Cordelia (Fire Emblem: Awakening) (Patreon)

Disclaimer: If you are a patron, you are being charged for this. Yes I know I said I was going to make something lazy but free but I think this is good enough to warrant a fee.

https://mega.nz/file/4o4WHQDA#TpHcRVgq2KhKkchEfoUwoRRR4mY3OYKy_EfoWmYlr_g

(For the Main Game.)

https://mega.nz/file/kg4ijRaA#-9gr0StlrtdGj_BNlAn-uVvL-csSsG1ZzLYgKbLhFBY

(For Studio.) 

Be sure to copy n' paste the ENTIRE link or else it won't work! (Or just click For Studio/the Main Game depending on which one you want.)

There are two links this go around: One is explicitly for Studio, and the other is for the main game. Admittedly bit of a knee jerk reaction to one scene's lighting not playing too well with the skin texture I used for Cordelia. I changed the shader and added a normalmap to give characters skin pores.

Usually, the effect is subtle but on very rare occasions, it makes their skin look like a popcorn ceiling. That or a character from Garten of Banban. It's not great hence why I packaged a version of Cordelia without said skin texture + shader. Oh, and the armor's different: It uses the original armor's shader settings which I think is closer to the original art.

While you can use the game version for Studio with very little issue, I'd recommend against using the studio version for the game as it uses an uncensor specifically geared for CharaStudio.

Speaking of which: I should work on making my stuff more friendly to ambient occlusion (AO) in the future. I myself don't really care for it but a lot of people do. First step: How to make AO not make my characters' hair look all dirty.

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Long time no see! I swear, I've been more inactive than I have been active. While I was away, Illusion went under, but then I think they reformed under a new company called "IllGames". I can't believe Papa Nurgle bought Illusion. At least, I think that's them since they've announced a teaser for their new game called Honey Come which is Honey Select but with KK's artstyle. It's a bold strategy, Cotton. Let's see if it pays off for 'em.

Anywho, it's been a while since I've knuckled down and worked on making a card so I figured I should warm up with something small. I've had my eyes on Cordelia (Slide 1) ever since Thunderbreak released their version of her. My initial plan was to simply change the body and throw in her swimsuit alt (S2-3) because hey even a lazy card needs a swimsuit. It's just a bikini. Slap one on and call it a day how hard could it be?

I don't think I've ever made a single card where I planned to make it and then I did. There's always something that happens. To start us off: If you look at the gallery and think "Hey that doesn't look like Cordelia all that much." that's because my main reference wasn't her official art. It was based off a sketch done by Ten/Tenchan Man.

As I was gathering reference material, there was a growing realization that I don't care that much about Cordelia. That, and her hair is like a Christmas tree chopped in half. KK doesn't seem too fond of that kind of hairstyle as there's not a whole lot of hair pieces that would work for it. In an uncharacteristic move, I realized this was going to take more effort than initially budgeted so I was moving towards canning Cordelia in favor of like, Lilina or something.

That changed when I saw that sketch. I looked at it and went "Yo Cordelia lookin' cool as fuck! I wish that was how she actually looked like." I didn't go all the way to making her look exactly like Tenchan's version because I figured going too off model would alienate those who like Cordelia as she is. That, and I was worried I'd end up with Lucina but red. (Which funnily enough, going off the concept art  Lucina was just blue Cordelia.)

Well, I was already straying off the beaten path so why not double down? Unlike Lucina, there is no official artwork of Cordelia wearing modern clothing. (S4) That's just something I lifted directly from fanart. Specifically, Ebinku's. I couldn't find a shirt that had that type of collar without open cleavage so you can see her bra just barely peeking out. Her school uniform (S5) was taken from a near decade old fanart by Haruna0112 which was probably done around the time Awakening came out. Ayup, feelin' the age yet?

Even if Cordelia were to get a spring alt, I seriously doubt it's gonna look like S6. That was based off Hocen Hosen's art. They also have a Patreon! Small world eh? Speaking of other Patreons: Cordelia's outfit here is a combination of two bunny girl outfits: The main one (Pantyhose+Top) being Alvarna's which had this cool ass chromatic aberration effect to it and just looks nice in general. For her jacket, I used one of MMDDRR's. I have no idea how the shading works or what settings does what, but it looks good and that's really all that matters eh?

So like, if you were expecting her Resplendent armor, her Christmas alt, or any of the classes she could be in Awakening, sorry to disappoint ye but they ain't in this post. At least her swimsuit made it in which BTW, I had to make myself. Fuck those seashell gloves man.

I used to be a stickler for canon with bust size being the one exception, but then I've noticed that I didn't touch the alt costumes after making them. All that time n' effort spent on something that's just going to be mothballed... why bother?

So while I'm not going to base my cards strictly off of fanart, completely disregarding any official material, I am going to put more value on what looks good over what's canon.

I think this will be for the better. I mean, had I stuck strictly to canon there wouldn't be much variety in hairstyles for Cordelia. Unless there's some cipher card or one of the classes gives her a ponytail like in S7. Speaking of which: That there's a fusion of Seityr's drawing of the entire Awakening cast as cheerleaders combined with Aone 9110's Cordelia.

I also slapped on the armor texture from her standard outfit onto her cheerleader top, which is why her bust looks bigger. Due to how the top is modeled, there's a lot more underboob than I had intended. I had to cut it that short because any longer would have left "dust" orbiting around her.

Comparing my Cordelia to Thunderbreak's (S8) made me wonder if they changed her body's X value to make her thinner or if I accidentally stretched out Cordelia. No, those variables were left untouched. If any variables were touched, it'd be the Y one.

If one were to dig through Cordelia's dynamic bone collider hair settings, you'll notice that some of them have their Y axis frozen. Why? That's how I marked which ones were okay to disable physics on. Y'see, even if you erase parts of something, they technically still exist. Meaning their physics are also active which puts unnecessary stress on the GPU.  Since all my cards are made up of small bits n' pieces, this can lead them to being intense resource hogs.

During the hiatus, I managed to snag some upgrades to my computer which is good for me, but bad for y'all as that means the above problem is buried even deeper. While I can't promise that my stuff will work on the most potato of systems, I will still try to optimize them the best I can. Some things will be out of my reach tho, like say that one Kronii mod. Believe me it's not just you. That bloody skirt causes even my system to tank. I swear some mods are packing an entire graveyard with the amount of bones they've got.

Again: If y'all have any tech issues with my cards, whether it be missing mods or cards being resource hogs, lemme know and I'll do what I can to remedy it. Unless it's like, you're missing official DLC. Yes, Amaterasu has an issue with her club outfit kimono since that uses DLC. The fix is to get it which, hey, KK's not abandonware yet but y'know...

So yeah, while the plan is to make more unique cards rather than revamping them, no plan ever survives first contact with me. It is rather embarrassing that 90% of my front page is just "lol on hiatus" so tell y'what: the goal for the short term is to just make more stuff in general. Could be whatever. Could be actually adhering to a poll for once. Boy that'd be a shocker huh? Long term wise: I want to make delays n' hiatuses surprising again.

I'm still adjusting to things, but here's what I can guarantee for certain: I'll be back with somethin' new within a year's time. Hey man, I'm just keeping my goals realistic. :p

Til' next time, everyone!

EDIT: Dear Patreon: Please stop resetting my formatting whenever I edit my post. Thank you.

EDIT 2: Unrelated but I completely forgot to actually tag Cordelia as Cordelia on the pixiv post. Gods I'm rusty.