppina side by side

The hardest part for designing Super Peppina was actually deciding on the colors. And I did struggle with that. In fact I suck at choosing the color for all my characters.

Her accent color was black, but for a super form, it needed to be something better, something bright. At one point I was going with coloring her blue or even purple. I also still have the artwork of her super form with everything colored, except for accent color.

In the end I settled on making her red. Directly inspired by (once again) Peppino himself. Or rather his scrapped sprite of him getting red and naked in his boss battle with Pizzahead

Peppino being red and naked.

Gustava design is also quite simple. Of course the base for her design was good ol' Gus. I also made her canonically a gnome because originally Gustavo was suppose to be one

There he is!

Her skirt and bow are supposed to resemble his mustaches. And the round pink gem that decorates her bow is a node to her pet rat Renga. Also apparently everyone draws it purple??? I don't know why. Perhaps everyone is colorblind except me…

Also, originally she wasn't wearing white stockings, but I forgot to color her legs in one of her drawings and everyone just started drawing her legs white. But that's not big of a deal because I do that too now, lol

As for inspiration behind her, aside from Gustavo himself, I'd say she's based a liiiittle bit Chibiusa Tsukino from Sailor Moon and also on Minky Momo!

Unlike Minky Momo, Gustava is immune to the influence of Truck-kun

She also had her Pizza Charm on her skirt instead of the hat like Peppina. I dunno when and why I changed that. It was probably a bad design decision that I caught up quite early and fixed.

Not much to say about Renga. He is clearly based on Brick and Hamtaro. Also I changed his name to something close to a word “brick” but in Japanese

Hamtaro

Boy oh boy! Originally I NEVER intended to design Noise-Chan at all. She was supposed to be a complete mystery. But people demanded to see her so I quickly slapped the design in like five minutes. Which was probably a bad idea because I still think that her design is the most Meh of all the cast. I have no idea why she got so many fans…

Her costume is supposed to be a nod to Power Rangers and all the other Japanese superhero shows. Plus Noise himself also wears a superhero-like suit so no surprise that his counterpart would wear something similar.

Also her trinket for the transformation into a magical girl is shaped like candy as a reference to Noise Hardoween demo(and also some other PT demos) where the collectables are switched to candies, once you play as Noise

She can fit just right in!

Originally her hair was curling into some sort of spiral, because I tried to replicate how Noise's mustache curl. But I hated that design so much so I changed it over time. Also her hair was dark blue, almost dull gray, but I made it more light blue. This was actually inspired by Usagi's mom from Sailor Moon

Maybe she IS Usagi's mom after all…

I would freaking lie if I say that his pants are not inspired by NiGHTS from NiGHTS into Dreams. I just love this game so much that I can't not include it in any way possible.

Funny little creature

Overall, I would say that he got like the most different sources for inspiration. He got a little bit of Mettaton Ex from Undertale, a little bit of James from Pokemon, a little bit of Zoisite from Sailor Moon anime…

He's somewhat of a pretty bishonen makewife for Noise-chan.

Mettaton Ex. The resemblance is remarkable!

Here comes my favorite design!

Frankly, I actually don't care about the original Vigilante at all. He's just not an interesting character for me. However I decided to make up for my attitude towards him and make the most appealing(for my taste) design of him. Huehuehue

The main inspiration for him was this awesome cosplay from a Pizza Tower stage play in Russia.

Tanibata 2023. Rostov-on-don, Russia.

(Fun fact, I have same cow skull somewhere and it's actually a part of the pendant)

But him being based purely on cosplay wasn't enough for me. Also this is a good time to mention that one of my favorite character archetypes is the grumpy middle-aged gunman with a goatee (Like Daisuke Jigen from Lupin III series). However in Lante's case I was leaning more towards something akin to Zenkichi Hasegawa from Persona 5 (who I believe is also based on Jigen anyway, lol)

Zenkichi. Codename: Wolf.

Oh and I just want to mention how much I'm proud of designing his cheese poncho. I feel like The God of Inspiration itself came down to me and blessed me with this idea. I just love it so much. Another thing I want to mention in his design notes is that his gun holder was inspired by the gun holders of Happy Chaos from Guilty Gear

(Originally this was a full crotch shot but I realized how awkward this is actually)

And another interesting side note is that originally I wanted to give Lante the name Vigil and somehow play around with it sounding similar to Vergil. But at that time there was already a girl character named Vigi in Peppina Ramen mod, so I had to change the name to avoid confusion.

