Dragon-Harpy

In roughly two weeks I'm planning to upload a new test build, I'm planning to add a new enemy in a test area and a shop for the shards you collect to remove unwanted corruptions, as opposed to having to do a full reset. In the meantime...

A couple months ago, a poll was run to decide what the next enemy added would be. It was close between the "dragon-harpy" and the "dullahan/ghost". All the designs for that poll were pretty early sketches, you can see here that it's sketch #4 whilst the design now is at #27.

The rest of this post will be design notes talking about the decisions made, this is going to be a long post so don't feel you have to read it, you'll get to see her in-game soon enough.

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... Really, I've just dumped my thoughts out here, I didn't have time to edit them because I've gotta get back to working on the game after this.

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You'll notice this design doesn't feature the dragon part. That's because my plan is now to make the dragon-harpy an elite and the harpy the standard version. Let's call them Drake and Harpy for now.

• There are a lot of sketches because it's the way I draw, it's an interative process: I'll draw over and over until I like how it's going and then I'll draw based on what was good and re-try the parts that weren't good. Especially for a new design like this it takes a lot of time and energy so it took me most of the week...
• The dragon features will be added later, I plan for the harpy to focus on the "egg" side of things and the dragon to have a large tail she'll be using. She'll be the enemy with the most Elite variations once she's made.
• This isn't the final design. I usually tweak the lines while I do the rendering which includes shading the character, adding lighting and other effects.
• This is the dialogue art that shows up when you hover over her or talk to her. It's weird that I always draw these first since it doesn't include the legs, normally artists draw a full reference sheet. I can't really use a reference sheet in game though, reference sheets are best for giving to other artists. If I want another artist to draw her I'll have to compile a reference sheet myself.
• Speaking of, why would she have the egg still there in the dialogue art? I don't know, it just felt like it worked. I've tried to keep it similar to the original poll sketch because that's what people voted for, even though the sketch is just a representation of the overall theme. The eggs in the original were just there to show I might do something stupid and egg-related.
• She has some similarities to other characters (Qades, Voice, Ram) in her body shape, hair style, clothes. I tried not to make her too similar.
• I did give her big tits. Apologies to whoever wanted her tits to be streamlined for flying, the harpy (and drake) are pretty clumsy fliers in the first place.
• I usually makes notes about what I expect their personality to be like, at one point it was a "Hey hun, how's it going?" friendly vibe and while I still expect her to be quite friendly, I would also say she's like a lot of the other monster-girls. Crooked.
• Facial expressions are a good part of defining a character's personality. I'll be adding various alt artwork over time like facial expressions but it's worth noting that each character I make has expressions that are unique to them. I don't re-use the same expressions, I have a "cheat sheet" for the names of each character's expressions for use in conversation coding because they all have different names.
• You'll notice in games that "dialogue art" like this has a certain look to it. You don't see the legs, the character's often looking a bit off to the side. It's like the characters of a conversation are staring each other down, rather than looking directly at the player's screen. Incidentially, there are times it's good to make a look like it's looking directly at the viewer/POV to engage the player but it comes off a bit too strong otherwise.
• Pose! Posing is something a lot of new artists will get in a tangle over. It's something you have to learn. Poses express the character and hint at what they do, poses keep each character unique and interesting, poses can show off parts of the character that are important. If I just drew the Harpy with her arms down then you wouldn't see her wings properly, plus I'm trying to get a bit of squish in on her tits to show off the softness of it. One of her wings actually looks like a skirt with how it's positioned, that's somewhat intentional.
• Speaking of, I don't want to create very noisy designs. You'll notice some gacha games have incredibly detailed designs to make a character look grand. This sort of extra detail makes it harder to draw, gacha games usually only draw a few arts for these characters then have a "chibi" distilled version for gameplay. I'm just trying to keep it simple, having monster-girls already makes the girls unique enough.
• Noise (pt2). Noise is also localized, I thought about positioning the arm below the bust but realized that between the bust, ribbons, her belly and the wing that creates a very noisy region right under her tits which would get confusing. Normally you keep the noise to the facial expressions and the curves like the tits and the thighs are part of a greater whole of curviness. If you think about it, the areolae are a great way to draw attention to the tits and clothes often frame the bust in a pleasant manner. I'm thinking about re-designing her top a little.
• About clothes then, she obviously doesn't have much. I might give her a thong or rework that top she's wearing but you have to ask, why do so many lewd games put so much clothing on their characters? I'd say it's because it's much easier to share and advertize your work, I can't really post this character in most places because of how shameless she is. There's also something nice about "unwrapping" a character from her clothes, or again clothes can frame a character's assets in a pleasant way.
• I've thought about making a "crotch fluff" filter, body hair is often a very divisive matter. However, with the way I do it, I think it's a lot more palatable to a wider audience. If you've got an opinion on this feel free to leave a comment, I'd happily had some filters like that if it's what people want.
• I haven't really drawn harpies or many feathers before so I'm working it out. Drawing hundreds of tiny feathers would be hell, I've decided on making it fluffy and having larger feathers. It also makes her a very soft-looking character overall. I like making soft characters but I do want to expand out and do some lithe or more rocky ones. I like variety.
• Asymmetry is a nice way to make characters more dynamic! You'll notice there's quite a bit here. Symmetry and smooth curves make for a pleasant and healthy-looking character but a bit of asymmetry in the right places keeps it real. Odd detail but the outline of her hair, her tits and even a couple of other small details follow the golden ratio, I tried to re-draw it after using the golden ratio but the golden ratio just really works sometimes, it's like artist voodoo magic.
• The left side of her hair was designed with the motif of a beak. Reminds me of those eagle warrior cloaks from Age of Empires, the curve and the split at the end is supposed to take after that impression.
• I thought about giving her elven ears, then tried the feathers-where-ears are hack. Characters without ears look weird so using feathers is nice, right? Then the feathers made it too busy, so I reverted back to ears. Then I went with feathers anyway?
• The hair's bun design is also repeated in how the Harpy's top is tied, recurrent design like that is nice, you see a lot of it in Voice's design (Voice focuses on drill-shapes). Ribbon shapes are just pleasing in general. The hair loops also remind me of some chinese hairstyles, the feathers are there because it makes sense you're propping the hair bun together with something, doesn't it? It also creates a very unique silhouette for her which is important in character design, if you make the character a solid black shadow you can very clearly see the feathers. I forgot to check her silhouette in the design phase but it worked out well.

