art direction

[Error302]

i REALLY don't like to give critiques on art direction because i am not an artist an 99% of the time people asking for artistic changes are bad faith actors with bad intentions but i'm going to allow myself just this one time.
please, i beg you, make your goblins more goblin-y.
especially right now goblins/goblin waifus are very popular and while what a goblin is is a topic open to a lot of artistic interpretation the general consensus is that goblins are:
shortstacks with huge like bat ears
manic/gremliny voice
just barely civilized/tribal
the idea of a barely civilized short green maniac in maid clothes, undertrained and tasked with cleaning a deadly dungeon is a GENUINELY FUNNY IDEA and you should absolutely run with this.
but the goblins as they stand now are just... too conventionally handsome/beautiful. you have made SMALL GREEN ELVES when you promised GOBLINS and it's just.... such a missed opportunity.
look at how like lines sensei draws goblins, or iwillBUCKyou, or hell even blizzard style goblins, even honey goblin the vtuber. lots and lots of variations of the goblin archetype.

but maybe i'm crazy. maybe i'm the only one here who prefers his goblins this way.
but please, at the very least like put up a poll and see what people think because i really think proper goblin-y goblins will be a good draw.

[neotechni]

please devs, i beg you, ignore everything the op said.

[SassyAzura]

Originally posted by Error302:

i REALLY don't like to give critiques on art direction because i am not an artist an 99% of the time people asking for artistic changes are bad faith actors with bad intentions but i'm going to allow myself just this one time.
please, i beg you, make your goblins more goblin-y.
especially right now goblins/goblin waifus are very popular and while what a goblin is is a topic open to a lot of artistic interpretation the general consensus is that goblins are:
shortstacks with huge like bat ears
manic/gremliny voice
just barely civilized/tribal
the idea of a barely civilized short green maniac in maid clothes, undertrained and tasked with cleaning a deadly dungeon is a GENUINELY FUNNY IDEA and you should absolutely run with this.
but the goblins as they stand now are just... too conventionally handsome/beautiful. you have made SMALL GREEN ELVES when you promised GOBLINS and it's just.... such a missed opportunity.
look at how like lines sensei draws goblins, or iwillBUCKyou, or hell even blizzard style goblins, even honey goblin the vtuber. lots and lots of variations of the goblin archetype.

but maybe i'm crazy. maybe i'm the only one here who prefers his goblins this way.
but please, at the very least like put up a poll and see what people think because i really think proper goblin-y goblins will be a good draw.

tldr: op is upset that the goblins aren't fugly and wants them to not draw peoples eyes as much... almost as bad as people sexualizing the characters or getting mad over the gender....

[SassyAzura]

Originally posted by neotechni:

please devs, i beg you, ignore everything the op said.

literally people have no lives man.... first people are upset about the gender, then they get mad cause the character isn't sexy enough, and now they are mad cause they are too sexy??? people will just never be happy will they

[SassyAzura]

Originally posted by Catman:

I honestly can't believe this topic is still going. I don't think most people have even really understood the OP at all, and I am surprised there are so many people advocating for prefab game engine waifu model green elves.

I personally feel like the game is missing a mark that would dramatically boost popularity and all it really would take is having the option for the goblins to be short and stacked.

we understand what op said... we're saying that they're argument is as empty as those getting mad about the gender as well as sexualizing characters considering this is just the DEMO and not the full verision...

[Catman]

Well I would have to say in counter to that though that all the people who have entered the thread to say some variation of "Devs ignore this fool" or anything like calling them a clown for "wanting ugly goblins" haven't contributed anything to the thread at all. Emptier than anyone who actually put forward an opinion, negative or positive.

I feel like all of those people posting nothing have not really read the OP properly at all and just assumed they want the goblins to be scrungly gremlins instead of anime waifu green elves, when in reality what they are asking for is the more modern conventionally attractive "shortstack" goblin.

Judging by the examples they provided especially: (Just bear in mind this will probably all be ecchi at least)
Lines Sensei - https://www.newgrounds.com/art/view/lineslines/countertop-stack
Very par for the course I would say as far as the trend goes for Goblins now. To be honest if they didn't have drawing timelapses on their youtube channel, I would feel like this was partially AI but it's real enough - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Un8xi9jRsZA - and they actually have a tutorial video about limb shaping for shortstacks.

iWILLbuckYOU - https://x.com/iWILLbuckYOU/status/1703090029776802190
In their setting the goblins are a lot more wild or tribal and still have a little bit of monster-y traits like the spiked teeth and unique eyes but the body proportions still speak for themselves really.

Blizzard, so World of Warcraft I guess - https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/wowpedia/images/d/d8/Goblin_heritage_armor.jpg
Probably the weakest example here imo but also this Goblin rep is nearly 13 years old now, that's when they were updated in appearance as a playable race at least, much older than the shortstack trend that has adopted them. I've always been of the opinion that WoW has a strange thing going on in its art style especially for faces. Here we see male Goblins fulfil the stereotype gremlin monster type look while females dimorphically look more human in the face, or I guess reminiscent of how the female Gnomes look relative to the more caricature wizard/mad scientist male Gnomes, who had been playable since the game came out. They're not really my thing, but mostly because I just find the faces a bit uncanny, they're definitely not ugly (but I would always be a proponent for males being able to look softer/cuter and females being able to look rougher/monster-y).

Honey Goblin (Vtuber) - https://www.youtube.com/@honey_goblin/ or maybe better this one https://x.com/honey_goblin
This is a pretty alright goblin to me, not particularly a shortstack but that's ok. Really if anything the game's current model is not too distant from Honey's design, they'd just need to squish the head shape so it's shorter and wider, make the eyes and ears larger.

