Grima/Robin (Fire Emblem: Awakening) (Hotfix 1) (Patreon)

https://mega.nz/folder/do5UmCaB#T4REWiKhs0gmNgXQe7D_zA/file/hpgWgQ4K

(Outfit) 

https://mega.nz/folder/do5UmCaB#T4REWiKhs0gmNgXQe7D_zA/file/plZwzRIa

(Card) 

Be sure to copy the ENTIRE link or else it won't work!

EDIT:

Mod issue got fixed. Also fixed an issue where I accidentally gave Grima two highlights: One baked in into the iris and one overlaid on top of it. 

https://mega.nz/file/whxixYAa#H_Id8SB_ZAkYH6161EeIbVK-nS0d5DYHDnf2_ea6J8A

Catbox is down rn so here's a Mega link instead. You're gonna need it for the updated Grima. I deleted the link to the original mod so don't worry about accidentally grabbing the original bugged version.

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ACHTUNG! TECHNICAL SHIT BEGINS HERE:

You're gonna need the mods linked below as not only is KK Manager and HF patch a little bit behind the times, but this card also uses custom mods. Sigma and Fissy both helped me in making this shit. (Fissy: Editing this Takumi outfit no relation to the angry pineapple. Sigma flipped this Durandal ponytail allowing me to use them for Grima's twintails.) Other mods I came across in Pixiv and the Bleeding Edge modpack which is fucking huge, contains a bunch of buggy stuff so to save y'all the trouble of downloading gigabytes of possible bloatware, here are all the mods you'll need.*

*Assuming you've been using the latest HF patch as well/keeping up with KK Manager.

https://files.catbox.moe/8g5v0i.zipmod

https://files.catbox.moe/33yb6w.zipmod

https://files.catbox.moe/car7xt.zipmod

https://mega.nz/file/bNRhlLgZ#9u-wy4KL1MvkcBhsUAdGN4sxOnnt-CnqKXxh9DnJCT8

https://files.catbox.moe/qsqlpd.zipmod

Koikatu Sunshine Mod Incompatibilty PSA:

If the mod doesn't load despite it being in your Koikatu Sunshine mod folder, more often than not you can fix that by just opening the mod zip in question, opening the manifest.xml, and just deleting the <game>Koikatsu</game> part. Save that, save the changes of the zip file and boom: Now it's compatible with Sunshine. It's really that easy.

If that doesn't fix it well you got a bigger problem on your hands that I have no idea how to handle.

WARNING: This card may or may not be cursed. By that I mean for whatever fucking reason it won't save the physics modifications I've made for it. But it's totally a-okay outside of the maker? And the changes are saved when saved as an outfit?

Annoying issue about it: If you load her in maker, the frozen physics unfreeze, but if you load her everywhere else it's frozen. (It being frozen is the intended behavior.) If you save her with the physics unfrozen, then it'll unfreeze elsewhere too. So y'know, I linked the outfit above so that you don't have to constantly tick off the freeze physics button...but you do have to reactivate pushup advanced mode for her top cause outfits don't save that toggle. I seriously hope this is only an issue on my end and not for everyone else. If it is I'm really sorry I'm going to try to get this thing fixed ASAP.

Maybe it'll get fixed in some new plugin update down the road but mmph. Not too comfy with the idea of something buggy, even if it is rather minor + may actually just be an issue only on my end.

If you do end up having issues, please ask in the #help channel in here: https://discord.gg/hevygx6

I should do that too tbh.

TECHNICAL SHIT OVER

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HEY KIDS WANNA SEE A DEAD ACCOUNT?! (This joke works better for my Pixiv account cause wow I seriously did not post anything on there for 5 bloody months holy shit.)

It is finally the spooky month and what better way to get into the holiday spirit by making season appropriate shit eh? (Slide 1)  I totally intended to release Grima around October as part of a theme. No seriously though could you believe this was supposed to be a stop gap measure card along the lines of say, Flannery or Roll? Like I intended this to be "Ah fuck there's only a week and a half left before the deadline TIME TO RUSH SOMETHING OUT!"

I figured making Grima, or Robin I guess, should've been easy and like, yeah the hair was fairly easy. (Discounting the fact that I had to get outside help for it.) The outfit was kind of a bitch to do, but nowhere near as arduous as fucking Melodiana's was. No, the real struggle was trying to figure out why I was even making this bitch.

I think  the idea started with "Hm based off the polls, a lot of folks sure are fond of Rise, Robin, and Jill. They have pretty similar hairstyles too come to think of it. Well, I don't really see the appeal of it...but Halloween Grima is pretty cute though. I like the gap moe of Dragon Satan being basically forced into a chicken costume. That's funny. Hrm, maybe if I make her, I'll finally figure out why people like this archetype so much. Everything except her alt outfit looks like a cinch to make so it won't be a total snoozefest yet easy to do. I bet I could push this out before the month ends!"

This saga is either gonna end with me trusting my instincts more or going strictly by the book depending on how y'all react cause man does this take a lot of artistic liberties. And I mean beyond the usual "Why is this character's bust 3 times bigger than it is in cano- oh it's from pron gotcha."

So, the whole thing about Grima fan perception wise is that she's the sexier version of Robin. 'Cause evil. (I mean even the gacha game does that with Male Grima have you seen the damaged art for him?  That's the Attack Superboon at work there I'll tell ye hwat.) I approached this card with that in mind so imagine my surprise when looking at the official art, the two are basically the exact same appearance wise. Their faces don't change at all so Grima is just Robin, but grumpier with stink lines/purple fart gas coming out of her.

