Hiya!

This is a devlog.

Today is April 1st.

There's not actually an April Fool's Day joke here, however.

I originally had planned to make a parody crossover thing for today, but due to not being able to do too much at the moment due to my wrist issues, I wasn't able to. Still, I wanted to do at least something for today, and thus, this devlog!

Since I haven't been able to give an update in a while, and wasn't able to make the April Fool's Day thing I wanted to make, I shall instead show some of the art assets from before they were finished to show things that have changed/stayed the same since concept. Because why not.

First up, behold, my attempt at drawing a title screen in MS Paint. I wanted to give Coza at least some sort of visual for what I wanted from the title screen, so this came to be.

From that, Coza made a few different variants for the title screen, and this is the version that we went with. Obviously, a few things changed after this point. The biggest one is that Caijoru is no longer in the current title screen. After Coza finished the cavern background, having his silhouette overlayed on top didn't look right, so it was removed. I still wanted to have at least some allusion to Caijoru on the title, so Coza came up with an idea and designed the logo with the four tails.

Now, for the character sprites:

The first character sprite to be drawn was Caijoru's. Coza had no idea what to do with his arms, so she tried a few variants and unfitting silly poses like this one.

Ted looked a bit different initially. Personally, I prefer his current look. His pose is similar to Caijoru's since his sprite was only the second one that Coza made, and she wasn't sure what to do for poses at the time. I also wasn't sure what direction to give since I had no clue either.

Also, have some sketches Coza did of different expressions for Ted early on. We decided against doing expressions this way due to time and cost restraints, but I still thought it might be fun to show.

The next character that Coza worked on was Jeffrey. He never got a full-body sprite, but Coza did do this as a silly thing.

Speaking of Jeffrey, his sprite was the first one where Coza streamed her progress on Discord, so I took screenshots occasionally when she'd do something silly like adding tiger stripes to his eyebrows and nose.

... Or silly things such as this when I asked what he would look like if his muzzle was longer.

The next character after Jeffrey was Daren. Coza was really happy when she found out she'd get to draw a character with a different body type finally. It was something I hadn't actually considered at the time.

By the way, if you're wondering about the text on his shirt here, Coza and I would occasionally send images back and forth with "fuck light rampant" on them as a joke. Anyone who did savage raids in FFXIV last tier will understand it. Our group got stuck on that one mechanic for almost a month.

Coza maaaaaaaaay have accidentally selected the wrong brush at one point.

Jesse's sprite was another one that Coza streamed on Discord for me to watch. Like with Caijoru, she wasn't sure what to do with his arms, so wavy, squiggly lines were the answer.

Or maybe up in the air was the answer.

Next character was Sean. I think we were both really tired when Coza made his sprite. At one point, Coza asked if I had anything in mind for hair, so I just said "mohawk" for the fun of it. Then it stuck.

Originally, I planned for Tracy to be a wolf, but later changed my mind because I had enough canine characters already, and so I went with red panda. I stayed pretty much hands-off for her design, since Coza sounded excited that she'd get to draw a trans character. I feel like it turned out well. I did, however, point out to Coza that I noticed she had been drawing tails on each character bigger than the last. Apparently she hadn't realized. She just has fun drawing them.

Marshall was one of the hardest characters for Coza to figure out how to draw. It turns out, there actually aren't all that many references for mouse characters out there, and out of those, most of them wouldn't fit with the artstyle of this VN. There are so many different interpretations of what an anthro mouse would look like, but this was the design that was settled on. As far as why I chose a mouse character: mice are my favorite animals, so I always make sure to include at least one mouse in anything I make.

The last sketch here is one that Coza did of Caleb before we settled on a pose and design for his sprite.

Lastly, have three fan-made bonk emojis created by @IJustANick

And fanart of Caijoru drawn by MelodicStream

Anyways, I hope everyone's having a good day, and I shall continue to keep everyone updated!