SoV3 Post Mortem #5 (Last)

Hello everyone,

As promised, here's the last post mortem post about SoV3!

Since I focus my posts around images, I'll talk about the three things I can show you. In order of importance :p

So I'll start with the Um'Qwans. I probably mentioned it back in the days but orcs in SoV3 are not called "Orcs". First because I wanted something a bit more original in terms of naming and secondly because I wanted a way to fuse two representations of orcs commonly seen in mangas.

Basically, depending on the author's desires, orcs are either bulky brutes or fat pigmen (to sum things up really quickly.) Since I liked both represensation for what they had to offer, I included both in SoV3. That led to the creation of Shu'Qwans and Um'Qwans. 

The first ones are the ones you saw in SoV3. They're bulky, live in tribes between them and speak their own language. 

The second ones are those who decided to "blend" into the rest of the civilization. They speak the common language, live among other races and have their own jobs.

Here are some examples:

Because of how sedentary they became, most of them have fattened as they're originally meant to be nomads. I liked that idea because it was more or less a mirror of mankind itself.

Those are different elements drawn by Peak to have a better grasp on the whole race. Of course it's not shown here but female Um'Qwans were supposed to follow the same path, ranging from chubby to downward obese females.

The bottom right picture features the first Um'Qwan the party would meet. But I won't tell more about him, you'll have to wait for the novel to know more about him ^^'

Let's move to the second part which will definitely be the shortest: The card game.

Anyone who's followed me for more than a year knows that I'm a sucker for card games so it was EVIDENT I'd implement one in SoV3. But considering the experience I had with Slice of Cards, I went for a VERY simple one and just took my favourite card game: Triple Triad.

Thankfully it happened that someone had coded a full Triple Triad game for MZ. It was very barebone and it would've needed lots of tweaks from Hime to fit the game properly but we had the base. And even better, we could provide original illustration thanks to JFC as having a different artist for the cards was not a problem in terms of graphical coherence (I already did it for the Slice of Art cards in SoV2.) The image under is a test. Nothing was set to stone, I never intended to implement the card game right away so I was still in the prototype part of it.

When I did that, JFC hadn't finished the coloring, it's been done since then ^^'

Looking at things, this is one of the few things that I can possibly save from SoV3 and implement in Slice of School. I don't know if I'll do it, but considering the script is for MZ and SoS is done in MZ, at least, I have the possibility to do so.

And the very last thing to reveal is actually the very last new character Peak and I worked on together before completely stopping to work on Slice of Venture 3. I would've prefered to reveal her in the novel but oh well, it's Christmas so might as well give you everything :D

Along the journey of the girls, of course you were bound to meet characters you know and new characters. I wanted to focus on new characters (because they take longers to do) that's why we finished her whole design despite being a character that will not be met very early in the game.

Brace yourself, I'm posting the whole design evolution pics (more than 25 pics.)

This character was supposed to be the black mage of the group. There were some elements to respect for her design. Just like I tried to be original with Aleksia, I wanted this character to stray away from the usual Black Mage stereotypes. So no long cloak, no long hair and no pointy hat. I wanted her to look classy, almost noble-looking. Her race is supposed to be held in high regard so I wanted it to be reflected in her style.

Those pictures were the first ones Peak came up with.

After some talking and working, she evolved into this.

We were getting closer to what I had in mind. And that's when we decided to work on the famous unique race element. There are things about her race you'll learn in the novel but like the Shisleïz and their stone parts, I wanted her to have a dinstictive element proper to her race.

Of course, in that kind of brainstorming, the first thing you do is to analyze what is already existing. And when you have a body almost completely recovered by your clothes, it's harder to find something good. So I leant towards something EXTREMELY common that tends to be linked with magic: Elves.

But at some point, I don't remember if it's Peak or I who got the idea but decided to keep the ear thing, but make it unique. Instead of just having pointy ears, they're had a fully-fledged bone that would come out of the top of their ears. In addition, their ear lobes would be wide open as a natural thing, and not due to accessories. This led to those possibilities.

When I saw those I thought "THAT'S a good idea" (sorry, congratulating ourselves again :x).

Because of the ear lobe hole, Peak ended up making a version with the bone pierced and I went: "bingo". I asked him to add a chain between those two holes and we ended up with this.

That little touch was perfect to me. It was subtle enough to fit the character but visible enough to clearly identify the race. The chain is meant for her only, mind you. The others would've had different-looking bones that aren't necessarily pierced.

There's one thing you have to understand about my design decisions: since the game was supposed to bathe in lewdness, I didn't want the outfits to be overly sexy/slutty. So beside the whole ear thing, I asked PeakJump to give her something more formal in form of a pair of trousers.

We were gradually evolving in the right direction. So we tried different elements in term of outfit to find something more suitable. But now it was more a question of accessories/details than overall design.

We tried large sleeves.

Narrow sleeves.

Armband.

We even tried a few hats. And while there's no doubt she looks nice with those, they were not going in the direction I wanted. These were either too military-looking or too common. So I ended up ditching the idea of hats. After all, hatless mages was somehow original :p

Those designs made me realize something: The whatever-it's-called thing she had around her chest before had a nice feel to it. I especially liked the chain to link both part. So I asked Peak to simply give her a jacket that would stay open but be tied around her neck the same way.

(In the meantime we also had worked on the boots :x)

When I saw the result I was convinced by my choices. While it's true that after not seeing her for 2 years, the coat has a slight military feel to it, we could've tweaked it a bit. Overall, the goal was reached: she looks almost noble and is miles away from your everyday black mage.

But wait, there's more. A black mage is nothing without its weapon. So we also worked on designing her. And my idea was simple: if black mages hit people with their staves why the fuck do they carve them in wood? This is something that always annoyed me in Final Fantasy. So I took the opposite direct: Let's create her a staff that looks like a fully-fledged blunt weapon. And the best weapon that mixes both for Peak and I was evidently the keyblade from Kingdom Heart. So we took that as a basis and worked with that.

Peak added the parchment around the guard. It had a specific purpose but I can't remember it ^^'

For the rest, the idea was to have the "magical" part of the staff serve as a blunt part. I didn't take long to chose the first version. I loved the idea to have a huge chunk of Flectahlite (the magical stones in SoV3) stuck on a weapon without any polishing, hurting much more people or monsters hit by it :p

So I validated it. And with a few changes including a western-looking belt to actually sheath the staff like a sword...

...and a change of colors, we reched the end of the design.

I present you Meweldi, the Eira. (Eiras being the race she belongs to.)

As you all know there's nothing better than time to judge your ideas. And staying away from her for two years refreshed my mind completely so when I saw her design a couple of weeks ago I was actually pretty impressed by the results we came up with. We sure take ages to design a character but I really like our decisions.

And that's all for Slice of Venture 3! I hope you liked this serie of little posts. Don't let them down you too much, it's not because the game won't happen that I'm not proud of what we've accomplished for it :)

I'll make a $5 post with a Christmas pack. Inside you'll find the whole CG set of Slice of Venture 3, with the addition of the two exclusive scenes that were done after the first release (Ayame's bow scene and Yuki/Ayame's Shu'Qwan assault. This last one missed a part of inked content so Ayame has one pose with only roughly sketched body.) You'll also find a couple of stupid pics drew by PeakJump and one by JFC.

And lastly, there's more. JFC actually posted EVERYTHING he drew for Slice of Venture 2 and 3 in that post: https://www.pixiv.net/en/artworks/103775739

Some pictures will be known to those who played SoV2 but others are completely exclusive as they were meant to serve as illustration for SoV3's card game. So be sure to download them and thank him for this gift :D

Now that's really everything, the next post will be for The Hunter 2. Chances are it will be AFTER new year's eve. So I'm taking this chance to wish you a merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. Eat well, enjoy your time with your family and try to cheer up in those times where things aren't always funny :)

I'll see you soon! o/