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Possible minor change to Odachi's design... Please vote in this poll!
🕑 Added 2025-04-11 08:43:30 +0000 UTCUPDATE:
Ok, so the poll is over with a clear commanding preference for Option A, with a small smattering of people who couldn't tell the difference, so I'm glad to have this confirmed that not only does Option A look better to a large majority, but it's also not drastic enough of a change that people would immediate think something was wrong, so I'll likely go forward with the changes, although with a few minor fixes.
Here's what they look like side-by-side as well as which one was which.
Side by side, you might even prefer the old one over the new one, but there's a caveat here...
Odachi was one of my first published characters to use "Accessory Hair", a KK Creator technique where you place the hair bits as accessories instead of using the ones in the character creator. The plus side, is that I can design multiple hair styles for each outfit, use layering techniques to create very unique hair options (remind me to tell you about Taru's origins when I get to doing a deep-dive on the outliers), as well as choose from hair options that the base creator doesn't have (Odachi and Daburu both do this.)
The negative side is that when you want to change outfits, the hair goes with it, leaving you with an empty skull, or in my preferred case using a base hair color "buzzcut" look.
It was when I swapped to a premade outfit for another character that I immediately saw what was wrong with Odachi's base design...
The original Odachi is still a "bulbhead" (a nickname we give to the base-designed character head proportions in default character creation. Her skull was proportioned like an alien when I was trying to give her a longer/skinny face, and while it looked decent to alright in the hair I chose for her, it caused a lot of problem when placing her against other characters, and the disparity of her skull proportions stood out even more.
It's still a minor difference but I felt the need to bring her head more in like with the rest, and Option A was the result. I may still do some tweaks. You probably noticed that A's hair clips into her cheek, something I thought I fixed in design (and doesn't appear in the example image), but it's not a difficult adjustment. You may also notice her mole is more squashed in option A, and I'm not sure if I want to round it out more, or lengthen her face just a BIT, so it's more in line with the thin frame. As her head became technically smaller during the adjustments, so did her height, so I re-adjusted that in her overall size, which is why her shoulders sit a bit taller now.
I do redesigns constantly when I learn new techniques, or think I can fix minor issue with how a character is presenting in Studio as opposed to the Character Creator. Ciann had a fairly major rework I'm not sure if anyone noticed, Suki's had some minor adjustments, and Acacia gets face and body tweaks occasionally. Milori and Hope's size and shape have also hit a few reworks. Original Leiko was also a bulbhead and had a MASSIVE head that was subtly reduced in constant posts while Suki's head was way too small at one point.
This early image being the real awakening moment to that fact:
These Odachi adjustment are just the first time I felt it was immediately noticeable enough to fundamentally change the "vibe" of the character. I just wanted to be sure I wasn't being over critical, so thanks to everyone that offered feedback.
(Original outdated post below)
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Yesterday when designing some more outfits for Odachi, I came across an aspect of her that was bugging me. While I did some adjustments and was overall happy with the result, I felt it might look off to other people, so I figured I'd ask before I commit to a look. There's two versions of Odachi saved to my character list at the moment, but the results of this poll will have me commit to one.
To avoid any bias against change, I'm not telling you which one is the adjusted version. You can probably figure it out with mild observation, but overall I'm just looking for a preference with no caveat. Let me know if one stands out as objectively better looking to you.
If the third option of the poll ends up winning, I'll likely move forward with the changed design since it means it wasn't drastic enough for anyone to really take notice.
Poll ends on 4/13 (this Sunday) and once it's over, I'll tell you which one is which and exactly what was changed.
VERSION A:
VERSION B:
