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artwork feedback: sprites! (poll voting!) (Patreon)

Published:
2020-03-08 09:58:02
Imported:
2021-04

Content

 This is a little interesting for a poll! So, we're asking all of our supporters and followers to please take the time to do this. <3

 
Please vote here! Strawpoll (patreon poll limit too small)  

So what's the point of this poll?  

I'm kindly asking all of you to please take the time to vote on as many of these choices below. There is no limit to your voting, this is very important to us and while we have our set goals in mind for the series. We want to engage with you guys and know how you feel about things.  You will find choices below that ask questions relating to our character sprites that's finished.

As we get closer to finishing all the major sprite artwork, we're looking at possible touch ups for any older sprites. Some of you might even remember our old version of Nova, who rocked a different hairstyle and color. While it took some time to get used to it, it was also a risky move and luckily there wasn't any major outcry from it. (that I'm aware of)  

So please do take your time to carefully look at these characters, how they look in their sprite form (not cg scenes) and ask yourself if there's changes or things you like or dislike about them.

-Erika-
(I've had plans of possibly changing Erika's hairstyle slightly to better fit for her, not in color or major style change. Little bit different bangs and hair is a bit longer in the back.)  

-Rachel- (There's some thoughts going around at possibly doing a major level changes with her. This isn't set in stone and will have very long and hard thinking about it. The idea is to make her more in line with her original concept idea from a long time ago. She would be shorter 5'3-5'4" tall. More petite/slightly average build, think of a mix between Miki and Erika. Hairstyle would receive a little bit of touching up, but color would stay the same. eye color would stay the same. We want to know how much dislike there is for changing her design like this if we do go through with it and just to confirm, this isn't due to any outcrys about her, etc. This is something behind the scenes being discussed to ensure she's perfectly suited.)  

-Heather- Check old sprite here.

X needs small changes = slightly different hairstyle, color tone a little bit changed, tiny adjustments.  

X needs major changes = nearly different hairstyle, color changes to hair/eyes. deeper adjustments to body shape/build. maybe new pose/stance.  

X deserves to be redesigned = complete utter from the ground up, could become a completely new character in the sense. 

Comments

Anonymous

Polls like this sure are tough. So much subjectivity when you're asking for personal preferences from folks about appearances and personalities of characters. First of all I think you're doing fine with the characters' designs. They may not suit every taste out there, but overall I feel like they've been pretty good at offering a lot of variety so far and the characters are distinct enough to be memorable and appealing (or unappealing in good, well-designed ways), and that's important I think. Just wanted to comment and add my own thoughts beyond the depth that a poll allows in no particular order. All this is just of course one person's preferences and opinions haha... I voted to keep Nova how she is. I really liked and appreciated her redesigned color/style changes. She's always been one of my favorites even before the redesign, but I like her even more now honestly. I'd say keep rolling with her just like you have been and you're golden, 'cause you've only made her more appealing over time with the changes you've already made so, no need to mess with that at this point. Erika I thought could use some of the small changes just like what you already mentioned. Something about the hair, probably the way her bangs are parted, seemed a bit off to me even before this poll came about, so I think you're onto something there with those slight hair change plans. Heather I was torn on, so I voted to make use of both. I think I like her new sprite because it carries her haughty attitude a bit better overall, but in her quieter moments when she decides to let her defenses down every once in a great while, her gentler looking older sprite design could fit pretty well too I felt. Rachel... I just voted for small changes to her because I wasn't quite in line with the proposed ones. I think changing her height would be fine, but I think her newer body proportions/build suit her better than the petite ones. Also I feel like the balance between different body types/styles needs to be considered here, as you wouldn't want too many of a particular size/shape body across the cast I think, and you already have arguably at least 2-3 petites (Erika, Miki, Juliet?) so if you changed Rachel to similar it'd be 3-4 and that might unbalance things if your goal is more of a spectrum across all the girls. Hairstyle change is probably fine as long as the colors stay. I think the thing about Rachel that I've seen so far that seems off to me is the eye color change whenever she spaces out. I get what you were going for there of course, and red is a good color to choose for people to actually notice the change, but I feel like maybe a flatter color of her same natural eye color (like you see in anime a lot where the "light" goes out of their eyes when a character is hypnotized or being controlled by magic powers or etc.) or maybe even the opposite and her eyes could light up a bunch since she is basically fantasizing whenever that zoning out happens. Or you could instead do some other kind of visual change to her sprite's facial features to look more space-y like, that could still get the point across without such a drastic change to her eye color, and that might sit a bit better with me personally. It's not anything major though even if left as-is, just a minor nitpicking thing. Miki... well I think she's just fine as she is. She seems popular and I'm inclined to agree, I like her too, both her personality and her sprite design. And for Bridget I voted that she could use some changes perhaps. Maybe there's just some side of her I'm not seeing yet that will help it make sense, but I feel like for a girl known for playing games all the time and streaming etc. she seems well built/fit too and it just doesn't really mix that well for me with as drastic as her portrayal of a die hard gamer is. Now I'm not saying gamers can't also be fit, that's a bad stereotype, but it seems like she spends most of her time gaming from what I've seen of her character up to this point (v0.07 at the time of writing this) and if that's the case then you're not investing much of your time staying fit when you're busy marathoning games for hours on end so... I think there's just a bit of a disconnect there is all, between her current design and her proposed lifestyle habits. It was especially apparent with her pool scene learning to swim with Nova, who is a pretty serious dedicated athlete and has been her whole life, and then putting Bridget right next to her and they both had amazing bodies so... either Bridget's got some serious behind-the-scenes workout routines she keeps up with whenever she's not doing her long gaming sessions (her dialog and mannerisms towards Nova's life outlook seems to suggest otherwise though) or perhaps it could be a good idea to revisit her design a bit and... maybe not quite as drastic a change as her old 3d model version, but somewhere in between that old one and her current version perhaps would be a more believable portrayal. Anyway that's all I've got for this time, but thanks for the opportunity to voice our opinions again! It's fun helping things take shape and being able to get our feedback to you development folks for consideration while things are still in flux rather than after they've been finalized.

MessyAcademy (edited)

Comment edits

2021-09-30 00:57:30 Thanks again for the very in depth input! ^^ &lt;3 Always love seeing new comments pop up from our fans &amp; supporters. I won't be able to give this comment enough justice &gt;.&lt; But we're happy to see exactly how everyone feels about certain aspects because if I've learnt anything in my time of working on the project. It's that you'll never make everyone happy and mistakes will happen, long as we pick ourselves up and continue onward. ^^ With that said, of course any changes that do happen (if they happen) are being very carefully considered if it feels like the correct way to go. That's a little mix of the behind the scenes visual direction and making sure things don't clash, or bump into issues. But the main thing to take from this is these kind of changes aren't going to be taken lightly when being considered, we'll look at it from every angle before going through with them. (of course this means a lot of feedback/votes towards X reason or Y reason to a stacking growing number, might help push our direction a little bit. In the sense of if we saw a huge outcry from fans/supporters that Rachel feels like her original design would be better from the sounds of it, and the issues everyone has with her are matching up. It'll let us know for sure on that end "okay, without fully trying to completely go with their ideas. We will look into this and consider things 100% towards this." I do think you have some good points brought up, mostly with Bridget who as the creator I really dislike saying this. But she has always been in my personal opinion the weakest character in terms of standing out. Her original plan since the very beginning was way before Nova was even a thought, that Bridget would fill the tomboy gamer style character role and build her up from there. But even that idea to me doesn't feel like it ever came to perfection. Nova took over for filling the real void with a sporty, hardworking tomboy girl once we launched the visual novel plans into motion, her being a exclusive new character for the VN. There's been many different ideas on growing Bridget's character to feel unique, at one point being considered to drop the whole gamer girl ideal and become more of a band/rock music girl who's part of a band at the academy. (might've played into her personality we can see shine through at little moments) There is some greater plans in store for Bridget as her route comes along and we learn more about her, but I do think there might be some room to adjust her a bit before we get there. (again sorry to you or anyone who does like Bridget &gt;.&lt; I don't hate her, just as a creator. Sadly I'll admit she's in my opinion my weakest.) I think as more votes and comments roll in, without confirming it 100% yet. Erika will most likely receive a little touch up, but it shouldn't be a major "Oh no! Don't do it! I like how she looks already!" kind of moment. The only thing to change for her would be her bangs area with how they split apart, making for a more natural look to them and still keep this cute bit about her in check. Ideally her hair might grow out a little more in the bangs and back area, but in terms of hairstyle. it'll roughly be about 70-75% the same with just enough touching up to make her perfect in this regard. ^^ Rachel is on our radar for options to maybe strike a balance or get some concepts to share on what feels right if we do go through with anything major. That's another thing, is if anything huge for changes will take place, before we really get into it. We'll have some rough concept designs to see the reactions and take our time with it. I think the two that's on our major radar is Rachel, followed by Bridget for big adjustments. Heather is a tough call as she's unique with 2 sprites being considered for use in the game. (old one as the game progresses, new one for early within the game.) But maybe there can be a strike balance between the two. Because her new one can really pull off her angry, bitchy expressions to a T. While the old one I feel can really touch better on her softer side, general expressions. Anyways &lt;.&lt; That's enough of my rambling. This isn't something we're rushing into, so this poll will be around for this month and most likely leading into next month. I'll end up maybe pinning this post soon enough or make it easier for everyone to see. If anyone has comments or concerns, etc. But you don't feel comfortable about publicly leaving a message about it here, you can also send me a email at Messyacademy@hotmail.com (I check it daily and will reply back, etc. &lt;3 )