Some gameplay notes,

• All of the poll options including the Harpy were designed to have a way to punish players for playing in optimal but un-fun ways, such as flying over the map and ignoring all the enemies. Many enemies have good horizontal attacks but are lacking in their verticality, the Harpy then will have a lot of good vertical range and should present a new challenge.
• Harpy likely won't have any debuff like Possession or Hypnosis but just a very strong, telegraphed attack to avoid and some weaker ones. Drake (Dragon-Harpy) may have a heat sort of debuff, there's a heat debuff in the game that currently isn't in use. The "smoke" theme the Drake has isn't an allusion to any sort of drugs, it's just an alternate take on a fire-breathing dragon. The smoke may have debuff properties that inflict heat and cover a wide area with either Sweet or Energy damage.

The last time I added a new enemy was the Ram-Girl, 1.75 years ago way before the game went public. After that I had to freeze content because if I kept adding new enemies and mechanics and didn't spend time developing them, the game would become a mess. After almost 2 years I can finally design a new enemy...

I was worried during the design process that I wouldn't live up to those 2 years of art practice and the expectations fans might have but she started to take form over time. There's a real problem I have that sometimes the early sketches look better than the finished, lined product, because using a thinner pen with more detail loses a lot of the charm. Every time I make a new character I have to go through that cycle of anxiety, it's just how it is. I'm happy with the result.

Again, the design may still get tweaked a bit and I may be drawing some different poses and expressions!

As a closing reminder since we got a boost of new supporters in the last week, I'll be running another monster-girl poll, the same sort of poll that chose the Harpy. The poll will run at some point during the Harpy's update, likely starting next month. Alongside any designs I add from the last poll, I'll make some new designs. Look forward to it!