aulyra's amazing technicolor shawl, and other design explorations (Patreon)

okay, i previously promised going over some of the design changes we made when we were finalizing aulyra's old design. as a reminder/first time information for those who weren't around in the infancy of this patreon, this is what aulyra was shown to look like way back in the day:

now i'm going to challenge myself to let most of the images do the talking here. in general, before making proper assets, we wanted to mess around with the design a little and see if anything else felt different. 

so, some initial rough edits change her bolero to a more standard shawl, the belts are more appealing, and the bangs changed to be a bit more friendly. 

cleaning that up a bit and restoring symmetry to the bangs, and also reconsidering the shawl color.  also, sparklies!!!

but thus began a multi-stage exploration of how do we get the shawl and collar to not blend in too much but feel cohesive

while messing around, i accidentally hit a wrong layer and it turned into this:

but actually, isn't that kind of cool? i said we should save that kind of transparency for some other character's design.

this was another case where, since we werne't sure what to do with the colors here, i took the art into greyscale to help focus on the values and decide what we needed:

this is fine, but it's ultimately lacking contrast, and thus doesn't stand out or have appeal. 

this helps me figure out that i want to see something like this instead:

this cleaned up her hair a bit, restored the necklace, darkened the midriff, and recolored the shawl 

so in color we get this:

in terms of values, i feel good about this! but i'm not sold on the color. so we tweak some more:

the purple strikes us. it's the purple. where else can we purple?

...but i still want her to feel blue overall. we step back from the corset, make it a little darker, and choose a moderate shade of indigo instead of pure purple. 

some other fun explorations:

more of a snowflake. too much of one, maybe.

this is totally out of pocket, just having fun with evil!aulyra

but the design is settled. so a bit later, it was finally time to make her art proper!

i went through and took a first pass, stopped to check with the others to clean up anything that looked off:

falcon uses krita, and krita doesn't like saving layer groups and transparency very well when coming from .psds. so when he opened up the above file it looked like this:

anyway, he really liked the character! so he did a quick sketch of her!

i was very grateful for this! i loved that he liked her enough to do this! i love when people like her.
i also took psychic damage because i liked his sketch much better than mine.

so i redid the entire thing based off of his sketch.

now, it is possible............................... and perhaps even likely................ that i may have overreacted....................... just a little....
falcon is a very skilled artist and it's his main discipline. his proportions do look better, but was it a good use of dev hours to redo the whole thing for the improvements...? mmm.... i wonder... i was real amydespair hours, but on the other hand, it did turn out more appealing...

if it weren't the literal main protagonist, i'd say it was definitely not worth it... but since she's the central character, it is probably important that we go the extra mile for her in particular. justified. yes. right? copium.

shout out to hewaje and falcon for helping me so much with her!

to be honest, i feel like for much of october, i've come down with a tough case of The Goodenoughs ™. i keep getting stuck on small details and put off when it isn't exactly like i hoped, because i care very much about this project and want it to be Goodenough™. in a case like this, and in some of the mapping i've been doing recently, i think it's important that i remind myself that the act of developing the project is ultimately also to be enjoyed, and the less i can Worry about it being Goodenough™, the better off literally everyone is going to be.

i've been doing this for how many years and this is still an issue? on one hand, there's something harkening back to kiki's speech in apophyll-- that i of all people should know better. but on the other hand, maybe it also goes to show for the other aspiring creatives out there, that these kinds of doubts exist at all levels of skill and in all disciplines, however irrational it may be.

just a passing affliction, perhaps. i'll get better soon. thank you all for being here in the meantime <3 it does a lot to reassure me as well.