After countless hours of studying, sketching, scrapping, and revising, I'm happy to say that all of the characters, playable or no, have finally been redesigned, and the portraits of the first three party members have been completed.

Without further ado, and with the old art below them for a better side-by-side comparison, meet the new Aeyr, Mia, and Amalie:



As you can see, they look sliiiightly different than they did before. Aeyr's and Mia's alternate outfits are also done too, but they are significantly less interesting than their defaults.

In addition, here is the new sprite style that will accompany these new character portraits:


This is the entire playable cast, so there are some you don't recognize since I haven't talked about them. But yeah. This is everyone.

And that's the new art direction for the characters. All that's left now is to shade everyone the same way that these three have, including dialogue busts, and the art for the main characters will be completely done. Of course, there are obviously still the NPCs and tiles to sprite, and I'll go back and make some adjustments as needed, but the art overhaul is almost over. Yaaaay!

That's not to say that all of my time has been spent on art, though. I've been setting aside about an hour every night after schoolwork is done to write a more proper synopsis of the storyline, rather than the bullet point collection that it was before. I pace myself by writing about 1000 words a day, and am about a third of the way through the whole plot. Forcing out words like this has been amazing for creativity and brings out some interesting plot points and world lore that I hadn't thought of originally, and I encourage anyone else out there struggling with writing to try it for their own projects.

So while the new prologue won't be out this month, the art certainly will be finished, and I'm confident next month everything will be ready. I can see the light on the other side of the tunnel, everyone! Between this new art style and the expanded plot, I'm gonna hit the ground running when it finally comes time to return to the editor. I won't lie: While I'm enjoying every moment of working on the art, I think I'll be ready for when it's time to get back into development of the game proper.

Thanks for sticking around while I slave away over the tablet for the past month! Now that the end is in sight, what do you think of the results?