Hey all! For this week's update, I'd like to share some updates on our class visual design pipeline, as well as a look at a rough example of some new practices we're implementing.
The Knight is one of the first classes we ever revealed, being the only class to make an appearance in our first few weekly updates before we introduced Archer and Lumimancer. Not only was this the first class sprite shown off, but also the first class portrait I drew for Crystal Horizons. It's been a long time since, and as we're now in the process of creating our more robust V2 portraits, we've run into some slight issues.
Due to our small team and lack of experience with art, we've been mostly just winging it every time we need to create a new sprite or portrait. We try to draw the character in an action pose, and work out the details as we go. This has worked fine enough for the Chieri and Enchanter portraits, the only V2 portraits so far, but other portraits currently in progress are getting done slowly due to the poor process.
We've also had cases where not having a clear design has led to inconsistencies between the sprite and portrait, which Knight has felt more than any other class. We started with a sprite, then made the portrait which introduced new details, then remade the sprite which necessitated more changed to the portrait and so on.
This back and forth has cost us precious time and resources throughout development. So, in order to both resolve this and make development of further portraits much easier, we're now in the process of creating front and back reference art for each class. This will allow us to both have a stronger direction when creating portraits and sprites, and also allow us to share the art with you all so we can better communicate details about the design of each class or character.
Now, this probably sounds like standard practice to some of you, but Team Whirlwind counts zero professional artists among it's core team, so our art pipeline has been a major pain point all throughout development of Crystal Horizons. After everyone has worked hard to learn at least one art-related skill, we're now confident that we can implement changes like this to our development structure without significant issues. Of course, things like this might mean more delays in the short term, but we're sure that it will be highly beneficial in the long run.
With that out of the way, today I can share with you the front reference image for Knight. These are relatively simple pieces, without any of the shading or poses that go into portraits, so all members of our team can have a clear understanding of how each class is meant to look. I'll be creating these reference pieces for all current and future classes, as well as characters, so look forward to seeing more of these over the course of development!
