I'm done...

Hello everyone,

This post is going to contain rant, I'm warning you. But I REALLY need to vent because I'm pissed off.

If you've followed me for a certain amount of time, you know that I haven't always been lucky with the people I work. The guy who stole me 3,5k for working on a Slice of Cards that never happened, the pixel artists who scammed me $500 for SoV3 and all the artists that disappeared without a word...

The last time I made a post about this, I had calculated that it was a 50/50 thing. Half of the people I worked with were professional, and the other half weren't. The thing is, that value has started to change. It started at the beginning of SoVR where the colorist back then left without a word (and it's not as if he had disappeared during the year I was working on TH2, I remind you we started working on SoVR paralelly to TH2 so he worked on it.) That's one disappearance.

Then we hired Sencha, who stayed very shortly because she felt underpaid (despite agreeing to the payment chart at the beginning.) But at least, she waited for the end of a release and told me before leaving, so I consider that professional (unpleasant, but professional.)

Then, thanks to one of you, we hired the current colorist and if I have to admit that at the beginning things were not turning good, it's becoming better and better. So that's 2 for 1.

Since we needed extra help, we re-hired Carlis (so she doesn't count because she has ALWAYS been one of the most professional artist I've worked with, but she was already there in the past, like Aimless). And then I hired someone to do the liquids. I think I made a post about this. About the fact that no matter how professional you are, if you're not good at making liquids, well you can't do them. And unfortunately, no one in the team apart from Peak is good enough for that. So we hired someone.

Peak and I spent hours giving her indications on how to improve etc... After a couple of days, she disappeared for a moment, and came back saying her mom got sick and she had to bring her to the hospital etc... Okay... Then she disappeared again for two weeks. Reason? SHE was in the hospital this time because she caught what her mom had. Okay... She apologized deeply, over and over again. I told her that Internet being what it is, I have no way to know if she's telling the truth and the best way to show it will be to actually work. She redid a few drafts (ah yeah cause I didn't say it, but she was still in her improvement session, providing corrections of already existing stuff so we could help her correct the mistake she was still making before working on proper pics. That means the amount of work is equal to 1/5th of the actual required work. You just tweak some lines and color, you don't do anything from scratch.) She said she'll come back with the corrections the day after. I waited one week and a half and didn't get anything. I left a message on her channel hopping to get an answer. She never answered. And you want to know the irony of it all? The very same day she posted a message in the "hire me" section of the discord sever I hired her saying she was completely free for work.

THIS is the kind of shit I have to deal with when hiring people -_-

And if only it stopped there. But no. Today marks another day! And now it's about the pixel artist I hired for that pokemon game. I won't beat about the bush. He finished the H animation today and showed them to me. The only word that comes to mind when I see them is "insulting". You want a proof? I showed one to Peak, his first reaction was to burst in laughter. And I'd have done the same if they weren't intended for my game. With this alone, the guy managed to kill my entire motivation to work on this game. It's as if buying an expensive GunPla model, spending hours to build it and when it's done, it's a cripple Mr Potato with missing parts.

The release is supposed to happen at the end of the week and the only thing I want to do is work on SoVR. I'm giving you a fair warning right now: those animations are so bad that the only way they'll be implemented in the game is through parody. The game itself is supposed to be a parody but I wanted the H stuff to be hot. There's nothing hot in that, it's laughable and pitiful and that's how it'll be portrayed in the game. I'm sorry everyone (not that you're all anticipating the game, after all I got my third dislike when announcing working on it), but at some point, I'm a human being and I can't bear so many people taking me for an idiot. And this is raging, because AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAALL the content of this post until now was NOT supposed to be there. I was supposed to show you the creatures. To show you how Peak has a thing at creating them. I'll do it on the second part, don't worry, but still, I hate that I've been so demoralized by this. And with that I've officially worked with more unprofessional people (or swindlers) than normal people... So yeah, I needed to rant, sorry for that -_-

Soooooooooooo... Well, I don't know how things will look by the end of the week, but I can AT LEAST show you things that went in the right direction (meaning stuff we worked on with Peak). I wanted the game to be like Pokemon Yellow: with one pokemon you'd be stuck with as a "friend" and that would follow you on the map. I'm going to show you everything you need to know about him. Even his evolutions (they're not in the game, of course, but I have no idea when I'll ever go back to the game.)

A slight warning before, though. I'm going to show you my own sketches. They're shitty and lame, as always, but do realize that it's not the only thing I gave Peak. I'm better with words, so each of these sketch came with a description to help him having a better idea as to where to go in terms of design. That being said, he implemented a good amount of ideas himself and they're often good.

Let me present you Whirlub!

it's not a rat. It's a dog. The thing is, for that Pokemon, I had the idea of the design for the final evolution so I started from there and then did the 2nd evolution then the first form. And while I had a (good) idea for the final evolution, in the end, for the first form, I was like "Uh... Okay I'll just make it a small dog." The name pun is between "Whirl" and "Cub".

Then we have his evolution

Yeah I only show my shitty stuff so you can bleed from your eyes (and/or laugh your ass off). That will magnify Peak's work. So here we have Whiround (Whirl + Round). I thought a furr version of Shelgon would be a good idea. I wanted something that evolved towards the defensive side before releasing his full power like many insect pokemons. And the goal was to make him evolve into...

Whipound! (Whip + Hound)

The original idea was "A huge fluffly dog with swirling hair and a cameleon-like tail". He unrolls his tail to whip his opponents. I liked the idea (and now you understand why there's a "whirl" in his previous versions.)

So, what Peak did with those awesomely lame sketches? Well, he did that.

Not really the same level, heh? As you can see, Peak added some personal elements like the hair in front of the eyes for Whipound, the dual tail and the head inside the body for Whiround. And he made Whirlub cute as fuck, of course. While he was working on that I was thinking about what type I wanted the pokemon to be. I didn't want the game to start with a fire/water/plant type (way too boring). And I went for the type that got fucked for most of the generations in Pokemon: the poison type. As such, he's a "Normal/Poison" type. And when I asked Peak to add a few colors to finsh them, he added a few things to completely finish their designs:

The tip of the tails now has scorpion stingers and...

Whipound has three tails (making it much more coherent with the growing tail on the second evolution.)

I don't know how many of you like Pokemon, or are used to their designs etc... But personally, I find this result extremely satisfying. It doesn't look like an already existing one, it's credible, has good visible feature, looks both friendly enough to be your partner for the game BUT also threatening enough to be able to fight. It's great. I love him. And that's why the whole pixel art affair is pissing me off all the more :x

Anyway, with that recent misfortune I have to rethink a bit things about the game. But I'll be honest: I'll probably do the minimum during this week, and spend most of my time on SoVR (especially considering how this buffer month helped a lot art-wise and I'm much more motivated to go back to SoVR). So in a nutshell: Don't expect much from that small alpha thing :x