They seriously are going to use this one? This has to be a joke, who the fuck thinks this is an improvement over the model we have right now. I can't believe this.
Hello there, I'm Kuja and I'm LOK project creator and artist. I got motivated by some of you guys questions and answers and ended up creating an f95zone account to to try to clarify some stuff regarding Krys new model, for anyone interested. I also want to apologize for my broken english in advance.
First of all, and as you already may know, Krys received an intensive rework on her model, for different reasons: 1) Heavy anatomy mistakes 2) Lack of model maneuverability for specific animations and 3) Feedback (Which happened both in Patreon and in Discord, but mainly in Discord, where I always encourage people to contact me directly with any feedback regarding the models or any other art I make. Many people did and still do so, which is great!).
During the model rework we went through various different "phases": Model Sketch > Team Feedback > Model Rework 0.5 > Discord and Patreon Feedback > Model Rework 1.0. Some weeks after those "phases" were done and gone people were still very vocal about some changes, so we proceeded to do more changes until most, but not everyone seemed satisfied with the new model. The last batch of changes that happened after model was "finished" were the ear, irises and feet changes (We made polls for some of those), which were not as heavy edits or additions as previous changes, making the model go from 1.6.5 to it's 2.0 version. In total, we had many, many different versions of the same model.
Keep in mind we normally ignore hairstyle and fur coloration feedback (for the moment), because those will (and we have been saying this for quite some time already (even though many people [somehow] still don't know about them) be able to be changed to different ones, so no feedback is needed for this particular set that is attached to the model itself at this particular time, which, again, means that she will have her original fur coloration (dark blue) [I even made concepts for this while streaming twice] and her original LOK hairstyle, along with many other fur coloration and hairstyles.
Now about some of the concerns I have seen on this very topic:
Krys looking naive: Definitely, I totally agree with that. However, we still have to show any character expressions to the public. We have been working on it for quite some time but it's a quite difficult transition and task to make due to the new model's complexity and many other technical issues. On the original game we had just an anime-style mouth-swap and many people felt like it was too robotic when the characters were talking. We are currently trying to change how that works, but it's a too of a technical talk for me to talk about at the moment. The point is that expressions can be changed and she only looks naive at the moment because we have only shown what I like to call a "T pose" (even though it's a 2D model and it doesn't count).
Krys model looking simplified and Model versions: This is a misconception and by no way true, except for maybe her tail, which had a change requested by the animators.
The most recent and new model is by no means more "simple" or simplified than any other previous version that I did in any possible way (Shading, number of parts, cutting and separation). After gathering some experience, all I did was increase the readability of the model itself. I painted her fur the exact same way I painted her in all models, so I believe this is an illusion created by the difference in tone. The one model presented has a much lighter tone than the original and that might be creating that illusion. At least I do think so.
About the model versions themselves, I created a reference image to show the difference I was trying to talk about. You should definitely ignore her expression, hairstyle and fur coloration to perceive and define what has changed between the models:
Note 1*: Some people still use the "wet" version of her original model as comparison material, but that should be disregarded, since it's an alternate version of a model.
Note 2*: Some model parts are altered inside Spine or Unity, due to technical reasons (like the original model length).
While still considering myself an amateur artist, even people not related to the field can acknowledge the improvements made on the anatomy field. I have been studying the female anatomy quite harshly for the past year and I think I did a good job at improving that exact part along with her overall face structure. Even though I was not able to please everyone, all of those changes were made in order to satisfy most of you. To be honest, despite being naive in this specific regard, I was completely satisfied with the rework 1.0 but we ended up changing her completely once more and then once more.
So please, keep in mind that feedback is an essential part of and in this project. I value your feedback and everyone else's and I just proved I did so, however I'm not even close to have perfected my skills and I'll never be able to please everyone, even though I still believe I'm improving in the art field.
There is a lot of stuff to retouch, modify, create and edit before we reach the 50-55 days before launching the tech demo. I don't want to sound like a broken record but there is still a lot of stuff that my dumb-dumb self doesn't understand completely and will probably never do but again, we are going to gather more feedback from everyone that wants to do so after we ship the tech demo to the public. We might even consider changing Krys appearance once more if requested too much.
So, all in all, the answer to the question is me. This third-grade amateur artist think the new model is an improvement in many different ways.
Keep it civil guys, remove all toxicity from your hearts and have a nice week.
