Minor Wortox Skin Criticisms

[crushcircuit]

I absolutely love (most of) Wortox's skins, but I feel like some of the in-game sprites could use some work. I wanted to lay out some of my criticisms here, in the hopes that these are a bit more manageable as small fixes.

I'm not asking for any complete redesigns here, as I know that would be crossing a line for paid content. I will be providing a few sprite edits that could be seen as a bit much, but I do believe there is a way to fix all of these that would be way less severe than how I approached them. I just like providing alternatives where possible, to help in articulating and providing examples of what I mean.

Moonbound Maxwell's changes as a skin are the farthest extreme I could imagine for skin changes. My criticisms here are asking for way less than that, as I don't think it's very productive to just throw out the whole thing when it's relatively easy to build upon these old assets. I simply think that there are a few things that are a bit rough around the edges.

All of the skins I criticize here are ones that I enjoy, but don't use for reasons that I state in this post. I'm not going to criticize skins I just don't like at all, as that wouldn't be a good use of my time. Please keep that in mind.
Minotaur

• The hairline in the side view is inconsistent with the front view, and his hair generally looks like it was designed to be viewed from the front and only the front. It lacks structure in the side and back views.
• Speaking of, he does not have a skull in his side view.
• The shape of his head is based off of Wortox's initial concepts, not the final. It is way thinner and curvier than it should be.
• Finally, his earrings are flipped on the back sprite. (Or... not flipped? You get what I mean.)

I will also be providing my own sprite edits, which I will place under spoilers:

Spoiler

This is likely going to be the most drastic edit on this post, as I'm focusing on minor changes as opposed to the design itself. Maybe I'll make another post on that in the future just for funsies.

Here's the breakdown of the changes:

• Probably the most obvious change, I changed his hair and gave him a proper mullet. I wanted to do something less drastic with his hair because I like the front view, but I genuinely could not figure out what was supposed to be going on with it. So I redrew it from scratch, but I don't think that's necessary. His chest and tail tufts are also given more scribble detail to match.
• In redrawing his hair, I gave him more head room for his horns, like an actual bull (which the Minotaur is based on)
• I redrew his ears to look more like a bull as well, and fixed his earrings.
• His head shape is changed. Literally traced over default Wortox, like most of his skins do.
• I also removed his muscles. They aren't there in the portrait, and I think they look odd.

Additionally, I feel his hooves could also be drawn better (as they are in newer Wortox skins) but I didn't do that here. Mostly because I didn't feel like it. I did change his legs to not have a gap between the leg and the hoof, as it makes it look a bit rough.

No-Eyed Deertox (Costume)

• His head has no structure.

Yeah, that's it. That's the dealbreaker of this skin for me. His head's a rectangle! He's missing his skull in his side view (much like Minotaur), and his cheekbones, which are one of Wortox's defining features. He doesn't look right without them. Additionally, the head's back sprite is very flat. Most of his skins have... something to distinguish between where his snout and his skull are. His default even has shading! But this skin doesn't have anything.

Spoiler

Here's my edit:

The changes are exactly where my criticisms above lie and nothing else.

• I gave him cheekbones
• He has a skull in his side view now
• The back sprite has like, the slightest bit of definition. There is absolutely a better way to draw it, but this was the quickest (and the first) sprite edit I made for this post, so it's just trying to get the idea across.

Roseate

• His head sprite is very flat... on the front and back views this time. His side sprite is gorgeous! This is mostly evident in his beard and his cheek fur.
  • The cheek fur goes too far in, and the beard throws off the shapes in his face. Wortox's head sprite is very top heavy, and especially in this skin it has a lot going on up there, with the flower crown and thorny horns and the huge ears. The beard makes it feel lopsided, because the head goes wide -> skinny -> then wide again.
  • Additionally, the space under his cheek fur is skin-tight if you overlay default Wortox on top, which contributes to this problem.
• The greenery sprouting from the roses, especially on the side sprite, creates a tangent on his right (our left) eyebrow. Similarly, the cheek fur intersects with his snout and creates a tangent as well.
• He doesn't have cuffs on the back sprite.
• His arms are a bit odd. It feels like he's supposed to have chest fluff instead, and the texture makes the arms look shaved.
• The back sprite's head is very flat, much like Deertox.
• His snout is transparent in his yawn sprite. Because he has fur patterns, this is extremely noticeable.
• Generally, the fur pattern also should be drawn higher up on the head sprite, or his face needs color on the lips like Guest of Honor. The mid color pokes through his bottom lip.

Spoiler

Here's my edit:

• I tried to make his fluff a bit more even. While I think the side view is fine, I changed it here to be consistent with my changes. I think there's a way this could be done without changing the side view. (Because I made him fluffier, I also made his ears bigger so they didn't get lost.)
• I attempted to add more contrast on his fur patterns, because I've talked to a lot of people who didn't know he was supposed to have them because the color shift is so slight. It's even harder with colorcubes. (Klei has the tools to do this waaay better than me; his eyebags are REALLY dark here as a side effect.)
• I changed the greenery to be in the middle of his face instead of towards the side so it doesn't overlap his eyebrows.
• I changed his arms to be fluffier as well. (I did mess up the fur patterns here, as you can see his hands are darker, but you get the idea.)
• His back view has more definition. I would have added shading here, but it would be difficult to read because of his fur patterns. The definition comes across fine enough with lineart.

Merrymaker

For the most part, my criticisms are not in how it's drawn, but in how it's structured. I've made a bug report about this in the past, but it fits with this post too.
It's his bangs.

• I feel they are drawn a bit flat compared to the rest of his fur and especially his portrait.
  • They feel either matted or damp, and strangely enough... his ghost sprite actually fixes this somewhat. Perhaps it's because the ghost is wider? Whatever the reason is, his hair needs more volume.
• His bangs are on his face sprite.
  • What this means is that whenever his face moves in any animation, his hair does as well. It does not move dynamically, his hair is affected by squash and stretch when the rest of his head isn't. It makes them feel weird and disconnected.

The Others
That's all of the major ones out of the way! Here's a quick lightning round on some other really small things.

• Triumphant Wortox has really shiny nostrils. It makes his snout look rubbery. Cool skin otherwise, this is the sole reason why I never use it. Beyond that, the black parts should be scribble black instead of solid black
• Masquerader Wortox's hairline ends prematurely on his head sprite. This is normally hidden by his mask, but it's extremely easy to see in certain animations. It should line up with his side sprite better, because it looks unfinished. Additionally, when emoting his open mouth is above his fangs.
• Victorian Wortox is supposed to have a scaled texture leading into his foot for a smoother transition, but it's on his leg sprite which is always layered behind the foot.
• And finally, Verdant Wortox's portrait misinterprets his hairstyle. He's drawn with one tuft of hair on the top of his head, when he has waaay more hair on his sprite that should be visible from that angle. I wasn't going to bring this up, but most artists just use the portraits as reference, which makes it a bit more important.

Enjoy my shitty MS Paint conspiracy board for this section.

That's all! As always, please remain respectful to Klei's artists. They're people too. I say all of this with an intense passion and love for this game and the art behind it. Thank you for your time.

[Hollow soul 3]

I'm genuinely surprised he didn't get a lunar skin yet.

It's like they're waiting for his skill tree to get reworked or something