#development post

[the-redemption-project]

Motive and Purpose: The Exterminations.

The idea of Lilith being the mind behind Hell’s yearly Exterminations did not start with me. @paranormal-paracosm gave me the idea while I was venting about trying to untangle the mess of motivations in Hazbin Hotel.

I knew I’d wanted more complex reasons behind the Exterminations than a simple hatred of the residents of Hell, but given Lilith’s affiliation with Adam (which was a particular frustration for me at this point in time), it made sense to involve her in his work. I’d been thinking about how the then-recent reveal of Lucifer being unable to harm Sinners would have affected his relationship with Lilith, and I decided to make her the Architect of the Exterminations.

Lilith had watched Hell grow increasingly lawless as Lucifer fell deeper into his depression, unable to rule over his subjects. The Sinners in the Pride Ring no longer respected the Royal Family as they once had, but bowed to Sinners with more power than a mortal soul should have been able to hold. With her beloved unable to defend his honour, Lilith went to the last person she ever expected to return to; the First Man, with a dangerous idea in her mind; to introduce a yearly culling of the Sinners in Hell, conducted by a heavenly force led by Adam himself. Knowing that the Angels could kill Sinners, she hoped that reintroducing morality to Hell would lead to the souls in the Pride Ring revering their immortal rulers once more.

Adam presented the idea to the Seraph as his own, with Lilith’s blessing, and although they were reluctant, they accepted the proposal. Adam was made the new commander of the existing Exorcists, and with the support of their Lieutenant, was able to turn them into a force to be reckoned with. Lucifer signed the terms without protest, and Lilith, fearing that her Deal would be revealed, left the Pride Ring and her family behind. Lucifer still recognised his beloved’s work.

Adam had his own reasons for making a Deal with Lilith, but I’ll talk about that another time.

[ask-hajimehinata]

There was a knock on Hajime's door that was left unanswered, causing the person on the other side to knock again, this time more aggressively. After a groan, the person on the other side used a spare key to unlock the door, stepping inside.

This revealed an small girl who looked oddly similar to Hajime, perhaps a family member, who cautiously searched the house for the older male. Finding nothing, she sighed and plopped on his couch with a pout, holding the cat plush she carried with her close to her chest. "Of course he's not here." She grumbled. "Hajime always has a way of finding trouble." She said to herself, kicking her legs. She supposed she would just wait for him to get back.

??? is available for asks!

[areseiseart]

08-10-2020 A long Awaited Update

Personal emergencies are done! Which means I can get back to work and update you all. I apologize so much for the delay everyone, my cat needed the vet, my mum needed emerge and I needed sleep,

Drama aside-here is the update.

Writing:

So let's talk pacing-I realized while working away from home this week that i was trying to cram way too much into the prologue of the game so I decided to go back reorganize my thoughts and how i want each different part to be introduced.  I have set up a short brief 'prologue' that acts as a flashback of the mc of events before the game begins. This short prologue leads into the common route where the characters will each be introduced. The prologue and chapter one of the common route are done and I am thinking 4 chapters will be the maximum needed for the common route. I'm working on chapter 2 of the common route this coming week and will update you all as the pacing and plot progresses.

I have also started fleshing out the vague line of Aspen's route. He will be the first to be written so I've gone back and forth on his first chapter set up as I have changed and adapted the common route.  His first chapter is majorly just in need of editing but has been put on hold in the meantime until I complete and finalize the common route. Just to ensure continuity is upheld.

The side stories are more casual but I am mostly done with the first 'story' for Aspen and Gabriel, it is just a casual story of their first meeting.  It might appear more episodic in its releases.

Other than that just spelling corrections and some quick pacing changes have been made to the completed chapters (prologue and common route ch1.)

Art:

I got quite a bit of art things I'm working on! Minor sprite adjustments to fix anatomy but as well as some background sketches.

The two backgrounds are of a lounge area and a classroom, there's also a revamp of aspen's pin up that I'm working on. because i was unhappy with the anatomy of the first one. Here’s a preview of the sketch for the lounge for now

Coding/GUI etc:

Coding very much took a back seat this past few weeks.  Other than implementing more of the script from the prologue and completed chapter 1 of the common route I haven't touched it much. I  wanna focus on the assets being completed before I place them into renpy. just to avoid losing files as i have a couple times now.

