[Art update] zumi rejuvenation vs the sprite world

its.... an actual game dev update???? that isn't a bunch of character art??? from ZUMI???? whoa!

yeah i've actually been doing things that probably were a bit overdue anyways.

Today's update from me to you is about the VS sprites! There's already been a couple of sprites that received updates, namely Zetta & Keta which I have shown off prior to this post -- go check the recap post at the start of the dev blog, they're in there somewhere! -- but I spent yesterday and today fixing up some more! And ooh boy, some of these took a good bit of time to fix up (ariana, i'm looking at you. why did your face give me so much trouble ma'am.), so I hope you'll appreciate the improvements on some of these! Let's do a before and after showcase! The sprites on the left are the old ones, and the ones on the right are the new ones. 

Amanda

So this is, along with SEC, one of the sprites that has gone without an update for a long, long LONG ass time, and was in dire need of cleaning. Her hair and and cap have been sprited entirely anew, and looks much more accurate to her official art now.The shading also got a slight fixing, particularly on her hand and the pokeball she's holding.

Ren

Not much has changed in terms of the clothing, but the facial shape is different, along with the shading on the hair being a teeeeny tiny bit different. Honestly, looking at it now next to his old sprite I'm not 100% convinced it's exactly how I want it to look like quite yet? Ren looks kinda young in this sprite compared to the one he has at a later point in the game, so I might still do some further editing before V13 is out. It's headed in the right direction, at least!

Eli & Sharon

Eli looks even more clueless, and Sharon looks even more Tired Of This Shit(TM). This is one of the sprites that suffered from pointless detailing in the shading that made the sprite look messy and cluttered (Amanda, Valarie, Flora and Florin also being victims of this), so everything has been simplified a bit. Sharon also no longer has the earpiece, as it felt redundant to keep, and the pokeball shes holding has also been colored red.

SEC

I... Don't think this sprite ever got an update before LOL. I think the difference here is relatively clear; the color has been fixed, and the shading has been updated in several places. The black screen has also been made *slightly* bigger, and the pokeball icon has been redone entirely.

Madame X

Not a whole lot has changed on this sprite outside of that the shading has been improved, along with that the colors have been fixed slightly. The outline of the hand now also is darker, making the whole a bit more readable than it was before.

Valarie

Ah yes.... Miss hair clutter. I don't know why I thought it was a good idea to add so much detail in her hair back when I did the first edit of her existing sprite, but the messiness should be quite a bit less now! Her eye shape is now also slightly different, giving her a little bit more unique facial features instead of being almost entirely the same to Elesa's sprite in B/W. Other than that, there's been some color correction and reshading, so all in all the sprite looks a lot cleaner now!

Crawli

I think out of all the edits I've done this one is the least notable? But his face is slightly longer, the eyes are a bit different and his shoulders a bit wider.  At least he no longer looks like he's like 9 years old lmao

Flora

This is probably one of the more significant updates! As much as I like her old hair (despite it being huge in her vs sprite, what the fuck), it's not accurate to her official art, and therefore I had to change it. Next to that, her facial expression is quite different now, along with that she no longer has her hand resting against her face, but instead in a semi-relaxed pose on the right of her. I did this for the reason that I'd like to keep the amount of duplicate poses to an absolute minimum, and Flora used to share a base with Melia's 1st and 2nd VS sprite, which is something I no longer wanted.

Florin

Florin's sprite DEFINITELY needed some polish. His hair was a mess, and so was his hand! Sir!!!! ARE YOUR FINGERS OK????? i don't know why i thought it looked fine the way it did. i suppose as time goes on you get a better eye for these things.

Either way, he looks quite a bit better now! His hair looks closer to his official art now, and his hand no longer has broken fingers (i also switched it to be his left hand instead of his right). The colors of his shirt and vest now also match the official art better, along with that his shirt has a collar now. The face also has a better overall shape now and has his chin looking less like a V -- and to top it off, he looks more confident in his sprite now!

Adam

Probably the edit I'm the most proud of out of these! The old one honestly looked kinda weird and I 100% understand the comments that I got at the time of V11's release that Adam looked weird (mostly because of his hair), so I made it a point to make him look Less Weird(TM) in his official art. And as I said before, I was going to fix Adam's sprite to match his art better, so here we are! Adam 2.0! His eyes are now peeking from behind his sunglasses (which are smaller now), along with that his facial shape is thinner and his hand is in a slightly different pose. His ponytail now also shows up on screen and his bangs are a bit shorter so they no longer rest on his shoulders. I feel like his sprite emanates a lot more personality in the second version, so I feel like this is a significantly positive change in appearance!

 Moving on, the protagonist sprites also got a couple of touch-ups.

Ariana

Almost nothing beside her hair color being slightly lighter, her skin color now matches her official art and her facial shape has changed. However, can I complain about her face for a second? For SOME reason, her face gave me absolute hell to get right. THE EYES, MAN. HOW DO I GET THEM TO LOOK RIGHT. THE ANGLE IS SO WEIRD AND YOU HAVE SO LIMITED SPACE TO WORK WITH. HFJDGDFGNDFBGDHJF I AM DYING, SQUIRTLE

ahem.

i am ok. i think.

either way, Ariana, like Ren, is subject to change in the future because I am still not fully settled on if I'm satisfied with this or not. I'll sleep a night on this one and see again later. maybe i'm just tired and that's why it turned out weird. idk

Axel

Axel had a bit of a messily shaded vs portrait, so I've gone and fixed the shading on his hair, face and vest. He also has a grin on his face now to match the official art better!! The hair has one less color used now, giving it an overall more clean look. His vest is now also distinctly grey, as for some reason the vest in the previous version was the same color as his shirt??? which isn't actually the case in his art?? oh well. in his alt outfit, the edge of the lil jacket he has over his shirt now looks a bit cleaner. overall, it's not that big of an update, but an update nonetheless!

And last but not least...

Aevis

okay. so i can hear you thinking "WAIT. BUT THAT'S A LOT MORE DIFFERENT." and i respond to that with yes! it is! his hair is different!

Aevis has been under prospect for a while in regards to a slight design change, due to feedback from a good amount of people that his hairstyle felt very plain compared to all the other protagonists. Jan and I did a bit of brainstorming (along with collecting some feedback from Jan's patreon server members), and eventually settled on this new hairstyle for him! His battlesprite and backsprites will be updated to match the change accordingly. Nothing else about him has changed though -- it's just the hair. He'll keep his good ol' green clothes as we saw no reason to change that from what it was before.

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Honestly, normally I don't even write these long winded posts for sprites, but I felt like some people might like to know the thought process behind some of these changes I make to sprites, so I wanted to have a more elaborate post for a change when it comes to graphical updates. I'll also very likely be doing a pass on a couple of battle sprites as well, but I won't be making a separate post for those.

For now, thank you for reading! Let me know what you guys think of the changes! 

Until next time! (which will probably be a character art post or smth. yeehaw)

o7