Larissa's breasts are mysterious. I show the character portraits around, and everyone always chooses Larissa as a favorite, and I think it's because her breasts are nondescript. Go ahead and check the first picture again... gimme your "breast" guess. It's likely the viewer has his own idea of how big they are, since she has a huge leather jacket covering them. My friend liked the smaller breasted characters and pointed out Larissa as being one of them, surprisingly.
Larissa is a lead character, so she needs to appeal to both a new audience and the returning audience from AD2. Larissa's breast size is right between what AD2's character average breast size was, and what men generally statistically like.
So what size do all men prefer? Well, if you haven't heard me rant on this, I'll bring you (and myself) up to speed.
http://www.hongfire.com/forum/showthread.php/11915-Breast-size-poll
This poll shows a skewing towards B, C, and A (or flat). Note that this poll is on a website with hentai, and generally hentai content tends to be underaged girls.
http://www.misterpoll.com/polls/254407/results
This poll is for a general audience. C's and D's are preferred.
There's an obvious correlation between preferred female age and preferred breast size. If you like younger girls, you're going to want them smaller.There is a percentage of men attracted to underaged girls. This group should be factored out, since they are not the audience I am aiming to please, but this is a very large percentage of the hentai loving population. What is the percentage of men attracted to underage? We can't say. There are statistics of men that act on these impulses illegally, but no statistics of men who simply prefer them. If I had to guess, I'd say it's somewhere around 30%, but that's just me being prejudiced. If we factor out the lolicon lovers, I have a blind estimate that most men prefer breasts between D cups and E cups.
And of course everybody loves talking about breasts. I'll be unveiling some animation stuffs soon, and I am more excited for that.
I included some references I used for Larissa's breasts. I just wanted to be more transparent about what goes on behind the scenes. It's not a tracing. I definitely used it for direction on how I wanted Larissa's nipples to look like.
My stance on copying is this: It's good to trace if you're just starting out as an artist. When you start to pick up on things, it's still good to copy and absorb other art styles. I'll occasionally hand copy some art from my favorite artists, but I don't actually show anyone this art, because it would be plagiarizing and pointless. I do it simply for practice. There's an unwritten rule communicated between the artist and the viewer that his art is original. Yet artists hone their craft by studying real life figures. It's a blurry line; Even if you trapped an artist into a room and made him draw something, it would still be based on his past perceptions and memories. Every artist has to have their unique stance on this subject. Instead of putting it into words though (as if this blog post wasn't big enough), I just included the references so you can be the judge on where I stand on copying.
Glad everythings going good with you, man. Thank you for keeping us up-to-date on things.
ReplyDeleteIt's gotta be said, she just keeps getting better and better haha. Since the past update of her she's deffinetly shot up to my top 3 (Isabel and Elaine being the other 2, what can I say? Multiple choices are fantastic). Honestly though, I had her figured for one of the smaller breasted ladies, though I'm pleasantly surprised to be wrong :D
Judging by those polls it sounds right, though I'm very surprised the hentai fans are into flat girls... I mean... what's the point really? Being into it myself I'd rather have a girl packing ballistics than looking like 10 year old boy, but hey, I'm not here to judge.
I appreciate all the work you're putting into this and wanted to congratulate you on reaching your offbeatr goal, again. I havn't really drawn anything in a long while (years) and I always just did it casually, but you've gotten inspired in it once more, thanks for that too.
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ReplyDeleteFrom my own experiences, I think the poll is fairly accurate. Between C-E is what most guys seem to go for. Purely objectively, I'd describe it best as "ample without being overly large". Considering both your target audience and the likely audience, you'd want a mixture of "large" and "small", but I would say large is the predominant in the mix. Despite the average hentai-goers preference for small for young, I'd say that in anything circling adult they tend to be more on the... shall we say, beach ball end. My point is that while hentai viewers may prefer the small, they also clearly enjoy the large too, provided that there's an emphasis on the breasts in this case. If you notice, most of the flat ones tend to skip over much breast related things as a result. Personally, I'd say I enjoy the large more than the small, but I also have loose preferences. I've been attracted to all kinds.
ReplyDeleteAlso, the nondescript thing seems accurate. A good friend of mine is rather well endowed, and tends to wear baggy clothing, big jackets and the like. It rather surprises people when she changes into a T-shirt. The nondescript part means that the "ogler" can form his/her own opinions, and generally is pleased either way.
