Lulu (Final Fantasy) - Concept and Creation

Concept and Creation

She was designed by Tetsuya Nomura for Final Fantasy X. He has expressed that he wanted her character design to resemble a cross between a fashion model and Black Mage to break the connotation in players' minds of the traditional Final Fantasy Black Mage. This was achieved through – in Nomura's words – Lulu's "eccentric" hair and dress. Lulu therefore deviates from the traditional Black Mage look. She is instead dressed in an outlandish, low-cut, fur-lined, dark grey and black dress that displays her ample cleavage. He has also mentioned that as technology advances, the Final Fantasy games allow for a greater level of detail to be incorporated into characters' outfits, and that he makes a point of challenging the game's visual programmers with his designs. In Final Fantasy X, this challenge came in the form of the interlocking series of belts on the front of Lulu's dress. Nomura said that this design has a specific order to the belts and that each buckles in a specific manner. His challenge to the game's design team was for them to recognize the belts' pattern and keep it consistent throughout the game, from the beginning to end. Because of this, Nomura referenced Lulu's dress as taking a lot of hard work.

Another key design aspect of her dress was that it still show an "appropriate" amount of skin for the character, which most notably translated to her cleavage and shoulders being mostly uncovered. Her look was also inspired by the traditional obeah vodoo priestess and a modern day witch doctor due to her ability to wield black magic and her usage of dolls during battle which includes cactuars, moogles, and other Final Fantasy creature types that she can control to attack enemies. Lulu's Celestial Weapon is the Onion Knight, a homage to Final Fantasy III.