radlord

New Hazel Sprites & What That Means

Added 2023-06-22 19:18:39 +0000 UTC

Hello everyone!

Kokman has just completed work on the new sprites for Hazel in Hazelnut Latte!

I am now going to start reworking the game to phase out Hotsumi's sprites in favor of these new ones. This will take some time since I need to redo all of Act 1 and Act 2.

My goal with the next update is to have completely new sprites for all characters and to use these sprites going forward. This will give the game a consistent look, since many have complained about the game being pretty inconsistent (myself being one of those people).

And honestly, Kokman has gone all out! What you see isn't even everything he has done for the game.

Hazel has his barista outfit (hat optional), which can be taken off to reveal either underwear or nude. Both have him either hard or soft.
Hazel's date outfit can be removed to either have just his skirt on, no skirt, underwear, and his dick out.
And, of course, he is nude. All of this with two poses to choose from!

So... a LOT of option and variety. I was honestly blown away when he told me he was done and I got a ton of files. Kokman is such a pro. Love him.

With this being done, we are going to move on to redoing Jeze.

Jeze only has the one outfit for now, so this won't be as crazy as Hazel.

And as time goes on, we hope to add more expressions and maybe even poses. But for now we have just the 5 expressions and 2 poses. Even with just that, it's a lot of variety!

It also can lead to some fun combinations, like putting Hazel's apron over his date outfit. Which, I will never use in the game, but it looks kinda cool, right?

But some of you may be asking, or thinking, or uhm... contemplating?

Why are we getting new sprites? Why are you getting rid of Hotsumi's work? What is going on over there?

Well, I gave a pretty thorough answer on F95Zone, but I will repost it here:

Hey, so to make a long story short(ish): I hired on Hotsumi to do the art for the game. We agreed upon him doing the initial sprite and the 3 lewd scenes in the cafe. He got me the sprite and then after 2 months told me he was going to stop taking commissions and focus on his own project, but he would do the art he promised for me. He then only did 2 of the 3 remaining pieces, and in that time I decided to get a new artist and push forward, going back to redo stuff when I could.

I then got another artist who wished to be anonymous to do the sprites in act 2 (the restaurant). They were able to do something closer to Kokman's style, but with the cleaner feel of Hotsumi. I was hoping they'd be able to stay on, but they had other commitments.

And, actually, I hired another artist to do the sprites, but it isn't going to work out so I'm paying them and not using that art.

So while I know Hotsumi's art is awesome (it's why I reached out to him from the get-go). Kokman is a fantastic artist who is fully committed to the project and does amazing work. We are hoping to get the game to the point where the art is consistent and the best it can be. This newest update I am doing is probably the last one with Hotsumi's art.

I'm sorry to those who want that art to stay, but as the game evolves, it simply can't be there.

To further elaborate from that post, if I used Hotsumi's art in an official paid release on Steam or GOG or even Itch, I'd have to pay Hotsumi for each piece he drew... again. So instead of using that money to keep art that doesn't match what we are doing now, I used it to redo all the art so that it is the same.

It sucks, but these things will happen. We are all indie artists doing what we can and sometimes you need to back out to focus on you. Hotsumi did it to me. I did it to Foxicube. I hold no ill feelings towards Hotsumi. He did good work and was fun working with.

When v0.7 comes out, we will be putting the past behind us and looking to the future of not only the game but this studio.