Amidst looking these up I ended up skimming through the game's official Twitter account and it's kinda disappointing how much of the art- aside from much of it look like it was AI generated and then traced and altered- is just elves but green, and the male elf is even stranger imo since he's just very a plainly masculine guy with the long pointy ears. It just screams AI-generated anime girl and prefab designs. I know this is pretty harsh criticism for a (presumably proof of concept) game that's actually only just about to have a kickstarter campaign begin a few days but like, if you don't point out something you feel strong dissonance over as feedback to the devs, then they don't have the feedback to consider doing something about.

In their first news post here on Steam mentioning the Kickstarter campaign being readied for now, and the demo they released in the June Steam Next Fest they have a picture of the Kickstarter listing and they have some chibi drawings on it that are actually really cute and I honestly believe if the character models could be more like those proportions it would be really great looking for it.
https://steamcommunity.com/games/2748340/announcements/detail/4207000361148677127

I'm going to stop building this tower of text now, since I don't expect anyone passing buy to pay attention to most or any of it. The TL;DR is that none of the examples are ugly gremlins and it feels like out of the dozens of people who joined this thread to say something, or nothing much, only a small few including myself actually get what OP was talking about.

[Hex]

I mean, we haven't seen character creation yet. For all we know you can make anything from an ugly gobbo all the way to a shortstack that is 75% boob and butt. We just don't know, at the end of the day i think the designs are fine and if you don't care for them I'm sure people will mod the models ugly and lewd, thats just how people are.

[Psycolink555]

Without trying to pick a fight im just going to say people like the extra thicc gobbo girls pretty much for the exact reason you might expect. Nothing wrong with that. I for one downloaded this demo for the thicc gobbo girls. I am however staying for the surprisingly enjoyable gameplay. I dont think its a big deal that the gobbos arent depicted in the traditional monster style. being bothered by this fact is like being upset that you dont play as an actual gear in Gears of War. Its a creative twist on an established concept. Honestly being tied down by the traditional depiction can be a bad idea. Can you imagine if Tinkerbell was drawn as an accurate fairy? It wouldnt be as fun. Tinkerbell was drawn as a cute conventionally attractive human woman who just happens to be tiny and have wings while showing a scandalous amount of leg. These gobbo girls are depicted the same way for the same reasons. They are eyecandy.

[Catman]

Well, I think they could be a lot thicc-er, I'd like more eyecandy and particularly from the male Goblin - but I want to see a femboy design for that.

I just wonder what you mean by "accurate fairy"? lmao. I am as much a fan of fairies and pixies as I am a fan of the modern shortstack Goblin stereotype, but I don't like Elvish, faefolk or nature-y treehugger ♥♥♥♥. I like an interpretation that Pixies, contrasting to nature-loving Fairies, are instead very into artifice magic for engineering and mechanistry, aside from also being prank masters. But anyway, I don't know if anyone could really claim any design of a fairy as accurate, considering a lot of these folklore creatures are all really the same thing by many different names. The Wikipedia article for Fairy has its main image as an 1888 painting they call a "modern depiction" but it's just a naked, conventionally attractive woman wrapped in sheer cloth (as in, almost transparent) and she has large butterfly wings. So I think Tinkerbell might just get away with it, right?

Sometimes "fairy" was actually used to refer to all of these faefolk creatures, Goblins and Gnomes were included in that. Even "kobold" was one of those names for these miniature, mischievous peoples, where Kobolds nowadays, thanks to D&D mostly I believe, are generally the equivalent to Goblins for the Dragonborn and/or Lizardfolk type races, tiny lizard/dragon people. They also get collected up in the middle of the venn diagram - "generic, tiny, hoard enemies, remorselessly cannon fodder" + "they're actually cute and increasingly depicted as shortstacks rather than gremlins".

[Angela]

Personally I think we're short on games like this that allow us to be attractive creatures in general, we need more representation~ I understand the appeal of true to lore ugly goblins but- I enjoy killing them, not being them~

[Ikagura]

Originally posted by Jane Doe:

Personally I think we're short on games like this that allow us to be attractive creatures in general, we need more representation~ I understand the appeal of true to lore ugly goblins but- I enjoy killing them, not being them~

This^

[Catman]

I think a lot of you would like this, which has come to my attention recently https://store.steampowered.com/app/2768430/ATLYSS/

The Imp race in particular can easily be customised to look like a Goblin, the game also has a Kobold race. The Imp race itself is very clearly inspired by Midna as it is. Very based aesthetics all around. There's a demo on their itch.io page https://kiseff.itch.io/atlyss

[Bloodwyrm Wildheart]

...Isn't that part of the joke though?
Like "lol the stinky gobbos are actually waifus / husbandos!"
It's trope subversion.

[gator]

Originally posted by Jane Doe:

Personally I think we're short on games like this that allow us to be attractive creatures in general, we need more representation~ I understand the appeal of true to lore ugly goblins but- I enjoy killing them, not being them~

Which lore?

[Aesthetica Purple]

Originally posted by gator:

Which lore?

Tolkien's, I suppose? I'm not sure. As far as I know LOTR was what invented the cultural ideal of a 'goblin', but I could be wrong. I know dwarves weren't a Tolkien creation and come from Norse mythology, if not several more as well, so I could be wrong about Tolkien creating goblins.

[Ikagura]

Realistically speaking elves shouldn't even look attractive to humans because in the lore they have a face that does not look like any existing human group.