SUPER ARISA WORLD

[Shinbs]

...and not a dumbed down version of the main char.

Yeah this; I don't see how people are making direct connections between them other than the fact that they're both bulletheads.

I don't see how people make connections between Sonic and Shadow just because they're hedgehogs.
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Reposting for new page:
I'm not saying she must look badass,I'm saying she must look cool,as in interesting,and not a dumbed down version of the main char.
And the size thing still doesn't matter,no matter the relation betweem the characters;Vegeta is MUCH shorter than Goku,and guess who's most badass.

Here's my go at it,my original plan was to go for a complete overhaul,but I ended up making a more flashed out,less boring version of the current concept.
It's kinda eh,but better then the original imo.

[RokuGurin]

...and not a dumbed down version of the main char.

Yeah this; I don't see how people are making direct connections between them other than the fact that they're both bulletheads.

I don't see how people make connections between Sonic and Shadow just because they're hedgehogs.

Well, that's my point. Sonic and Shadow have features dissimilar to each other. Just as Arisa and Belle do. They're the same species, but that's it.

If that's the only reason why they look exactly alike then it's kind of a weak argument.

[Garamonde]

The one next to Arisa is best.
She's more eye-catching now -- I think now just tweaking the color of her hair or head (probably the head) will probably complete the look!

[Gors]

I see what you did, Shinbs, and I'll take it into consideration. I'll still play my designs though. Thanks for sharing your point of view.

[Rosencrantz]

OH SHIT

WAIT

Gors, do you remember your original ref?

The yellow bean thing?

Belle looks kind of like Original Gorsal and I think it would be pretty rad if you referenced it more in Belle's redesigns~

---

unless you've already been pulling the designs off of Origigors, in which case nvm

[Shinbs]

DB,you need to chill out dude,I'm not saying she's exactly alike Arisa,but I do think she's a dumbed down version of her as in "It's kinda like Arisa,except more bland",while Shadow is more "Kinda like Sonic except more badass".
It's normal to have characters based on the main one,as long as they look interesting,I'm just trying to make Belle more eye catching.

@Jetters:
By head you mean her skin right?
Yeah,I think it'd look better as a more vibrant yellow,kinda makes more sense in comparison to Arisa.

[Mutsukki]

Here's a basic recolor, just to see if I can trigger something with this:



Color choosing is probably all wrong and still doesn't make her stand out much, but I played a bit with themes (which I hope are identifiable) and changed her expression a bit (I would change the eyes but welp skills). I don't think this is a better version or anything and honestly I really like Shinbs edit. But, idk, maybe different colors can help too or something.

[Gors]

Yo, just dropping this here

I went in and wrote all that Belle is supposed to be, while discussing with my another friend.

as for now I'm trying to doodle some poses for Belle
and give her another clothing

to better reflect her french nationality

i don't want to make her wear striped shirts and beret though
I'm mainly focusing on clothing so i don't need to rely on accessories

basically people told me she is too much alike Arisa

and thus she looks boring

and with bad design

though that was the point

to make a rival that looked like an edit of yourself
the concept is to make fun on those type of characters

as if she was just an annoying 'fancharacter' of sorts

and everyone would mistake her for you, making her angry

that is the joke
the premise of this character

is to look generic, while having actions and personality of her own

so it's a paradox of sorts

(because fancharacters are usually mary sues of their creators)

(and therefore not creative at all)
I can't make her a complete opposite

this is why I've been developing her personality too

she's someone who wants to defeat you to be the hero of the game
but other than defeating you, she doesn't do anything bad to others

she is just jealous of you

but also is hardworking and with a strong sense of justice
also because she looks like Arisa a little, people always confuse her

which makes her really mad because she doesnt want to be compared to Arisa

kinda like in a 'I am better person than her' way

in fact she doesn't even want to kill you
just stop you from saving the world
so she can do it instead

I also decided that Belle will have wacky animations
do you know those characters with cool moves

kinda like that

in a Viewtiful Joe way
it's that kind of animation that 'hypnotizes' the viewer

or it's just damn straight cool
I can't stand all this manichaeism

aka the Good is always good and the Bad is always bad

that's too artificial

and not human-like

everyone is prone to errors

so why not represent it in game
Arisa must look at her and think 'what the fuck is this girl' instead of being intimidated by it

it's like you confonting someone that physically looks like you

but with different clothes
it's that the world is also filled of non interesting people

that's what Belle is supposed to make fun of, in a way

she is yet another generic character like anyone else who also has the same goal than you and wishes to be different

briefly saying, she is making fun of the people who make Sonic fanchars and expect them to be importnat

the game being a parody of tSR and the members that came across it, having an edit character to represent such people would be fitting

So even if I redesign the character slightly, this main concept will stay. So I hope you understand.

If you want to help redesign it, feel free! Please maintain the concept though!

[RokuGurin]

Okay, I attempted a new design using Shinbs's modified sprite.

Spoiler

How's that?

EDIT: Got ninja'd by Gors. He sent me the same thing, so I guess it'll be up to him then, as I completely agree with what he said. There are no established rules as to how a rival should look. Having her look as is instead of being "more appealing" says more about her character. Putting it deeper, she might not have much going for her but she still strives to be better.

[StarSock64]

Not to beat a dead horse, but people still don't seem to get what I'm trying to say so I'd like to try again...

The reason this is so important is that rival characters tend to be, y'know, of elevated importance. If it's someone who's trying to beat you, you're going to want the player to feel the drive to beat them or to not be outdone. Shoot, it could even be a lovable loser kind of thing. I'm not saying it has to be "cool" or "opposite," just characteristic in some way or another that makes it interesting enough to want to care. I'm all for a rival who's not opposite. That's really not the point.

