Herokero
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Update 2/2/22: FEF February!
🕑 Added 2022-02-02 22:54:59 +0000 UTCBlarghhhhh. Meant to have another post out before the end of the month, but I've been sick with some kinda persistent thing again. Not covid, thankfully, but something nasty enough to need regular medication, but it's been knocking me out during the evenings.
I haven't posted as much as I'd liked, so I intend to correct that: I swear to have some kind of update every week this month, at least.
And, to start the month off, here's Sheila!
Sheila is/was a journalist investigating the dealings between the obviously evil conglomerate, Expa International, and the local oligarchy (and current mayor) Rich Ricconnel, (or whatever I named him). She got too close to exposing these dealings to the public, so Mayor Ricconnel had her arrested on false charges and sent to St. Hampton's Penitentiary, a supermax prison that he just so happens to own. This was intended to be a death sentence-- the Ham is less a place of rehabilitation, but rather a hell where the lives of inmates are extremely disposable. Inmates are encouraged to eat one another to reduce their sentences, but few rarely manage to do so, inevitably getting eaten by the gluttonous staff for being 'noncompliant'. This is all overseen by the Warden, Mayor Ricconnel's daughter.
Luckily, Sheila seems to have caught on rather quickly, and survived. But she'd really like to leave, if she could!
The Ham is a major location. It's already been teased in-game a bit, but I figured this bit of lore would be a good way of illustrating the scenario a bit better. Stuff is of course subject to change, but all of the above is pretty set in stone, imo.
To use the parlance of the last update re: skills, Sheila will actually be one of two hybrid-type characters, in that she'll have a mix of both BOOB and BUTT skills. She was intended to be an hourglass--the other character will better exhibit this-- but I, uh, like bellies. >_>;
Sheila's design was an absolute pain in the ass, because I didn't want to give her white anime features, but my various attempts to convey that were, uh, terrible. She had an afro at first, but that quickly proved a bad idea, because I'm not a good enough artist to understand/illustrate depth with regards to her hair.
These are like my nadir, in my opinion. Changing her hair and face structure gave me this:
Which I still kinda like, actually. Might reuse this for an NPC. But eventually, I said fuck it, and went for a photo reference. This EVENTUALLY gave me this:
Which became this:
Which became the pic at the top!
Here's her starting portraits thus far:
I'm, um, extremely happy with how they came out. Sheila's intended to be friendly and inviting, but not goofily so, compared to like Bella, or the very cartoonish Jamie, and I think I succeeded on that front.
She's unfortunately the only black party member, so the optics of her being a prison inmate isn't great (and February being Black History month makes it worse) but... well, there isn't any real excuse for that. It kinda sucks. Maybe I'll make another character just to alleviate that at some point.
Lastly... This is a goal, not a promise, but I'd like to have the next update--the big 0.5-- out by the end of March, sort of for the 1-year anniversary of my starting the game. It'll be big, between the battle changes, the growth changes, and all the other stuff, so again: not a promise, but that's what I'm aiming for.
Thanks for reading this, and supporting me! See you in a week!
Comments
Thanks! It was a real struggle, but the end result is just about perfect, I almost feel bad for fattening it up.
Would you believe primarily in MS paint? I keep meaning to learn/transition to another software, but, my 'asset pipeline' is all in paint, more or less. I then transfer it to Piskel, a useful free tool to make sprite sheets with transparencies.
coon26
How do you make your sprites?
RumRay
Awww man, was hoping for an update and here it is! Yeah, as a self-confessed white person, getting ethnic features down properly is hard, society tends to gloss over the details and my brain is used to assuming every stick figure must be a white dude. Reference photos are so very important and it gave her an awesome design, great to see more of your process in detail and more backstory about the Ham! Can't wait to see more. Or, you know... Maybe for now I'll just enjoy the gorgeous artwork. Wonder if there are more FEF chapters with neglected black characters, hmmm...
