Prince of Suburbia POLL: Proposed artist change

Dear Patrons,

First of all, we wanted to announce that last month Prince of Suburbia reached a RECORD-BREAKING number of patrons (241)! Wow!! We are so excited to see support for our very first game continue to grow.

We want to extend a HUGE THANK YOU to all of our patrons, old and new. We can’t wait to see our studio grow even more when our 3D game (A Shot in the Dark) is released later this month!

Secondly, we have a proposal for you, our patrons and fans about the future development of Prince of Suburbia.

As we announced earlier this year, we are now a two-person studio working full-time to develop lewd games! Because of this, all writing and coding is NOW FULLY WITHIN OUR CONTROL and cannot cause any delays for future development.

We have been asked many times over the years how to speed up development of Prince of Suburbia. The answer has always been that it depends entirely on the art. Unfortunately, we are not 2D artists, so that part will never be fully under our control.

ScarlettAnn, the sole illustrator for Prince of Suburbia, has grown in popularity considerably since development started. For good reason! But it’s no secret that increasing demands on ScarlettAnn’s time have severely impacted our development cycles.

Our current outlook is that future updates of Prince of Suburbia could take even longer due to ScarlettAnn’s availability. Our current development cycle estimates are 6-8 months for future releases. That is not what we want, and we know it’s not what our fans want, but it’s the reality.

We think we have a beneficial solution for both our studio and our fans. Now we need your input!

OUR PROPOSAL

We would like to propose bringing on our current animator as the sole illustrator and animator for Prince of Suburbia.

We know that ScarlettAnn’s art is what drew many of you to Prince of Suburbia. We also know that our current animator, auxiliaryout, is another reason so many of you love the game. That makes auxiliaryout an obvious choice to take over as sole artist, if that’s something our community supports.

ScarlettAnn would continue to receive credit for her original artwork, and her artwork would be made available outside of the game for fans to see anytime they wish. However, auxiliaryout would be the sole artist moving forward, and for all art in the final version of Prince of Suburbia.

FEAR NOT! This would NOT be a total revamp of the current characters or art!  No matter what, we would remain true to the style and spirit of the game as it currently is. No two artists are exactly the same, so of course there would be slight variations. But what happens and how the relationships progress would not change. No scenes would be added or removed from the existing story, ONLY THE ART would change.

If you weren’t aware, auxiliaryout was both the illustrator and animator of the scene with C and C’s friend in the latest update. We have also attached some examples of auxiliaryout's illustrations:

• casted_shower.png - one of his original illustrations that exists in the current game
• concept sprites that auxiliaryout illustrated for Catherine

Lastly, here is an example of ScarlettAnn's art that was prepped for animation that required repainting and touchups - POS_mc_s_cowgirl_BEFORE.jpg (ScarlettAnn's art) and POS_mc_s_cowgirl_AFTER.png (auxiliaryout's changes). 

We hope these examples demonstrate his commitment to emulating the current art.

BENEFITS OF CHANGING ARTISTS

• Proven, reliable, and trusted. Auxiliaryout has worked on Prince of Suburbia for years and is a trusted member of our team. We know fans of the game like his work, and we like working with him.
• Consistent release cycles. We can pay auxiliaryout a monthly salary to secure his availability and ensure that our release cycles would return to 3-4 months and not increase in the future. It would also help us reach our goal of releasing the complete game (V1.0) within 18 months.
• More efficient art production. Having the illustrator also do animations would reduce duplicate work and the time needed to create animations.
• More efficient use of funds. Overall, we feel it would be a better use of the funds our patrons have so generously given us to develop this game. It protects consistent and long term development of the game.
• Consistent art style and quality. Although new content would always be the top priority, some of the time allotted each month would be used to update the existing illustrations, animations, and sprites so they are consistently high quality throughout the game.

We understand that replacing ScarlettAnn is a huge change, and asking patrons to get on board with that change is a huge ask. While we feel it would be a beneficial choice for our game, it is not something we will pursue further without your support.

So, we are asking you to vote on whether or not you would support making auxiliaryout the sole artist (illustrator and animator) for Prince of Suburbia moving forward.

None of this would be possible without you, our patrons and fans. Thank you from the bottom of our hearts for all of your patience and support! We can’t wait to show you everything that we have in store. ;)

TheOmega & Josselyn Stark

ViM Studios