I appreciate Zac's post because it tackled a relevant issue (telling us why he thinks I'm wrong) instead of saying that my C+C isn't...what...worth the effort? No C+C is really "necessary," and that's for Gorsal to decide and nobody else. If it's flat out wrong go ahead and say something, but if your argument sounds similar to "you don't need to put the time into something like that because it doesn't bother me, even though I have no reason to say it wouldn't help" then that's really not an argument worth having. Especially when half the board apparently was bothered by it.

Still, I disagree. You can throw in words like "genius" if you want but I think it's a really weird justification for something that has a much better option. It's perfectly okay to have some characters be "ordinary" or "unremarkable", but why would you want a rival character, of all things, to be like that? It's a rival. It's supposed to stand out. It can be second to the hero, yes, but this design is second to pretty much every character in the game. If the audience doesn't care about the rival, why even have one? The post itself practically admits that she's not very likable. Why would you ever want to justify your rival not being particularly likable? Isn't the likability of rivals what makes rivals so great in the first place? Do you really want your character's rival to just be someone who fades into the background? Like, they just come up every now and then and you don't even pay mind to them? It serves no purpose. Why settle for something dull when you could do something better?

------

And now after I finish writing this huge as butt post, gorsal posts that. I seriously don't know why you would let us argue for several pages about "this design is bad!" and then pull out "it's supposed to be bad!" out of nowhere. That's not what you told us before, you just said it was supposed to be a rival parody yes, but idk why or how that means it has to look less remarkable than any rival character I've ever seen in my life. That doesn't have anything to do with a parody of rival characters and honestly sounds to me like an excuse. Rivals aren't unremarkable, and parodies tend to y'know, exaggerate or make fun of traits they actually have, not make them up. If anything, I think a real rival parody when put red oni/blue oni TO THE MAX or do luigi-style inferiority complex TO THE MAX, but a generic NPC recolor design says neither to me (was there an argument about luigi how used to be a recolor? Nintendo changed his design for a reason, y'know.) She can look inferior to arisa, look a little bit ordinary, and have an inferiority complex she's trying to overcome without being so ridiculously ordinary and generic that I can't even care about her existence.

The parody of fancharacters thing came out of nowhere. If that's what we're going with all of a sudden yeah okay sure. But if I was going to do a parody of fancharacter rivals, I would probably make it even MORE ridiculous than I would a parody of a normal rival character because fancharacters tend to throw on all sorts of crazy unnecessary details or have really terrible haircuts/wacky color schemes/blah blah blah in horrible attempts to stand out (which sounds like something somebody who constantly wants to be better might do!). I fail to follow the reasoning under any of the possible lines of thought, frankly.

And to answer dragonboy's questions about why arisa and belle look too alike
None of the changes between them would require surgery. Give belle a paint job, a change of wardrobe, and a wig, and voila, she's arisa. Normal people can do this to themselves in real life without surgery. Even shadow has entirely different quills/different eyes that can't be swapped by any normal, natural methods (don't even say a haircut because that's not how their quills appear to work)...most rivals have a different body type, etc...her hairstyle is kind of -the- anime NPC hairstyle. Idk if she has different eyes, but if they are different, it's hard enough to tell in the sprites that it's a negligible difference.

[TomGuycott]

You guys are getting way too worked up over a parody character in a game that is also a parody.

[StarSock64]

I'm not getting worked up over anything

people said things about art that I disagree with on an art forum, so I responded?

I seriously don't know why people are thinking I'm freaking out because I'm just talking about art. Isn't it kind of important for artists to tell other artists when they think they're wrong so that maybe people don't just let any old justification slide because that's how art gets bad?

:I idk am I not supposed to say anything but positive things now idgi

[Mutsukki]

It's because you're pretty much angry sounding in every post you're making here. idk if it's your particular posting style, but this here:

I appreciate Zac's post because it tackled a relevant issue (telling us why he thinks I'm wrong) instead of saying that my C+C isn't...what...worth the effort? No C+C is really "necessary," and that's for Gorsal to decide and nobody else. If it's flat out wrong go ahead and say something, but if your argument sounds similar to "you don't need to put the time into something like that because it doesn't bother me, even though I have no reason to say it wouldn't help" then that's really not an argument worth having. Especially when half the board apparently was bothered by it.

Nobody even told you that you shouldn't bother criticizing it. People were just counter-argumenting your argument, and that's apparently a big deal? You said something you find is wrong about that art and people said something they thought it was wrong about your comment, is that bad? This is the whole reason for posting in a forum in the first place. If you think around it, you're the one who's criticising everyone that doesn't see a problem with it and that they should actually see one, otherwise they're wrong and trying to sugar-coat comments to Gors.

[Previous]

If this is going to be a personal discussion about how people post and whatnot but not about SAW, have it somewhere else, please.

[StarSock64]

People were counterarguing something that made no sense to counterargue. Nobody even said that my argument was -wrong- until zac did, just weird arguments that it was "fine" as it was. If everyone was okay with "fine" then there wouldn't be C+C.

I'm not criticizing -anyone-, I'm criticizing -their arguments- because I think they're wrong and I'm not sure why people are treating that like it's a bad thing.

I'm really not angry and idk why everyone's being so sensitive. Stop taking it personally. It's about the reasoning and the art.

Like, until I say that someone (some -one-, not some -thing-) is stupid or insult them, it's not even worth pointing out that you interpret my tone as being upset because that's irrelevant to whether or not my arguments are valid. Seriously, I'm just trying to have a conversation.

edit: oh woops previous