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Design Commentary: Kieran
🕑 Added 2021-12-31 16:59:46 +0000 UTCHi guys, I've been only all of 8 hours and I'm already back to work. I want to try something new and actually explain some of the work I'm doing, maybe you'll find it interesting.
If you guys like this stuff I'm more than happy to do it for all the girls.
Original:
So just a little design process stuff commentary.
Kieran was one of the first cards I made in Koi way back in 2018, actually predating pretty much all girls in the main cast except Ashley and Victoria.
At first, she was just the older sister to Shiori and Haruki Mitamura, two reoccurring girls I had been making since the original Artificial Academy 1.
Even in her original version she retained her light punk aesthetic but believe it or not, she was actually the energetic genki type instead of being an antagonist (A character trait that slid over to Sarah once she was made).
One face + makeup update later and it became obvious that she would make the perfect rival/frenemy for Victoria.
As far as actual visuals go, she was originally designed to compliment Shiori and Haruki. Shiori had the boobs, Haruki was more slim and athletic, so of course Kieran got her famous dump truck lower half.
Cool enough, but compared to what I can do these days she always seemed out of proportion with the rest of the characters in game. The main cast are all wide hipped (except Ashley) sure, but they all hover around the textbook 7 head height golden proportion scale used in most art books.
Except Kieran, who was the pear to end all pears but didn't have the upper body balance Sarah has to compensate (kinda).
Later on when her aspects of being a hand to hand fighter became more important, this only became more apparent because quite a few of her design elements were contradictory to that goal of looking tough, so to speak.
So before I go full retard on 29, I decided to give her a little update.
Updated:
Overlaid comparison:
So Kieran's been updated.
The two Jamie-head wide butt is still present (in fact her thighs got a little wider), don't worry.
The main important changes are as follows:
1) Original Kieran had tiny fucking default Koi hands which really didn't look right when in a fighting pose. She now has hands that are actually slightly larger than the proportional ideal, something that would lend itself to her being a good boxer. Ask Conor McGregor.
This also lengthened her overall reach which used to be comically short.
Now Kieran's armspan is actually just about correct for her height, instead of having the cursed Chika short arm syndrome.
2) To add on top of this, Kieran's arms and shoulders are now significantly larger. She's still pear shaped but she has a significant upper body to balance things out.
Before:
After:
3) I fucked with her skin specularity and skin overlay to give her much more of a toned abdomen. She has a fairly high body fat % and so won't show individual abs, but as you can see above her tummy game has improved significantly.
Of course this is actually all in the context of anime proportions, even with all her buffing up she now has a shoulder to head ratio that's approaching reality instead of being cartoonishly small. But hey.
Anyway, hope you guys liked this little article. As always, if you want to see what I'm working on next just hop on our Discord and check out the WIP channel.
