Poll Results and Artist Reveal!
Added 2024-02-27 06:08:21 +0000 UTCAlright, well I'm going to leave the poll open in case anyone else would like to vote on it, but considering more people have already responded to it than in both previous polls, I think we've got a good sample size. And it's very positive! The average score from all the votes is an 8.07, or great. In comparison, the average for the ass part of the last poll was a 5.3 average, and the face scored a 2.9, poor. Which I guess shows how much you can improve from the first thing you've ever drawn, to the second thing you've ever drawn, because...
I'm the artist behind both of the two art polls I put up recently! I didn't want to say that off the bat, because I didn't want that to impact the results, as I assumed you'd be more positive if you knew I'd drawn it. That certainly worked, if the 3/10 face score is anything to go by, lol. It also led to some really funny comments, like one concerned that the artist might be scamming me. A fair comment, as asking someone to pay for the first thing I'd drawn would be pretty shady, but I'm here to assure everyone that I am not scamming myself. Hell, I did both of those "commissions" for myself for free!
Now, I want to explain what happened with my first two attempts at drawing, which should serve as replies to some of the comments left on that poll as well. As I mentioned, other than a very rough sketch of a face that I don't really count, the Cassandra artwork was the first thing I've ever really tried drawing, and oh boy did a make a lot of mistakes. And not just technical mistakesβwhich I also made plenty ofβI mean "things you almost certainly shouldn't do on your first attempt to draw a person." Like choosing a red skin tone, for example. None of the tutorials on shading I found online used a red skin tone as an example, for some reason. The pose, as well, was a bad choice. I thought it being just an ass would make things simpler to draw, but the bent over pose combined with the angle being directly behind made it really difficult to actually have an impression of a large ass, because that pose combined with that angle really flattens things out.
I think all of these things combined made it quite a bit more time consuming to do, which leads to what I think is the main problem with the artwork overall, which is that I ended up spending significantly less time on some parts of the image than others. The face is a glaring example of this, considering I wasn't even going to do it originally. I spent at least four times as much time on the ass than the face, and I even remember as I was uploaded the poll thinking "wow her face is long," but I didn't have it in me to tweak anything further, as I'd already spent a lot of time on it altogether. There were also some parts of the ass that I didn't spend a whole lot of time on. I more or less needed to completely learn from scratch how to draw every single part of the image, so especially with things like Cassandra's asshole, and her pussy, I got something I figured was "passable" and left it at that. And "passable" might have been generous on some of those.
My second attempt at drawing a face went a lot better, because I spent a lot more time on it. And while I made some overall better decisions in my planning, (like the normal skin tone and the side view angle), I still made quite a few mistakes. Mainly shading the entirety of the face and hair before taking a look at the image and checking to see if anything needed to be adjusted. Which was a real shame, because pretty much everything needed to be adjusted, lol. Fixing that would have been a hell of a lot faster to complete if I didn't have to adjust the shading every time I tweaked something.
I could probably ramble on more about this, but this post is getting pretty long already, so maybe I'll hold off for now. Two more things to mention here. I'm expecting that once I've got a better feel for drawing and don't have to constantly look up references to try and draw something I've literally never drawn before, I'll be able to significantly increase how much artwork is done per update, since unlike artists I commission from, I'll only be drawing art for the game. Additionally, I'll try and make sure updates aren't significantly smaller, or significantly delayed (cough excluding this one cough) due to me focusing on drawing. I suspect that adding drawing in will actually let me do a more work overall, because when I'm a bit drained from writing, I can switch to drawing, and when I feel like taking a break from that, I can go back to writing, ect. That is absolutely not what I did with both the Cassandra scene and this new face image, and I could definitely feel myself suffering productivity wise because of it, but I simultaneously really wanted to finish these, so I forced myself to keep going.
That's it for now. Thanks for all the feedback, positive and negative. I doubt my second attempt would have worked as well if it weren't for the feedback I got on the first, and the low overall score just motivated me to immediately start drawing again to try and do better.
Comments
I can definitely see the value in learning to draw yourself in a game with a paperdoll that you might want to add new transformations to, but feel restricted in your ability to do so due to the original artist not being willing to return to a drawing years after completing it.
crazy jimmy
2024-03-02 09:30:09 +0000 UTCThanks!
