Current State of Agrss

I don't want to share only bad news, but I've restarted the visuals for Agrss for the last time.

These gifs are from the previous version I made. I think they look good—certainly not bad. But whenever I tried resuming work, I didn't feel enticed to do so. To remind you, these were also made when I was still burnt out. My thoughts are in a different headspace now that I'm over it.

I still felt this wasn't exactly what I wanted—certainly not the quality level. The style also felt lacking, as if it wasn't clear what it was trying to be. As you can see on the last gif, Neu is shown in a more cartoony style. While it works for comedic purposes, I think the visuals don't fit well together. It definitely doesn't convey the ideas I want to for this project.

I also think the style lacks mainstream appeal—or at least, you wouldn't classify it at the same level as TV animes. While I'm not trying to make something fully mainstream and generic, I want the quality to feel "official." A peculiar topic I've been thinking about is how my works would be seen compared to other media. "Why would people choose to spend their time playing this game instead of watching an anime or playing an AAA anime game?" While you could say this project isn't even in the same category as those, the part about how people use their time holds true.

There's also the simple fact that I've made a lot of changes since getting over burnout, and the art I do now is plenty different in comparison. Even if I tried sticking with this same artstyle, there would be an obvious difference.

Lastly, when I started making these, I didn't fully consider how the lewds would look with the artstyle. The idea was short-sighted and was only focused on this particular part. Again, it wasn't sure what it was trying to be.

This isn't to make excuses, but my skills just weren't up to par for what I wanted to do. The only real way to get better is by practicing by doing. The only real practice I do now is just these projects I'll put out. I don't like wasting work and not giving you guys content, but I think this scrapped work is essential for my improvement.

I'm not just gonna be a downer tho. I haven't posted again til now because I wanted to actually have something good to show, which I'll do in the next post.

PS. You can download the video versions of these, which have sounds. The gifs look pretty bad cause of the compression.