Actually, the hongfire poll isn't too far from reality. A B-cup is a pretty average size for a woman with a medium build who hasn't had children, which most of your characters fit into. However, I would say that there probably is a decent amount of discrepancy between the ideal for real life and in illustrations. The illustrations are going to be 2dimensional and only responsive to one sense (sight). They are also not bound to the limits of reality (sagging, lopsidedness, etc.), and are of considerably less detail, so the response is not going to be identical.
ReplyDeleteAlso, while hongfire does have an ample collection of fans of lolicon, I wouldn't say that they are a particularly large portion. Now, fans of 'underage' depends greatly upon how one defines underage. From a child pornography standpoint, 90s teen starlets like Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, Mandy Moore, etc. would have been underage at their debut, but they would be legally at the age of consent in most of the world, and the percentage of men attracted to one or more them was far greater than 30%.
Good argument. I guess we don't see eye to eye, because I believe the "majority" of Japanese hentai to be lolicon content. By majority, I mean something close to at least 51%. The hentai community itself views lolicon differently than society. Normal society thinks it's wrong, but the hentai community accepts it and even fosters it. Even if I'm wrong about the majority of hentai content being lolicon, we can still attribute a larger amount of hentai viewers to be fans of underage than the rest of society. If there are more underage fans in hentai, then I'll stand by my correlation with their favoring smaller breasts.
DeleteI will agree that the hentai community has a larger proportion of lolicon than the general population, and they can be a vocal minority, especially when moral arguments are brought up. However, I wouldn't say it's more than 50%. Maybe >50% has high school aged and/or a pettanko character. Of course, a lot may depend on what particular medium you are dealing with, and where you draw the line. Ecchi anime strongly tend to favor busty girls, while doujinshi manga are probably significantly more favoring flat girls. This is especially so when you consider what a ridiculously huge fan base Touhou has, and they are typically portrayed as flat chested. Of course, a lot of the remainder consists of characters that have long remained popular, such as Tifa, Rei, Sailor Moon, and whatever a currently popular anime series has, and busty girls tend to be well represented there.
DeleteThere's also a bit of skewing in what gets translated, both by fans and professionals, and what gets scanned, uploaded, and such.
And finally, you haven't quite clarified what context you mean when you say underage. There is a lot that appears to be in the 14-17 range (stated age and apparent age are often quite different), which is certainly not prepubescent (I've seen 14 year olds with medium figures and at least C cups before), but is going to be a bit smaller than a woman of a similar build in her mid twenties to early thirties. If you consider that underage, you might be right, but I wouldn't call that lolicon, and neither would most lolicons.
Underage= Under the age of consent in America. Fun fact, AD players at >50% from the USA.
DeleteIt doesn't exactly matter where I draw the line on what I consider lolicon or not. The difference between the average age of pornstars and the average age of hentai characters is clear. 14-17's in hentai is still ideally smaller in breast size.
We can go around in circles arguing "oh but lolicon characters aren't that flat", but the actual argument still stands; hentai has younger characters that correlates with smaller breasts.
Look at it this way: 34% of the hentai audience surveyed prefer FLAT chests. Those flat chests can either belong to Loli or Adult characters. When compared to the non-hentai survey, it's pretty safe to assume that these flat chests belong to lolis.
If the flat chests belong to lolis, then I am correct in assuming smaller breast preferences correlate with younger age preferences.
If the correlation is correct, then I am also safe to assume that I should factor this lolicon audience out of the non-hentai survey average preferred breast size of C and D.
And so the actual final argument is whether or not the generally preferred breast size should be more than C or D, based on the unknown factor of how prevalent the exclusive preference to lolicon is.
So let's stay on topic here, hehe.
Part of the reason I liked her design was that it had that nebulous and wishy-washy quality known as "personality." You take one look at her and know that she's a tough, hard-bitten space cop-type (don't know if she's an actual cop or a soldier or something) who's not going to take any s*** from anyone, least of all these crazy aliens. Not really a Taiyo-esque belligerent vibe, just a sort of action-hero John McClain one.
ReplyDeleteDitto Isabella, who *also* gives you an idea of the sort of person she is just by looking at her.
...Then again, I'm not too fond of Stella's design, and *that* design, whatever its other faults, did have plenty of personality.
Hmmm... maybe it's just that they seem to have personalities that I like.
It's intended that you hate Stella. One thing I wanted to do was polarize people's opinions about characters. I know quite a few Stella fans though, so I'm happy you hate her. All the characters still have to be sexually appealing though...
DeleteHonestly I think Larissa can look like a guy, but everyone loves her. Oh well! I'll try harder in AD4 to make these characters even more different from one another, but there's only so much difference you can do before they become... well, unappealing.
