Heartache 101 ~Sour into Sweet~

author=amarathinee
Hello!

Hello Amarathinee, welcome to the heartache forums. I'm in charge of reviewing and managing custom content.

author=amarathine
I've played this game since it came out, and i'm finally making custom content ^_^ Although, I probably shouldn't... Like the Sims, I have a feeling I'll spend more times making content & stories than playing the game.

Your point being?;) We all arrived at that point eventually. Hell, Marrend never finished the built-in routes.
I hope you'll understand though, Heartache material is far from being handled the same as Sims sites handle theirs, and takes more dedication to finish, which most people don't have(recently I began to doubt I have it). It's not to say your job will go to waste even if you leave; after a while abandonware can be adopted by other people, and only uploaded when the package lives up to, if not better than, the original creator's, so keep it up as long as you can.

We are however required to warn you of the distinct possibility of premature abandonment turning us into sad pandas for an undisclosed period of time.


Now that the formal shit is taken care of, on with the criticism! As you only gave us pictures I'll have space for bashing in depth^^
First is the issue of their race. While we understand the ease of working with someone from your own culture, it's increasingly hard to explain away white people hanging around conservative rural Japan in a reasonable manner without repeating ourselves(and the premise suspiciously resembles OMG's). I give in to Esme being a must with her complexion and build; how about a new name for the other two? Esme could be a distant relative.



And here we are already. Every second time a new dev pops up, eager to please, and then someone points out the character's hair cuts into her breasts(and her neck, to be fair. So are the other characters', while we're at it). Those awkward moments...
Beside the usual, her tattoos and the sharp, sudden changes in her hair color give her a subtly unsettling vibe. Could be intentional for all I know, please say so next time around. Also, regarding the former, I'm not sure if you've done shading at all. In any case it's too subtle to notice.
Otherwise, Angel's tachie is of high standard. Beats our contently incapable majority's patchworks any day of the week.

This is Angel's little sister Celeste... lives in her sister's shadow and sometimes let's it get to her.

Umm... Been done? In a built-in route, of all things?

Should we call the plagiarism police?
Well, not really. I don't think it's stolen per se. Still, we already have that.


Wait, what? Godsdamn, are those low, close-sitting eyes sucking out my soul? Uhh, let's clear things up, when people say wasp waist is attractive, they don't mean it literally. Her head and lap are double the size! I'm fairly certain that never happens during anyone's lifetime, assuming healthy human development. It's larger than her own older sister's, for fuck's sake! Goodness, those hands! She could wrap it around one and a quarter times! And what is her head doing so high up? Did she switch jawbones with an amphibian?
Listen, I understand the definition of the Uncanny differs from person to person. More to the point, I can see how witnessing more than enough woohoo scenes in Sims 2 can train you to bear the depths of the Valley.

I'm personally okay with her after the initial shock. Celeste's a mere fraction of what I see in my feverish, faulty frontal lobe-induced nightmares every night. But the fact I can compare them to her screams "NO".
She's simply too disproportionate. It's like you resized some of her parts to make her look younger and forgot about it halfway through. I could deal with a girl who isn't pretty. No, actually, that would be a terrific change of pace, what with all the cutesy women in the genre. Just make sure she doesn't look like a mutant unless warranted by the plot, okay?
The problem isn't your artstyle. It's your artyle mixed with the palette's that creates something terrible. Either give her a new body entirely so the eyes fit the rest of her, or bid farewell to a few ambitions.



NOW we're talking. Probably the best artwork I've seen on the forum. Damn, it actually deserves to be called art.
Still, I don't get paid to fawn over you. I still have a few objections. First, fill in that little concave bit in her face under her left eye. Her legs have the same problem as Celeste's, tamper with them a bit so it won't look like she doesn't have a pelvis and fix the shades. Her breasts seem to... overlap, their edges use a color different from the rest of her body, her right armpit doesn't have an edge, and her left one makes her strapless dress appear as if it was sewn to her skin to stay on.(A hint, that's not how it usually works.)
The biggest issue is her hair: it gets worse and worse as it reaches her waist. Starts as something out of a high-end doujinshi to become a "drawing" you can whack out of your unmentionables in MSPaint within half an hour.

She's also a rebel who... flaunts the schools dresscode because no one challenges her.

Seriously?


Come on, you're not trying very hard. I'm not even so sure you aren't "inspired" by other content a tad too much. Whereas promiscuity is fine - while we have enough as is, it's more of a personality trait -, the clothing rebellion is the basis for 21 Ways. And nevermind the fact how clea her story made there is, in fact, a strong opposition to violating the dress code, this is Japan we're talking about. Should go without saying. You can't copy whole plot points from other people who created the exact same game. I guess we could possibly work something out(as Esme might be a true rebel, while 21 is faking it) through cooperation, but she will still need other traits to appeal to the audience.

That would be it! Keep up the good work, all of you! Overseer off.

Hey! Nice surprise to find on first check of the site today!

Not bad, Marrend. Not bad at all. The hair is looking a lot more like I envisioned it color-wise, and it actually blends together (unlike my original hack job).

Two things I'd change, though. First is that since I made my second attempt, I've kind of decided that she needs the side_tail_long layer. Without it, her head just looks a little too...round. Second is the eye color. There needs to be some green in there, maybe even more green than blue. My current attempt went a little too far with the green, I think, but having to jump back and forth with all the color presets to figure out which one is best literally (and yes, I do mean LITERALLY) gave me a headache, so I pretty much used something that was close enough and called it good.

Also (and I know this is a material_m thing), why the heck did they make one eyebrow higher than the other? It really jumps out with the bangs. That's why I left them off of my current tachie -- I actually thought it looked better without them entirely. Not sure if that would be true of this design, though.

Definite progress! Many thanks!

OK, NOW we're getting somewhere!

As for the eyebrows...it's not that I want to get rid of them per se. It just looks a bit...odd that her left eyebrow is higher (or, more precisely, closer to the bottom of her bangs, because I'm not entirely certain whether it's the eyebrows or the bangs that are asymmetrical) than her right one. I just don't know if removing the eyebrows would look better with this design without seeing it.

Woah, I log in today to see 40 notices. Welcome new people! I hope you are enjoying making new content and not discouraged by the criticism which flies fast and hard around here ;)

Hmmm...good, mostly. With these, I do think they'd look better without the "secondary eyebrow" bit in the "friendly", "like", "love", "lovesick" and "neutral" tachie. It actually looks good in the "surprise" and "unfriendly" ones, though -- more natural-looking, I guess you'd say - and I can't even see it in "dislike", so all good there. The "primary eyebrow" looks good now in every tachie except "neutral", which still looks uneven.

As for the behind-the-back pose, I like that as well. I just couldn't do it in GIMP because it would screw up how the uniform looked.