2020-03-08 16:56:27 Thanks again for the very in depth input! ^^ <3 Always love seeing new comments pop up from our fans & supporters. I won't be able to give this comment enough justice >.< But we're happy to see exactly how everyone feels about certain aspects because if I've learnt anything in my time of working on the project. It's that you'll never make everyone happy and mistakes will happen, long as we pick ourselves up and continue onward. ^^ With that said, of course any changes that do happen (if they happen) are being very carefully considered if it feels like the correct way to go. That's a little mix of the behind the scenes visual direction and making sure things don't clash, or bump into issues. But the main thing to take from this is these kind of changes aren't going to be taken lightly when being considered, we'll look at it from every angle before going through with them. (of course this means a lot of feedback/votes towards X reason or Y reason to a stacking growing number, might help push our direction a little bit. In the sense of if we saw a huge outcry from fans/supporters that Rachel feels like her original design would be better from the sounds of it, and the issues everyone has with her are matching up. It'll let us know for sure on that end "okay, without fully trying to completely go with their ideas. We will look into this and consider things 100% towards this." I do think you have some good points brought up, mostly with Bridget who as the creator I really dislike saying this. But she has always been in my personal opinion the weakest character in terms of standing out. Her original plan since the very beginning was way before Nova was even a thought, that Bridget would fill the tomboy gamer style character role and build her up from there. But even that idea to me doesn't feel like it ever came to perfection. Nova took over for filling the real void with a sporty, hardworking tomboy girl once we launched the visual novel plans into motion, her being a exclusive new character for the VN. There's been many different ideas on growing Bridget's character to feel unique, at one point being considered to drop the whole gamer girl ideal and become more of a band/rock music girl who's part of a band at the academy. (might've played into her personality we can see shine through at little moments) There is some greater plans in store for Bridget as her route comes along and we learn more about her, but I do think there might be some room to adjust her a bit before we get there. (again sorry to you or anyone who does like Bridget >.< I don't hate her, just as a creator. Sadly I'll admit she's in my opinion my weakest.) I think as more votes and comments roll in, without confirming it 100% yet. Erika will most likely receive a little touch up, but it shouldn't be a major "Oh no! Don't do it! I like how she looks already!" kind of moment. The only thing to change for her would be her bangs area with how they split apart, making for a more natural look to them and still keep this cute bit about her in check. Ideally her hair might grow out a little more in the bangs and back area, but in terms of hairstyle. it'll roughly be about 70-75% the same with just enough touching up to make her perfect in this regard. ^^ Rachel is on our radar for options to maybe strike a balance or get some concepts to share on what feels right if we do go through with anything major. That's another thing, is if anything huge for changes will take place, before we really get into it. We'll have some rough concept designs to see the reactions and take our time with it. I think the two that's on our major radar is Rachel, followed by Bridget for big adjustments. Heather is a tough call as she's unique with 2 sprites being considered for use in the game. (old one as the game progresses, new one for early within the game.) But maybe there can be a strike balance between the two. Because her new one can really pull off her angry, bitchy expressions to a T. While the old one I feel can really touch better on her softer side, general expressions. Anyways <.< That's enough of my rambling. This isn't something we're rushing into, so this poll will be around for this month and most likely leading into next month. I'll end up maybe pinning this post soon enough or make it easier for everyone to see. If anyone has comments or concerns, etc. But you don't feel comfortable about publicly leaving a message about it here, you can also send me a email at Messyacademy@hotmail.com (I check it daily and will reply back, etc. <3 )
>>33415973

