Demons Within Update 8 previews: New minor character sprites

Hey hey!

Well, after all the delicious previews of Update 7.5, we're back with previews of new stuff that's more on the story side, as promised! Today, as you can see, I bring you a bit of an extra. A preview of the first of what will hopefully be a series of minor character sprites we're adding to the game as well!

Most of you have already seen the previews of the major new characters that we'll be seeing in Update 8 (before 7.5 stuff!). I'll bring you guys more on that soon as well. In the meantime, however, since those two are well underway, I decided to use the spare time from Blain and the budget for art to add more bulk to some areas of the game where I feel like a bit more art would improve the experience a lot.

We're trying out to see how well we can pull this off. The purpose behind minor character sprites is to make sprites for these characters that do appear in the story, sometimes repeatedly or at least for quite a bit in some scenes, but aren't important enough to warrant a full sprite, unfortunately.

That is because when Blain and I make a full sprite for a character, there's a LOT that goes into it. We modularize it in parts, preparing it for all the variations it will have, which is a lot more work for Blain. That comes in things like separating arms from the bodies, so that the arms can move without having to redraw everything, separating the head from the body so that expressions can change with ease, preparing for accessories that the character might have, and that's not even to mention that every single major sprite needs to start with a full naked version so that different sets of clothing can be made on top of it later. That's a lot of stuff for each new sprite! Because of that and both budget and time limitations, I usually reserve the right of sprites only for characters that really need them.

Now, however, with this attempt, we'll try to draw minor characters in a simpler way. No extreme layering, no multiple versions, just a full body of the character with a few expressions and that's it. It'll be simpler and more limited, but I think that for those with little screen time, it'll still add wonders to the game since we get to see them in the first place!

I have a bunch of these in mind to make and we'll see how well it comes out, but the first one we decided to start with is... Can you guess? That is, if you remember her! This is a draft preview of the simplified sprite of Jen, the weasel librarian that you can meet if you go with Ludwig's day!

As always, Blain doesn't disappoint in making them great!

This is just a work-in-progress draft, so of course I'll share it with you guys once we have a more complete version of it! Though this isn't part of the new content of Update 8, I plan on adding her sprite retroactively to Ludwig's spare day scenes and, as we add more retroactive minor characters, I'll keep doing the same. In our effort to make Demons Within better and better as whole as we go!

And look forward to more previews soon! Thank you!