Progress Report #64 - New graphic artists are hired! (Patreon)

Hey lads!

Just a quick report about new artists and recent polls. Originally I wanted to hire 1 artist for everything, but in the end I'll be hiring... 4 :P I made 1 public and 2 patron-only polls this month. In the public poll huge majority asked for a total art re-make, so I started looking for new artists with that in mind. After talking with over 60 artists (yeah...) I chose the best for this job in my opinion and showed them to my patrons to vote in the 2 polls. With character artists it was a really tough fight and hard choice for me, but in the end I went with the character style that you can see above. Then another poll was about background artist, but this one was pretty one sided... 

Ok, so why 4 artists? Let me explain! RDuke will take care of character art. SyrupDude will do the main background art (first screenshot), and then Dan (second screenshot) will help him with the remaining background art. These 2 screenshots aren't final, they were just raw drafts for me to see artists' skills. Currently we have over 40 locations in the game, and I want art re-make to be done in around 2 months, so around 5 locations weekly - kinda an overkill for a single person with work, private life etc. Yes, both artists have different styles and there will be some artistic clash between locations, but they both fit new character in my opinion, and are still far superior than our old art. And last, but not least important, 4th artist agreed to help me out with reworking the ugly UI. So yeah, 4 artists. Yep, it will generate much bigger costs and I'm taking a risk here, but I believe it's really crucial for the project's future.

Right now mostly I'm working on v0.27 to be released still this month. It will add the Fast Travel feature to all game versions and a new location - Metro, that will connect the Main Street with the Slums and add new events centered around it.

Once v0.27 is released, we go fully into improving ALL of the art in the game, from characters, backgrounds to UI. And once we are done, we gonna re-release the game again. Don't worry, your saves will be compatible, game content will stay the same, aside from a few planned improvements, like better Event Sheet etc.

Next progress report will be about the Metro content.

Cheers!