Thanks again for the very in depth input! ^^ <3 Always love seeing new comments pop up from our fans & supporters. I won't be able to give this comment enough justice >.< But we're happy to see exactly how everyone feels about certain aspects because if I've learnt anything in my time of working on the project. It's that you'll never make everyone happy and mistakes will happen, long as we pick ourselves up and continue onward. ^^ With that said, of course any changes that do happen (if they happen) are being very carefully considered if it feels like the correct way to go. That's a little mix of the behind the scenes visual direction and making sure things don't clash, or bump into issues. But the main thing to take from this is these kind of changes aren't going to be taken lightly when being considered, we'll look at it from every angle before going through with them. (of course this means a lot of feedback/votes towards X reason or Y reason to a stacking growing number, might help push our direction a little bit. In the sense of if we saw a huge outcry from fans/supporters that Rachel feels like her original design would be better from the sounds of it, and the issues everyone has with her are matching up. It'll let us know for sure on that end "okay, without fully trying to completely go with their ideas. We will look into this and consider things 100% towards this." I do think you have some good points brought up, mostly with Bridget who as the creator I really dislike saying this. But she has always been in my personal opinion the weakest character in terms of standing out. Her original plan since the very beginning was way before Nova was even a thought, that Bridget would fill the tomboy gamer style character role and build her up from there. But even that idea to me doesn't feel like it ever came to perfection. Nova took over for filling the real void with a sporty, hardworking tomboy girl once we launched the visual novel plans into motion, her being a exclusive new character for the VN. There's been many different ideas on growing Bridget's character to feel unique, at one point being considered to drop the whole gamer girl ideal and become more of a band/rock music girl who's part of a band at the academy. (might've played into her personality we can see shine through at little moments) There is some greater plans in store for Bridget as her route comes along and we learn more about her, but I do think there might be some room to adjust her a bit before we get there. (again sorry to you or anyone who does like Bridget >.< I don't hate her, just as a creator. Sadly I'll admit she's in my opinion my weakest.) I think as more votes and comments roll in, without confirming it 100% yet. Erika will most likely receive a little touch up, but it shouldn't be a major "Oh no! Don't do it! I like how she looks already!" kind of moment. The only thing to change for her would be her bangs area with how they split apart, making for a more natural look to them and still keep this cute bit about her in check. Ideally her hair might grow out a little more in the bangs and back area, but in terms of hairstyle. it'll roughly be about 70-75% the same with just enough touching up to make her perfect in this regard. ^^ Rachel is on our radar for options to maybe strike a balance or get some concepts to share on what feels right if we do go through with anything major. That's another thing, is if anything huge for changes will take place, before we really get into it. We'll have some rough concept designs to see the reactions and take our time with it. I think the two that's on our major radar is Rachel, followed by Bridget for big adjustments. Heather is a tough call as she's unique with 2 sprites being considered for use in the game. (old one as the game progresses, new one for early within the game.) But maybe there can be a strike balance between the two. Because her new one can really pull off her angry, bitchy expressions to a T. While the old one I feel can really touch better on her softer side, general expressions. Anyways <.< That's enough of my rambling. This isn't something we're rushing into, so this poll will be around for this month and most likely leading into next month. I'll end up maybe pinning this post soon enough or make it easier for everyone to see. If anyone has comments or concerns, etc. But you don't feel comfortable about publicly leaving a message about it here, you can also send me a email at Messyacademy@hotmail.com (I check it daily and will reply back, etc. <3 )

