Posted November 24, 2022 by f1shsticker
#devlog
Hey there. It's been about half a year since I started developing Outland Wanderer, and I've decided to make a rather big change to the project -- redesigning the main character. In this devlog, we'll be referring to him as Tenki for ease of understanding. To be honest with everyone, I was not satisfied with his design. I'm very happy with him as a character, but was not content with his visuals. Many fans appeared to share these sentiments as well. Earlier on, Tenki received a small redesign; I thought I could change some details, tweak it here and there, and have it turn out fine. Last time, I redrew his inventory screen sprite, which meant a lot of clothes needed to be redrawn as well. As you can tell by the existence of this post, that redesign didn't really work for me. I thought it might be good to make him a cutesy little adventurer, in order to stand out from the cast. Unfortunately, I made him stand out a bit too much -- he felt too out of place. While Tenki is supposed to seem out of place narratively, the visual appeal was definitely lacking.
The idea of redesigning Tenki came as early as v0.0.1. I was dissatisfied from the very start of the game. His anatomy was not... right. The idea of a furry dragon concept did not get executed well. As much as this game is meant to cater to both top and bottom tastes, bottoming was disproportionately favored. This was because bottoming scenarios were far easier to come up with for Tenki -- he's a newcomer in this world, someone that needs to be shown the ropes. His design should convey that sentiment, but to a more limited extent than previously.
Tenki was originally meant to be a character with little personality, to allow people to insert themselves into the story. The design reflected that, as he looked bland, and without any particular direction as a character. Tenki's current design went far overboard -- his colour scheme, de-centered mouth, and non-existent nose/snout/nostrils, all made you feel like something was missing; it made him feel out of place. It was alright to have as a placeholder, but I don't want the main character, the face and outline of Outland Wanderer to feel... incomplete. While I don't want to prevent people from inserting themselves into the story, I decided that Tenki should have more character of his own -- which is reflected in some of the newer content released for the game. His appearance will need to follow suit, so as to keep visual and written design consistent.
Over the course of approximately 11 updates, I didn't fully commit myself to redesigning him. This was largely due to one of the classics, sunk cost fallacy. I didn't want to waste the time I spent drawing him; there rae over 20 CG Scenes with him, and it's all going to be wasted in some way. At least, that's how it feels, as the person that made that art. It's also a bit scary to make a change like this. Suddenly changing the face of the game most of you have been playing for a while, right in the middle of its development... it's fairly uncommon. While I understand that you may be a bit distraught if you really liked his design, his cuteness in particular, a change like like this feels necessary at this point. I hope that after a while, it'll turn out to be a good decision in your eyes as well. To help explain what I mean, after a while of drawing Version 0.2's MC, I realized that his emotional range was incredibly limited. The off center mouth made it nearly impossible to draw emotions properly -- they simply didn't look right. I've improved a lot as an artist since I started making this game, particularly when it comes to drawing furries. I think all of that new experience will let me improve upon Tenki's design, and give myself a better base template to work off of. My hope is that this will make many more things possible -- topping being easier to write for Tenki, different narratives showing a wider breadth of emotion... it should make the game that much more vibrant and varied. I want my project to grow to include all of that and more; I don't want to be hindered by a mistake I made a long time ago.
This will be a one-time thing. I think it's a bad idea to do that, and I really don't want to go back and redraw things again. I need to make him look right this time. So, to try and give the audience a voice in that, here are some designs that should cover several new aesthetics, without changing too much of his core design. There are 3 main designs that I'm looking at -- Please note that these are only rough drafts and I'll have another devlog along the development.
Some fans have brought up concerns regarding Tenki losing his more "draconic" traits. I want to make it clear that Tenki will continue to be a dragon. All of his new designs give him a snout, which may or may not align with some people's conceptions of dragon character design. While that may deviate from the norm, other dragonlike aspects will be featured more prominently -- I want it to be clear that Tenki is a dragon, even going by design alone. As part of that, I'll be changing his colour scheme. Tenki's fur colour is actually blue; the gray color is the result of an orange overlay being applied to that base shade. I'm not very satisfied with that. I want him to be more colourful, rather than drab.
Being completely honest, this is a result of me not planning enough when I first started the game. I designed Tenki from scratch in a matter of a few hours, and I never looked back. Now that I'm looking back from the future, though... I can easily say I regret that. Learning from that, I'll be giving much more thought to his design. I can't say if there's anything I would or wouldn't change with absolute certainty right now. As it stands, my current priorities are that the MC be appealing, that his theming be consistent with his character, and that people may still self-insert.
The redesign will not be putting the project on pause -- no new CGs will be produced until one is decided upon, but new content will be written. CGs for those writings will be implemented as soon as I can, following a new design being chosen.