I've been working on this project for the better part of 3 years now (holy shit). During those three years, I've been working on my own personal growth as a developer, writer, designer and, obviously, an artist. While I'm not yet practiced enough to call what I've got an "art style," I am learning to strike a balance between what I think looks neat and what I am capable of pulling off. The more I draw, whether they be assets for PotF for just personal doodles, the clearer that balance becomes.

Which brings us to today, where I have a combination of assets aged from two days and three years. Characters have different shading styles, face structure is a little wonky, expressions lack personality, etc. If I redrew everything again from the ground up every time I noticed a flaw, PotF will never see the light of day. What I CAN do, though, is update the art style of older assets to match the new look.

So that's what I did.

A wonderful piece of advice I was given a while ago was this: Don't try to make your work look, "good," because it never will. What looks "good" is entirely subjective, and holding your work to such an amorphous, ever changing standard is incredibly destructive. Instead, aim to convey the story you wish to tell with your work. If that means something doesn't look "realistic", then whatever.

Let's see a before/after comparison for Mia as an example:




1) Eyebrows are now above bangs. For many characters like her and Aeyr, a characters bangs could make it harder to see their eyebrows. Since that is a big part of their facial expressions, I decided to prioritize being able to see their brows than shortening their bangs.

2) Reorganized solid black shade. Solid black shading was inspired by Etrian Odyssey's art style, but it's difficult to place properly. Now, the solid black shading is placed in more natural locations, like the far end of a character's hair.

3) Armor has a more smooth glint rather than a bright reflective surface. I didn't want armor to have a super reflective glint, so this is what I went with.


As of this writing, I have finished giving this update to both busts and portraits for all of the major characters. I wish I could go back two years and punch myself in the face for a bunch of amateur mistakes made when creating these assets, but I've learned what to do and what not to do from them, so I guess it all balances out?

A few other random examples:



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So... yeah. Your opinions, whether you agree or disagree with my reasoning, will all be pretty valid. Hell, I'll probably look back on these portraits and go, "ew I can't believe I did that," a year from now. However, this is the look I'm gonna go with, and I'm gonna call these done so I can finally check "character art" off the big list of things to do.

After I'm done with PotF, I'll probably spend a lot of time working on improving my own art while figuring out what my next project will be. For PotF, though, this is the style I'm going to go with. There's a whole laundry list of items that need doing, and so I'm going to work on them starting now.


Thanks for reading!