Anonymous
>>33415973

I've taken a lot of your time lately but I appreciate the detailed responses. It's good to hear that you're approaching this with a calm, no-hurried blend of sticking to your creative endeavors and also incorporating fan/supporter feedback, but not totally dropping everything just because some folks do or don't like a certain thing. I think it's vital for creators to have the freedom to stick to their own visions because so often we tend to get timid when there's feedback of a counter nature to what we've created, or too caught up in trying to please everyone that we lose sight of the original creative vision. When characters and stories get generalized down too far in an effort to make everybody happy or at least complacent with this or that, it ends up with blandness and lack of originality as the result and that's just the bane of creativity and having something be unique and interesting in general honestly if you ask me. I understand what you mean too about feeling like certain characters that you've imagined and created don't feel as impactful or well-rounded as others, or like they're not coming through as strongly as what you originally had in mind conceptually. It's a pretty tall order to come up with an entire cast of robust and unique characters like you're taking on here, and I think you're doing very well with that so far all things considered, so please remember to be kind to yourselves too, as you're doing great with your characters and their stories so far, and some are just naturally going to outshine the others in popularity and rate of satisfaction both for you on the creative side and players on the fan/supporters side. As far as Bridget goes... I guess I'll add some more of my opinion about her character as a whole here... more feedback can't hurt any right? Granted I haven't seen as much of the game as early access supporters so keep that in mind that I might be missing important fleshing out of character or story details here, but personally her initial stand-offish attitude is off-putting to me in a way that makes me not want to interact with her when I'm given a choice with other characters. A lot of the time I will try to play games like this in a way that is reflective of "how would I interact with this person if it was me and this was actually taking place in real life?" at least for my initial playthrough of a VN game when I'm not concerned with chasing down the scenes or endings I haven't seen yet etc., and we already have Heather firmly established as the "if you want to get dragged through the mud" kind of character, and she does an excellent job of fulfilling that role so far and also having depth behind her character and a mystery to her story that you naturally want to uncover so you can understand why she's acting so cruel to everybody around her, so having Bridget also be another one who has a bit of a cruelty streak to her words and a "who are you and why should I care" kind of attitude doesn't help draw me in very much as a player. I guess to put it simply you could say Heather overshadows the first impression that you seem to get from Bridget during the early interactions at least, and Bridget doesn't immediately bring the sort of hook with her that Heather does to really make you want to discover why she's acting that way enough to want to deal with more potential abuse (even though Bridget's seems a lot lighter than Heather's by nature.) You might already be considering as much, but perhaps you could change the approach with Bridget a little bit? You might not have to change her hobbies or passions, because gaming fits in well with the MC clearly mentioning enjoying games as well, there's a connection and common ground there that you're already working from. I could see Bridget being a lot more approachable at first blush though if for example she was overly passionate about gaming, because maybe to her gaming is her life passion, and maybe she's a little disconnected to the rest of the world because of that, like she has a hard time with people not understanding the appeal of gaming, which would already line up with some of her lines in the swimming lesson scene too, but without the mean streak being involved. I know there's the part in her introduction where she talks about needing to go to school as a backup for her streaming career, but maybe her motivation for being at school could change accordingly to fit a passion for gaming? Maybe she has some game-related goal in mind, or maybe she wants to take social/performance/business/marketing related courses, on how to even better entertain and perform for her fans so her streaming career really takes off? It's just one possible shift in direction that wouldn't require a complete re-write. As for her personality, maybe she could just turn into the really socially awkward, doesn't know how to interact with others "in real life" without the topics being about games for long, doesn't really want to hang around or have patience for people unless they're also gamers and can relate to her world, that kind of thing? Again it's just one possible idea. I don't know if that would cross over too much into other girls' territory like Rachel being the shy one and Miki being often misunderstood, awkward, eccentric etc. but I think honestly if you could find a way to take some of the bite out of Bridget she'd be a lot more approachable especially with the gamer connection to MC, and then once players are a bit more interested she might open up to whatever other details you had in mind for her deeper story/growth etc. Though of course you could go the anti-social angst-y teen rock band girl route with her too if you wanted. That would fit just as well as the diehard gamer thing, and her personality being aloof and cold would fit that theme too. Maybe she's tired of gaming and streaming and is trying to do something more adventurous with her life, having mostly lived as a shut-in aside from her streaming career till she joined up at the academy? Just some more food for thought. I think it really just comes down to being more a matter of what parts of her you can envision changing, and what parts you want to keep as they are, but either way you've got options you can explore if something about her character is still not sitting right with you. All that said I don't want you to get the wrong impression here, I still like Bridget as a character even as she is now, she's just not my first pick as it stands and I'd probably not pursue her until after I'd chosen the characters I was more interested in or curious about, but it's not to say she's a bad character. She's good too, and has her own interesting aspects about her that haven't come out in the others, like the daring and flirty teasing she's quick to do for example, and her impulsiveness she's already shown to have keeps us on our toes and surprised in generally good ways so far from what little I have seen anyway. At any rate, that's about enough out of me. You get the idea here I'm sure, and I feel like I'm demanding a lot of your time lately so, I think I've gotten enough of my ideas across for now. Thanks again for your time and patience.