That's all I've got today! But I hope you all liked it. thanks so much for patience <3

[the-redemption-project]

Concept to final design; Charlie Morningstar.

I have a giant Pinterest board for The Redemption Project, so I began by saving twenty pins for Charlie, spanning fanart of the character herself, as well as real life garments alongside aesthetic images, song lyrics and a lot of text posts. I then used Pinterest’s Shuffles app in order to make a single image combining the contents of the board, thinking about how I was positioning both the text and visuals.

Using this as a reference, I did a rough sketch in order to figure out Charlie’s design; at this stage, I was more focused on the character’s style, choosing not to include animalistic elements at this stage.

Having completed the sketch, I decided that I wasn’t a fan of the yellow tint to her skin, deciding to go with a more desaturated colour. I also decided to add horns and ears, leaning into her demonic heritage, although I knew she was going to be a humanoid character. My biggest problem, however, was her skirt. Although my notes put the issue down to the skirt being too short, I wasn’t happy with longer skirts either. The issue turned out to be more complicated than I expected; the blazer was too long and affected the skirt, although I did also lengthen the skirt slightly.

Finally, I decided to edit some of the colours from the first design; making the blazer and pumps red to be more similar to her Hazbin design.

Now that I was satisfied with Charlie’s design, I did a full piece; redrawing the character with the correct proportions and an appropriate pose; I chose the pose in question in order to show off both her design and her character.

I did a couple of alternate versions before coming to the one I was happy with. This one I rejected as I felt like the lighting was too red, and I feared it washed out Charlie herself.

And that brings me to the final piece! It takes a long time to develop and design a character, and The Redemption Project is no exception. I hope this gave you a chance to see what goes on behind the Hotel doors!

[areseiseart]

Dev log 07-04-2020

Hey guys! bi weekly updates are underway so here we go with updated info. Sadly I didn’t get as much done as I wanted-since I have experienced yet another loss of a family friend. (we’ve had a death almost every month this year...2020 is not great)

That being said here's my small update.

art:

I was having some issues with some of Carmen’s sprite expressions. So I went back and tweaked the base and will be editing the editing the other expressions later. The anatomy was just bugging me and I couldn’t figure out why until now. I’ve been finishing up pin up poses for postcards as well and I'm waiting for some more prints. 

writing: 

I managed to get through most of the prologue edits and started the potato draft for Aspen’s first chapter. Other than that I was mostly doing some side story stuff to keep myself writing.

Coding: 

I was having an issue with Jace’s sprite where he would just zoom in-and then out...and then disappear from the screen entirely. So that got fixed thankfully and he is no longer zooming off into the distance. I fixed some minor spelling mistakes I made in the code so things run smoothly. 

GUI

I did some small edits to the mock up I already made for the gui and I’m no designing the new text box which will be something like a piece of parchment.

All in all its not as updated as I’d like but sadly life gets in the way and being one person is somewhat frustrating. But I’m still powering through and getting my mojo back :)

Hope everyone is doing well and I’ll be back in another 2 weeks with more updates!

[areseiseart]

Just a public development update for anyone curious!!

[the-redemption-project]

Revamping Angel Dust!

I have already spoken at length about my issues with Valentino’s season two writing during my Sympathy for the Abusers essay, but I also struggled to with how to adapt the character’s early writing. It’s no secret that Hazbin Hotel’s Valentino thinks with his genitals, but I knew very early on that porn wasn’t something I was interested in writing about for The Redemption Project.

Subsequently, I was able to figure out how to adapt Angel’s very flirtatious personality for a more dramatic show:

But the character really came together when I was discussing Angel’s plotline in season two.

@paranormal-paracosm made some really good points about how this could affect the character’s motives:

As for Angel’s design, I planned a feminine design in the early stages, with a showbiz influence.

I ended up doing various outfits for the character while playing fashion games, and came to a conclusion about the character’s design:

And with that, the character came together rather quickly.

He’s one of my favourites, and I hope you enjoyed hearing about what went into my rework.