Hate's a strong word, and not one I'm comfortable using. I don't *hate*, say, the Ghost in the Shell movies. I just accept that they're not to my taste and move on. And, in Stella's case, I accept that her design and the personality it conveys are not to my taste and move on.
DeleteSpeaking of moving on, I don't really think she's in any danger of looking that much like a guy. I can't quite put my finger on what it is, but there's *something* about her looks (haircut? body structure?) that marks her out as a girl.
And... well, hey. I'm not the one who's got two games' worth of experience in character design under my belt.
Don't worry, I'll encourage your hatred for Stella to grow. Stella hates fighting the aliens. It's so disgusting to her. Larissa loves doing it. Your dislike for Stella actually ties into the game's design... The game is about survival. You're going to have to choose someone to take the hit, and I'll expect it to be emotionally satisfying to put Stella up for guard duty so Larissa can get some rest.
DeleteAnd I'm glad with how Larissa turned out. The more people that like Larissa, the more perverts we'll convert. I mean, if you look at her, you gotta be a pervert to like her. That's funny.
...I am confused as balls about that last one. Not least because this game is probably going to have at least a *modest* pervert demographic irregardless. And why Larissa? She seems... well, pretty normal. I mean, she's even wearing pants.
DeleteAnd I *still* don't see why I'm supposed to hate Stella. I mean, ya know, if I don't like a movie, I don't burn the DVD. I just take it out and watch a different one. If I don't like a guy, I don't necessarily want to see him get eaten alive by aliens, I just don't really hang out with him and let him do his own thing.
...Though I guess if she's annoying I could see that emotional satisfaction come into play. Still not comfortable using hate as a descriptor, though. I mean, my brothers sometimes annoy the piss out of me, and I don't *hate* them. I wouldn't want to live with them either, but there's a line here.
Actually I'm aiming for the game to have a larger demographic since it will be available without adult content as well, and be on non-adult oriented sites. They're the closet perverts I want to release. Not you. You're on our side already.
DeleteOh well, I can't help it if you won't hate. To have preference is to like and dislike. Anger is a healthy human emotion, (nods) in monitored quantities. Hating the enemy is easy, but preference regarding your allies is a little more difficult. And fun!
Anger is different from Hate
DeleteI know it's most likely been mentioned or asked already (I apologize if so), but in regards to the story of AD3 and our role as captain. Will we strictly be in the "overseer" type of postion or will we as the captain also be participating in combat type things as well? Out of curiosity.
ReplyDeleteIt actually hasn't been asked.
DeleteIdeally, the Captain has 4 different backgrounds he can choose from at the beginning of the game. Doctor, Pilot, Survivor, Soldier. The backgrounds affect stats only. You are then treated as an extra survivor in battle. In the very specific instances where a survivor can die, having the Captain die is a complete game over, but not a game over for other survivors dying.
That does sound like a lot of work though, so it's one of those features that I'm debating putting in or not. Before you get all pouty over the fact that I might drop this idea entirely in favor of a combat-less captain, know that there are many ideas floating in the air. Like the idea where I'll have Doom Sprite like faces-
http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_llq8np8OgT1qkt0i4o1_500.png
Faces that change as they take damage/deal damage during combat sounds fun.
Or how about new costumes?...
See, you gotta draw the line somewhere...
(Before I begin, I'm not the OP there, I'm just giving my own opinion)
DeleteIf you don't include the captain as a fighter, you can still have the face idea with him, except where his expression reflects the battle as a whole. You could also try a sort of "comms room" idea, where he can see, to some extent, the "waves" of enemies, and give you a heads up as to how hard the wave will be.
If you DO keep him in, and make him game over material, I'd recommend adding a save function. I've always found that the AD series could do with one, but with a Game Over like that, it'd be necessary, or it'd be Snes hard.
And as for the defining a background, I assume your familiar with Actionscript, just make each a parent class and refer back to it when undergoing stat checks. For the death situations, that's fairly straightforward, define an action that checks if the commanders HP is greater than 0, if not, kill all animations and move to game over frame.
It's not a matter of stats... it's more a matter of implementing yet another sprite. Don't get me wrong, the idea is more concrete than other ideas are...
DeleteAs far as whether to implement some of the more complicated systems into the game or not, and I feel that I'm speaking for the vast majority of us here, I'd say just take your time. If you wanna try something, take the extra time to figure it out. Even if it doesn't turn out the way you wanted, learning those skills will help you create better games in the future.
DeleteOh and btw, great job so far with Aching Dreams 1 & 2. You rock man!
Thanks buddy
DeleteThat all sounds really sweet. What I was hoping for when it came to that was being able to just swap one of the ladies out and take their place. Chivalry action I guess? Lol.
ReplyDeleteCould possibly even be a challenge type thing to be forced to have your captain out as an extra risk but maybe extra reward in the process? Since if you bite the dust there, it's game over for that playthrough. But it's more than understandable if those ideas you mentioned do get bumped out. I don't mean to throw more ideas in to make it even worse haha.
Thanks for answering my question.
Hehe, while there isn't a chivalry action like that, the game has something similar.
DeleteGirls will have different roles. If you let them do what they like to do, they will have a higher relationship stat with you.
Olga does not like to fight. She would consider it favorable if you let her get back to repairs. Larissa wants to fight. If you let her do anything else, she'll get angry.
Dr. Veronica simply likes having supplies, so keep her around medical bays to keep her happy.
While characters only die in very rare circumstances, they'll still get incapacitated frequently. If they get incapped, they'll dislike you for allowing them pain... in most cases, haha.
So whereas in AD2 the game was just a dating sim, AD3 has more mechanics around, so you'll have to choose your priorities. Should you go for the area that will give your survivors the best chance of survival, or will you go to a dating area that will raise your affection level with your beloved?
You have to choose. In normal dating sims, you just choose option a, and then b and then c. With time, it's inevitable that you will reach all conclusions. With this game, you're confronted with choices that directly interact with how well you do in the game.
I am no longer Anonymous! Though for the life of me I still can't use the Reply button lol. I click it and nothing happens.
ReplyDeleteI like the sounds of that a lot, how they'll be effective when they're assigned to do their proper roles rather than just throwing someone anywhere and expecting it to work out exactly the same, and we get better relationships with them :D Adds more depth to it for sure.
The thing in AD2 that really made me go out of my way, was how some of the militia girls could actually die at the end, so I always made sure to grab the Composite bow and Warhammer so that atleast some would be spared if one of my crucial stats was too low otherwise. So it added a lot of immersion for me to make it so that they'd survive (most of them anyway).
Also, the way you showed the screen shots of the fighting bit with how you'll be bunkered behind a barricade shooting off the zombies and aliens reminded me a lot of the early "The Last Stand" zombie flash games, which is just awesome. I think you also mentioned in an earlier blog post that we'd be able to scavenge for weapons and supplies? That just adds even more to the survival element, I'm really liking the theme and how you'll be doing it this time around. You can deffinetly tell each improvment from AD1 to AD2 and now with AD3. I always enjoyed how there was more meat and story to the AD series rather than just another bland and blunt MnF sex game. Major props, man.
The main inspirations that I consciously brought over were The Last Stand, Marvel vs Capcom, and Left4Dead.
DeleteI'm amazed you made sure to spare the girls at the end. I didn't actually program anything in, when the girls actually die. I just wanted that emotional impact, so I'm glad it affected somebody, haha.
Scavenging isn't like in Diablo where you click on a chest to loot it. It's automatic, but you still make choices. Every few days, you can migrate your crew to a different room on the station, and different rooms carry different supplies, buffs, penalties, and defenses. As soon as you migrate to a room, you automatically pickup all the ammo, or the crew basically goes around and picks it all up for you. Now you could technically run through the station picking up all the supplies you want, but every time you do so, the aliens will attack fiercely since you won't have your defenses up.
You'll be asking yourself things like "Are my survivors healthy enough to survive the counter attack after we migrate?", "Where should we go, which place has the supplies we need?", "Should we hold out longer and use up the rest of these barricades here first?", and my favorite "So how pissed is everyone going to be if I tell them to migrate to a Swimsuit Shop?"
Glad you like the games, LS.
No, that's not how this game works.
ReplyDeleteIt should be like in Terminator 1 when they decide to have sex even though the Terminator is coming for them and could bust into the house any minute.
ReplyDeleteI remember that part feeling the same way as everyone else. We're shown that the terminator does not eat or sleep, and tirelessly chases them... and they have time for sex.
ReplyDelete"But he could bust into this room any second! We could die!"
"That's what makes it extra sexy"
"Ohhhh yeah, you're right"
thats the kind of fantasy i like
ReplyDeleteYou should parody that scene. Have a terminator robot chick chasing the main dude to extract his cum.
ReplyDeleteUpdate soon?
ReplyDeleteSoon
Delete