Hi!

This is Altila, the character designer (for the characters and uniform, but the casual clothes other than Yuuna's very first clothes are not my design) and the CG artist. Yui grants me the power to write a devlog for my part and I shall use it! In this postmortem, I want to talk a little about the production process on my part. 

Oh, but first, please forgive my poor English. Second, please play the game first before reading to avoid possible spoilers. This is going to be long, by the way. You have been warned.

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DEVELOPING THE PROLOGUE

I joined Yui back in 2020 as a CG artist. She already had really detailed character descriptions. Someone else was supposed to be in charge of character design and sprites. Somehow, Yui ended up taking over the role of the characters that appeared in the prologue: Hasegawa, Taiga, Yuuna, Erina, Haaku, and the Hooded Man. In the prologue, there were only two CGs: Haaku and Yuuna. That time, I was trying to match Yui's coloring style of Haaku for the CG. Here is the previous version of the very first CG:

Different? Yes.

I'm not going to tell the detail, but long story short, I ended up doing the design for the characters too and someone else did the sprites. If you ask why didn't I do the sprites too, at that time I was a bit busy with university. Quarantine, yes. Still, the university stuff went on. Not to mention, I was preparing for my thesis too.

The first batch that I drew were the characters from the prologue. It was still a mystery to me why the detectives had images. Oh. Since Yui actually had the base for those characters, so I only needed to redraw them. Yui also made the initial design for Shun (which was different from the current one) and there was also the legacy of the very first sprite artist which was Jun's design. But then, I took over the designs (more like sketches, though) because of a reason that I also don't remember, and someone else did the sprites.

Around that time, the sprite artist was Mellow. To match Mellow's coloring style, I recolor Haaku, so it ended up like the one in the game now.

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DEVELOPING CHAPTER 1

You might notice that I was and still sucked a big time at anatomy. Fortunately, Mellow was really reliable.  I love Mellow's drawings and lines. To be honest, I was a bit too comfortable and was like "Well, this is just a sketch anyway. If there was an error, the sprite artist will fix it!" but welp, unfortunately, the sprite artist decided to leave. This is why you could see some differences in some of the characters that appeared after the prologue.

Among the designs, Zeeku was the one with the longest time to finish because I lost my motivation again and again due to his asift$%W87fdh design. Raiji too gave me 3748wif@gCsv time. Shun and Jun were relatively easy to draw.

Although not by much, by the time it was time for me to draw what I was supposed to draw (a.k.a the CGs),  my art changed a little.  Also, because of the change in the person in charge of the sprites, I decided to follow the sprites anyway. 

Yui had marked the part where she wanted the CG to appear, so I read the script as I drew the CG. For Chapter 1, Jun and Shun's CG were among the easiest to draw while the girls gave me a massive headache. For unknown reasons, I have been unable to draw Rikku ever since I finished drawing her design. Aina was torturing me and as for Wadda... I guess it was purely my mood, but Wadda turned out quite good, I think.

I love CG with backlight, like in Makoto and Shun's CG. I was surprised at myself when I finished Makoto's CG. Like... "OH HOLY, WHO IS THIS??". For Shun's CG, I like the change of expression he had there. Good job, myself!

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DESIGN INSPIRATIONS

It was basically Yui feeding me with a lot of materials. For the uniform, honestly, I felt like it was a little tricky because the setting was a prestigious magic school in the modern era. So, it was like... ancient but modern, magical but futuristic? Something like Mahouka Koukou if you know. The main inspiration for the uniform was *ahem* Ensemble Star's Valkyrie's uniform. It was our joke that Yuuna and friends were going to idol school instead of magic school. I originally put different colors on the left side and the right side of the uniform to ask which one Yui liked better, but it turned out she preferred it like that. So, that was how we got the different colored uniform.

As I mentioned before, some characters were already drafted by Yui. Haaku was the one that was literally the same but drawn differently.  

Zeeku and Erina's design was supposed to be very Japanese which I had zero idea about, especially Zeeku. So, if any Japanese played and read this. I sincerely apologize if I made any mistakes. Zeeku's design inspirations were from... Touken Ranbu and Hakuouki. Kane-san and Harada (mostly Kane-san, though).

Some characters didn't have inspirations from anywhere other than the initial description and some random images.

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CHALLENGES FOR CHARACTER DESIGNS

Sketching a lot of characters was actually quite fun. I also gained a lot of experience. The challenging part for me was:

1. Anatomy (oh, well...)

2. Poses. I didn't know how what should I do about the pose most of the time if I didn't ask Yui.

3. Hairstyles, especially males. They had to look different even if they would be colored later!

4. Heights. Like... how to scale them? Idk. And that red guy Zeeku was super tall while Wadda was super small but they had to fit on screen.

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CHALLENGES FOR CGS

1.  Yet another anatomy problem plus a camera POV problem.  It was quite hard to find a good angle due to my inexperience.

2. Some CGs had a similar pose to their original sprite *ahem* Jun *ahem*.

3. Coloriiiiingggg!!!! 

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PROMO ARTS

So, It was time for... otome jam 2023. Yui planned to release the game during the jam. But, I also planned to release a game. So, Yui was helping me with the BG for my game while I helped with the promo art. Have you seen it? Here, the one without the title because I don't have the titled one:

If you followed Yui's Twitter or mine, maybe you had saw the countdown arts. Yui didn't know about this, so if she read this it would be her first time knowing. So, actually... she didn't ask for that. I was just sitting and suddenly like "Oh, how about I draw countdown arts for Milcham with the girls' in it?". Then, I purposely released my game sooner so I could work on the countdown. I mean, we worked hard for three years, might as well add the hype, right? Another fun fact, I started drawing from H-1 first instead of H-3 even though H-3 was just one or two days away. When I started drawing H-3 (after H-1 and H-2), I just realized it. Fortunately, I managed to finish in time.

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CLOSING

Phew, that was long. To conclude, I just want to say thanks for playing.

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BONUS

Here are some of the original sketches that I made (in no particular order):

Best regards,

Altila