Slice of Venture Remake Diary #1

Hello everyone,

Time to put The Hunter 2 behind for a while and focus on Slice of Venture Remake!

And it's always a good idea to open festivities with Yuki, right? It's even righter here that we spent more time working on her than Ayame for whom we found a suitable design right away.

I have to explain a bit things about both how things were back during SoV development and about my current state of mind.

When I decided to start Slice of Venture, it was mainly because I got a lot of positive feedback from Vitamin Plus after it was finished. It was 10 years ago so I don't remember well but I think some people on Hongfire (which was the place I was releasing versions of VP back in the days) mentionned that they'd pay for a sequel. So those two element combined, I started working on SoV. On a personal level, it also corresponded to the moment I found a job IRL so while it meant less time to work on the game, it meant being able to fund a part of it. But of course, I wanted to see if people would be really willing to actually donate some money to help me funding the game.

Now that I look back to it, it's very ironical that all the things I've done to balance donations (polls about designs and stuff) probably cost me more overall than the total amount of money I got XD Because that's how all the designs in SoV were chosen: through polls only accessible to donators. Haircut, hair color, body type, clothes... All the female characters were reworked that way. All but two: Reiko and Naomi who's design was chosen by big donators. One of them is still around (and I thank him for sticking along for so long :)) and the other one actually disappeared before I even finished the game. So I don't know if he ever saw his version of Naomi x)

Anyway, if you want more information, feel free to check the Slice of Venture Artbook (it's only available on DLsite anymore though) to see examples of progress for most of the girls. You only have to remember one thing: In terms of design I chose nothing for Slice of Venture. I chose the male designs for Seiichi, Kentaro, Hitoshi and Bunichi but for the rest, people chose. And as I get older and know better what I want exactly, I have to admit that I'm really not fond of letting other people deciding of something for me. I ramble but SoV 2's poll to choose a scene from selection of scenes I prepared myself was the best compromise ever (maybe I'll do it again for SoVR? 8D). So while I was happy to get some money to fund SoV, I've grown more and more frustrated over the years about the characters design.

And Yuki is probably my biggest frustration.

I liked her head and glasses and overall body look. But the clothes? There's nothing working, for me :x Now, let me show you what were the final sets of clothes people could vote for back then.

And since I'm this kind of guy, the forum where the polls were held is still accessible for me and I managed to dig out the poll results.

No, you're not dreaming, the total amount of people who could vote back then was 20 (hey, I was a nobody :p) And that's 20 including me (and probably Hime.) As you can see since it's in bold, I voted for 2. And the 3rd set won by far. I suspect people wanted something a bit reminiscent of VP? After all, Yuki has a big sweater... But I don't know, the combo of slevless hoody and skirt doesn't for me. And I'm not even talking about the colors. Cyan socks... So yeah, I'm not fond of this design. And back then I could understand that designs 1 and 4 were a bit too "classic" so I was expecting a full battle between 2 and 3. But no. If you remove my vote, 2 was actually as "meh" for the majority as the others x)

But now, things have changed. Thanks to you guys I can finally chose what I want! Cause yeah, it's not JUST having Peak redrawing the pictures. A remake is also the occasion to change EVERYTHING I don't like about the original game :p So when we started working on Yuki, I gave that exact pic to Peak and told him: I want us to use this as a base. Of course, I didn't mean to blatantly use the same design without changes. But we started working on it. And to be fair, when you have a base design to start from, it's MUCH quicker to find something satisfying than when you're starting from scratch.

One of the most obvious thing to remove were the shoes. Those boots didn't fit the rest at all. And they give off a mature feeling that doesn't fit Yuki. So our first version was like that. You have to understand something about Yuki's shorts. Ever since I've worked on VP, I've ALWAYS seen Yuki wearing shorts in that game. But she's not. It's actually a skirt. It's just that she doesn't have it in the majority of pics and the title screen can be confusing if you don't pay attention closely. So for a random reason I've always tried to avoid giving her shorts in games to avoid her being too close from her VP design. Which is, in the end, totally dumb since it's A SKIRT! So yeah, this time the shorts were non-negociable :x We tried the high socks (We knew they were already present in SoV2 but they're not socks in SoV2: they're not made of wool or cotton. They're closer to stocking texture.)

When I saw the result I knew it was going in a direction I liked. But we needed to work on the top. The jacket was nice, but having it closed kinda counterbalanced Yuki's natural expressiveness. So we worked on an open version.

There were several tries, here. Rolled up sleeves, long sleeves, short sleeves, longer jacket, shorter jacket, T-shirt, Tank top, inside the shorts, belly showing... we stopped at that version. I liked the fact that the jacket was both open and with rolled-up sleeved. First of all because it fits with the season (SoV occurs around the last weekends of September), but also because it fits Yuki as well, as a character able to adapt to a situation. And probably a bit because you don't often have the chance to have a jacket in a design that allows rolled sleeves that look good. Anyway, then came the colors.

Peak wanted to test other things than orange. There were probably other versions but they're not all posted so I can't save them all. To me, the double blue wasn't a good idea (the idea was to have a denim jacket.) It was a bit too bichromatic to me. Same thing with the tank top. So I asked him to go back to the original colors. AND to remove the socks. Even if we adapted the texture, considering Yuki's outfit in SoV2, it was way too close.

We also tweaked the color of the shoes since the socks had disappeared. When I saw that result, I was satisfied with everything but one thing: the tank top. And this might be a good example of how we can easily lose time on details most of you wouldn't care about. But for me, that tank top was too revealing. I know it's not easy to get back in the context, but this is Slice of Venture. Not SoV3 or SoS. Yuki only "experienced" SoVO. So having something a bit too daring wouldn't fit the progression of the character. Believe it or not, Peak probably drew 5 or 6 lines for that tank top so I could choose exactly the one I wanted :x

In the end, this is the final version of Yuki. As you can see the tank top shows less but still shows a bit. We added socks, of course, and switched back the shoes color to something more lively because it really fits characters like her.

You know what? I love her :p I hope you do as well. And it's not just a question of clothes. It's like we've FINALLY reached the level where we can say: this Yuki is the Blue Axolotl one. Here, look at the different steps she went through (I'm only showing Peak's stuff because I'm not sure it's relevant to insert SkullTT's version)

In SoV2, the haircut was way too close from the original design and her face was way too long for a character of that age. In SoV3 it's actually the exact opposite. She looks way too young and her skin is way too tanned but at least, the hair have their own personality. And finally, the Slice of School design. Which is, of course, the one we based ourselves upon to make that SoVR version of Yuki. It's DEFINITELY the best one. And even though, we've corrected tiny details, like her eye color. That bright cyan is way too clear. Her current eyes are much better. So yeah, she's been through a lot, but that's it. We have our Yuki. The final version. The one I hope you'll love the most. I'm very satisfied by the result and I'm eager to work on her again :D

I'll just mention one last thing: this colored version of Yuki is actually colored by kai. He colored her and Ayame before disappearing. As such, you will see another colored version at some point (the one colored by our new colorist), because we didn't want to mix styles.

That's all for today! As you can see, Yuki was a good chunk to talk about so it was logical to start with her :p

I'll see you later for the next post o/