I realize me being surprised is super stupid because no shit they'd look the same. Grima is just Robin possessed by Dragon Satan why the fuck would her facial structure change? Iunno I figured she would get an evil makeover to really cement the idea that she went over to the dark side but her being evil is more shown off by what she does, rather than what she looks like.

What this means for KK is that Grima, the "Wings of Despair", looks cute and innocent. So basically Robin. Other than her eyes looking kind of scary when she closes them. Yeah if she closes her eyes, it looks like she's got two red dots for pupils which look rather similar to what the actual dragon Grima eyes look like. I didn't intend for that to happen I just copied what her Halloween alt's eyeline looked like. 

I don't think that was what the original artist had in mind either but if it was, wow that's actually a cool detail. Makes her look a little creepy which is a plus in my book because it's something that differentiates her from Robin. It's a cool reminder of sorts y'know? "Hey did you know this bitch is possessed by Dragon Satan"

But I digress: Other than that, she's just Robin. Which is a problem because I didn't want to make Robin, I wanted Grima. I didn't want to deviate from the original artwork unless I absolutely had to (e.g tech or skill issues.) so I stayed the course. This created this tonal dissonance while making her that bothered me every time I looked at her face. Something that happened quite frequently given the nature of the work. It was very frustrating working on her because every time I saw her face I was like "I am fucking up big time this doesn't even look like the character what the hell are you doing."

Technically what I was doing was accurate and true to the source material, but it didn't feel right. Tonally inaccurate. There was a constant mental debate going on in the back of my head while working on her that made it difficult to keep at it. Which may explain why I did several other projects instead of her because at least with those I felt confident in that what I was doing was correct rather than having to constantly argue with myself that what I was doing was right, even though it didn't feel like it.

This struggle would come to a head as I finally just broke down and went "FUCK IT OKAY FINE YOU WIN. MAKE HER SEXY FUCK THE OFFICIAL ART I DON'T CARE ANYMORE. DO WHATEVER YOU WANT JUST GET IT DONE."

If you're not happy with how inaccurate it looks, buddy I am right there with you. Believe me, I tried. Throughout the project I was like "Okay we're basing this off her Halloween alt so obviously it doesn't look right since we didn't even start on the outfit. It'll all come together once we make that outfit so just be patient." then I made the hat for her and it still felt wrong. "...okay maybe it's the hair. Maybe I fucked that up. Let's make a new hairstyle for her and I bet you now you'll think it looks right." The hair looked nice, face still looked off.

Yeah that's why she has the long hair alt. (S4) (BTW the outfit there was made by Razorsharp.)  I made it purely to see if the twintails were throwing me off. Nope.

It was inspired by one of the alternate hair choices you could pick for your F!Robin in Awakening. The side hair is wrong as it's too curvy instead of spiky. Plus the back hair doesn't wrap around her neck unlike the original. I know there's one hair that would work for it but fuck working with that janky piece of shit again.

You could accuse me of being inaccurate by not sticking to the source material and I will totally agree you on that. However, you can't say that I didn't fucking try to make it work. I tried man, I really did ok. I tried so hard to make it feel right to me but in the end I just went with my instincts because it was either that, or never getting this damn thing out at all.

Sooo yeah that's why it took so long. What started off as a simple basically filler card done out of curiosity became a debate between myself over what was more important: Sticking to the source, or making something that felt right to me. Being a selfish bastard I went with the latter. Hopefully that doesn't backfire on me but if it does ah fuck it I'm just glad it's over.

(S2) I based her suit alt off this fanart of Grima wearing a tux and hey Helltaker's aesthetic is rad so why the fuck not.

(S3) Obligatory Tharja outfit. Makes sense that's what Plegians wear apparently and Grima is related to them so... What's not so sexy about the outfit: How it goes fucking nuts in Studio. Yeah that shot is doctored because for some reason the cape stretches out and sticks to a certain point of the map. I have no idea what causes it but I had to photoshop the cape glitching out in that shot. Or maybe my game is hexed and it works just fine for everyone else.

Next up is going to be something I'm doing purely out of self interest and not curiosity. It is going to be experimental though...maybe I should lay off the experiments. I like doing them because I want to be constantly innovating with each new card I make rather than remaining stagnant, but seeing how wide the gap is between releases is making me question that mentality.

I mean my thought process of wanting to make each card bigger and better than the last one is because I want to constantly improve but also because I feel like that's also what people expect. The former I think is a good mentality but I'm going the wrong direction with it (Changing things up just for the sake of it.) and the latter is flat out wrong. Nobody wants a drop in quality obviously, but I think people would much prefer more at a consistent frequent rate, rather than better at an inconsistent infrequent rate.

Ironically enough I am falling into exact same pitfall I've been using Koikatu to avoid: The need for constant improvement because that's what I think people expect and demand from me. With the fear being that if I stagnate or worse, falter, folks would get upset. 

Initially I didn't have this thought process with Koi because my defense at the time was "Ah it's p*rn shit who gives a fuck ayy look at this dude getting all serious over fucking pron what a nerd!" so making shit in KK was a lot more carefree, but now that mentality is starting to seep back in. No idea how to break this cycle but at least I can recognize it happening.

I should seriously consider shifting back into "Making shit for funsies" instead of my current mentality of needing to make each one better than the last. Maybe that'll be the new experiment: Do I make better shit when I'm all lax n' loose or is being incredibly strict and thorough make for better content after all? 

Well anyways hope the next time we see each other again it won't be nearly half of a year later. No promises.