Sprite Shading - 1/22/25

Ok so... I'm sure some of you are caught up on account of the stuff that's been discussed in Discord, but for those of you who either missed it or aren't in the discord to begin with: there's a potential change I'm thinking about making.

Pardon his nudity, but here's Alex. Aside from some tweaks to his snout and mouth, this is how he currently appears in-game. I'd like to draw special attention to the arms, where (as you may recall) I'm adding in a system where characters can swap between multiple different types of arms for a more expressive sprite.

The issue...

As shown here, the arms are more or less grafted onto the base. This runs a particular problem: namely, it's cumbersome to line up the shading correctly so that it doesn't look like they're grafted on. It's do-able, yes, but this needs to be done with every permutation of sleeves that exists. The MC has 13 different potential "sleeves," but these need to be shaded to match for every single arm variant, of which there are currently three.

This means that I need to align the shading with the base for a total of 39 different sleeves. Granted, MC is going to be an odd one out because he's present in every route, but it does rather complicate matters.

Thinking on how to potentially "fix" this has brought me to two paths. The first, I just suck it up and do it, even if it's difficult and tedious. I like how it looks, so it's not a bad option even if it sometimes gives me a headache.

The second is a bit extreme, but I guess I've been taking some extreme measures lately anyway. Have I talked about that yet? After checking in the middle of writing this post, I realize I haven't shown you all the new Alan and talked bout him that much. Awkward. I'll do that tomorrow, I think.

ANYWAY-

...Perhaps less impressive, but my suggestion is simply that we remove most of the shading, barring certain exceptions (white on the top of MC's head and ears, shines on certain spots, etc). In exchange for the simplicity, however, we would be able to do some interesting things at a much later date. Things like genuine animations or in-between poses, for example.

I also do think it would track with the CGs B is taking over with, since (as per my request, to be fair) the no-shading sprites would fit those CGs much more than the current ones do. (Of course, if I truly wanted to match his work then I'd likely be returning to cel shading. I hadn't even thought about/considered that until now.)

So I guess to sum that all up, I could stick with the current shading, which is more cumbersome (especially for this arms thing) but looks pretty good, and we leave it at that. Alternatively, I nix the shading for the most part to make the present easier, and with the potential to do some very expressive things later.

Which way is the right one to take? I honestly don't know! Soooo...

I'm going to wait until I make up a cel shaded version as well since that's a potentially viable middle ground, and then I'll open up a poll to patrons with the power to vote (which would be my employee tiers)! See y'all then

EDIT - 1/23/25

Here's the "best(?) of both worlds" treatment: hard shadows, localized lighting, easy to work with but still has some shading depth to it. This should match BBBuster's CG work.