StickyIcky
2024-02-28 10:23:42 +0000 UTCWell I am hoping that I will be able to do some of the art myself without reducing how much time I spend on the rest of the game very much, mostly by only writing when I am kind of burned out on writing. Writing isn't limited by time so much as it is by my "creative energy", or whatever you want to call it. I can only write for so long before I can't focus on that anymore, and I think drawing will be a good break from it. I also intend to focus on writing first, just in case I don't have enough time to do both. And I feel like I'll be able to avoid the issue of spending enormous amounts of time fixing my art. There were certainly plenty of things I felt could use improvement in the first scene I did with Cassandra, after all, and I still posted that lol. The main reason I decided to try and learn how to draw myself is because I really just can't get a good amount of artwork solely from commissions. I've worked with 7 artists to date, and only the artist currently working on the game remains. In addition, most of the artists I've found are only able to do one commission per month or so, which means if I could find enough artists to keep up with how many scenes I typically write per month, the game would end up with a mismatch of different art styles. I suspect it's possible to find an artist would could do multiple high-quality commissions per month, but all of the artists in that category are outside of my budget for the game. $200 per commission would be a very conservative estimate of the cost there. Lastly, there's the importance of art in the game. While you don't mind a lack of art and would prefer more game play and story first, I believe most people would disagree. Especially on game pages outside of Patreon, the most common complaint about the game by far is the lack of art. I feel the Patreon page would do better if the game had more artwork in it, and I kind of need it to do better to continue doing this full time. The game's patronage has been pretty much flat for the past year, so I feel I've kind of hit the limit on how far the game can go without making some kind of change, and more art seems like my best bet for reaching a wider audience. Thanks again for your comments though. I might partially try your idea of wip scenes a try, maybe by doing rather basic scenes as a way to practice and add some sort of artwork to the game, but without needing to dedicate too much time into it.
StickyIcky
2024-02-28 10:23:14 +0000 UTCclarification for what wrote above* When I said "unless you have a few years of practise under your belt" I meant dedicated practise which you obviously don't have time for unless you wanted to put the making/coding of the game itself on the backburner somewhat indefinitely. secondly It feels like it would be a better Idea to use your art as wip/beta/placeholder of the art/scenes you want to put in the game and maybe so us patrons get maybe a teaser/something to vote on in terms of scene direction and as reference for when you commission art from artists so they have a better idea of what you want from them which will speed up the process of them making the art you commission from them. trust me reference pieces make doing art commissions so much easier.
laura smith
2024-02-27 10:59:21 +0000 UTCWell your attempt didn't work (on me) because I thought "Is this a fan that really wanted a shot? It's cute! Last thing I'd ever want is to discourage a new artist." I'm not much an artist to give any technical critique but definitely keep at it and keep practicing! I still think a 3/10 is harsh but that might just be the mom in me talking.
Nora Knox
2024-02-27 10:30:01 +0000 UTCLotsa respect for keeping it under wraps that you did the art so you could get genuine criticism for the first to second pieces, I could always tell this game was a passion project and also a form of income and I think it would be cool to see some stuff from you or even let you practice with the detailed descriptions of your own writing as inspiration. even if it doesn't turn out as good as a full time artist you will get better as time goes on so keep it up
Cephalexin Addict
2024-02-27 08:11:43 +0000 UTCI'm here for it. You're 100% right that knowing it was you would have put the rose-colored glasses on a bunch of us. One of my buddies once came up to me and said "take a look at these photos I found, let me know what you think, I want a 2nd opinion". After I said they sucked (except for 1, that I loved), he let me know that he snapped them for his photography class. π it was definitely the fastest and easiest way to get an honest opinion.
Myriad
2024-02-27 07:54:34 +0000 UTCRealistically there's not a lot of point to making the art for the game yourself because you won't reach the quality level of the artists you have commissioned in the past without also losing time that could of been spent making more playable content for the game. mostly because unless you have a few years of practise under your belt in order to speed up the production of the art you have made at this point to less than 2 hours production time. because I have watched artists make better art than is currently in the game in less than an hour, then there's also the fact that all artists (myself included) all in some shape or form are unsatisfied with their art which can cause them to spend enormous amounts of time "Fixing" it. which is some thing that I have a good feeling you will inevitably end up getting stuck in which will eat into the time better spent making the game itself. now to wrap this up I must provide context to my thoughts written above and that is the art itself is secondary to the game play and story in my personal opinion which will definitely not be everyone's opinion. at the end of the day I like the art but I would really like more game play and story first with the art being a nice treat after the fact. like a house, you have to build it first before you decorate it, because you can't cook without a kitchen and you can't hang paintings without a wall.
laura smith
2024-02-27 06:33:51 +0000 UTC