To give Lante some sort of motives for his actions and make things just a little bit more interesting, I made Lante and Snotty related. Also I gave Lante the sister complex. ALSO I killed Snotty. Sorry Lante, you're the most traumatized out of this group apparently.

Another thing I would like to mention is that at the beginning I couldn't decide if I wanted them to be just related siblings or actually brother and sister. But in the end I decided to make them close siblings.

Not much of a design for Snotty itself, other than her being the farmer girl from Wild West. Also her pigtails are based on this kind of string cheese:

Cheeeeeeeeeese

Hmmm… There isn't much I could say about her other than it was REALLY hard to design her. The biggest problem I faced was that she is supposed to be a 90's monster, but the 90's ideas of monsters are quite outdated at best. For modern standards they're not scary at all.

Or maybe I didn't watch enough old school anime with monsters! Then, well, sorry I guess :/

I also couldn't design her just like Fake Peppino either because his design also isn't exactly 90's anime monster either. So after an unsuccessful search for inspiration from monsters from Sailor Moon, I decided to lean towards Devilman and it was the right call. I no longer hate her design but I still think that it's the weakest one. I think the mod version of monster Fakepina has better design than mine.

Devilman (1990)

Oh, also I gave her pointy ears in her monster form so that she has some sort of parallel to Pizza Head.

Now here is my favorite bastard child.

I like him so much that most of my sketches and concept artworks are just him or him with other characters. He is also the one who went through most of the design revisions. Originally he looked older and manlier. Also he had long pale orange hair(like really pale!) and he had cheek marks similar to OG Pizzahead, rather than the eyebags he currently has. He was also wearing full blue suit and a cravat.

This design was so bad that it would never show it to anyone at all. I even put it in a separate folder so I would never see it again. Although I had to pull it out of here just so I would be able to write this description right now. Bleh

This folder contains only one image.

His second design was much better. I was already getting somewhere with it. It was actually closer to his final design but he still had long hair. I just couldn't let go of this scene in my head where in the final showdown with Peppina, he lifts her with just one hand and his hair is fluttering in the wind.

However I was slowly realizing that giving him long hair was a no go, yet that scene in my head… I just couldn't let it go. So as a compromise, I cut his hair to have a better haircut shape, yet I left one long streak of a ponytail. It may look stupid now, but I don't care. He is supposed to look somewhat stupid anyway!

His second design draft.

Yet this design wasn't clicking with me yet. His clown cheeks were still bothering my artistic vision so I tried to move his cheek marks higher, and a little bit more higher, and more and… And then it clicked! So finally, he was complete.

As for a character inspiration behind him… I actually have zero. I just wanted him to be a spoiled rich prince boy, who wants to own the whole world. He wants to be taken seriously, and he is being taken seriously, but in reality he is a silly clown. Oh, and he is also quite insane.

Also maybe I did get some sort of inspiration for him because I was listening Will Wood's The Normal Album quite a lot at that time. So maybe something of that vibe did leaked into Pizza Head's personality, lol

I had Laplace's Angel literally on repeat for days.

When I already told that his clothes originally supposed to be fancier. But then I decided to settle on something simpler like a vest. The only fancy parts left are the sleeves and the bow (tie?). Also the costume is inspired a little bit by Candyman from Lethal League Blaze. And he also supposed to always have a cane with him but I kinda ditched it at some point

Candyman from LLB

Oh, and one day I got bored and designed him as a human and also him as a girl. And I suppose that led to some consequences…

He's a normal boy now.

The original purpose of the girl Pizza Head was to fool and deceive. I had some unfortunate experience with leaking my DMs where I talk about the plans for Peppina, so in case where I need to somehow share Pizza Head's design without revealing the true Pizza Head, I would actually use his girl design. I also wanted to keep the gender intrigue for all unrevealed characters for as long as I can.

Note that word “Not canon” is now stroked

However, I don't even remember why, I decided that I kinda like this design too, and maybe I should make her somewhat fit into the canon as well. And one day when I was walking in the park and thinking about Fakepina's lore, I came up with a brilliant idea which actually solved both problems of Pizza Head dying in the end of the “season” without any potential continuation for the story, AND also turning him into a girl.

My idea was something like this: “What if Pizza Head used a part of his soul to create Fakepina, thus leading to the point that when he dies, she would actually be able to resurrect him since she is technically partially him. But since she isn't a really well made golem, the result would have sudden consequences”. Thus, Pizza Koube became officially canon.

Also someone on Peppina Discord said that her clothes look like school uniform from Evangelion and I hate the fact that I never noticed it before that statement. I swear that was never an intention.

Asuka from Evangelion.