The Tale of Bulka OC

Hi friends!

Precisely one month ago we opened a poll for the next loyalty reward. To our delight, many people voted for an original character modelled after our mascot. We were excited about the project and wanted to do it properly. And thus began the tale of (not really) successful failures that I'm finally about to tell. Honestly, I was very hesitant to reveal everything that's been going on with that project and was this close to sweeping the shameful details under a rug, but hey, I've been very open and forthcoming with everyone so far and yet you're still here, so what's the harm in owning up to more of my mistakes?

Once it became clear we'd be creating an OC, we opened another poll to find out more about what kind of character our patrons envision. Originally, the poll contained a lot more questions to describe the charater in more detail. For example, occupation.

At some point me and Victoria let our imagination go too far, so Milana had to become the voice of reason, slap us out of our reveries and point out that we're making the work more difficult and restrictive. So, in the end we cut it down to only three questions: personality, body type, and style.

And now we're coming up to the first failure and the reason I never really posted the results. Well, here they are.

Notice how there are "Playful/cheerful" and "Carefree/cheerful" options? Well, that's on me. When I opened the poll, I used "playful" word. It only occurred to me a day later that "playful" might have a completely different meaning from what I meant by it. So I couldn't think of anything better than to change the word to "cheerful". Mid-poll, yes. I know, terrible idea. Lesson learned.

Anyway, once the poll results became clear, we moved to the next step - to find a concept artist and explain what we want in as much detail as possible. I was busy with other stuff at the time, so I delegated the task to Elena lest she died of boredom during her vacation. I figured she should have the honor, seeing how the two of us originally came up with the "Bulkamancer" name together. Moreover, from our brief discussion on the subject, it seemed we had a similar vision of the character.

Finding a concept artist took longer than I anticipated. Which tends to happen when you don't set a strict deadline and instead believe you have all the time in the world until it's too late. Anyway, when the first draft finally came in, I was... surprised. It was by no means a bad design, just quite different from what I imagined. Best see for yourselves.

To put it bluntly, out of the three winning choices in the poll the character fit... none. It's a stretch to call her carefree and cheerful. She's neither curvy nor slim. Slender would be a better word here. And it's not exactly anime style. Even though I specifically mentioned the poll results would just be a guideline, not requirements, but still, got to meet at least some expectations of the audience. What happened next wasn't exactly my finest display of team management, for only at that moment we realized we never actually assigned an artist to the project. Seems pretty obvious in hindsight, but the person who is going to create a model should be the same one who communicates with the concept artist. And in August Elena would still be on vacation, so she couldn't be the sculptor, even though she actually wanted to. Luckily, Victoria loved the concept and decided not only to take the project, but also help Elena steer the contept in the right direction. Honestly, I absolutely adore our team and don't praise them nearly as much as I should!

At some point it became obvious the concept art was moving even further away from our original vision, so another hard decision was made - the concept was split in two. We didn't exactly want to lose the hard work that was put into the first one. Thus, it was finished completely as per Elena's vision, so she might one day create her own model. Here, take a look at the final version.

As for this month's model, we found another artist and commissioned a different concept. Which led to even more confusion when I presented the silhouette of the concept that wouldn't be used. And, to top it off, showed the croisscythe that didn't make it into our model.

To make matters worse, precious time was lost and Victoria had to start the project way before the concept art was finished. In the end, the model was blocked out and ready for a reveal a week ago and since then Vik only kept building upon it. As for the concept art, it was only finished mere hours ago. But here, take a moment to enjoy it anyway!

Basically, by now it lost its entire purpose of serving as a reference, since the model is already quite different from it. So... yeah. Did I mention it was a tale of failures? Now you know I wasn't exaggerating.

However, despite the countless mess-ups and poor management decisions that's been haunting this project, I'd like to believe I've learned a number of valuable lessons that may help us down the road. Let's see if we can do better next time!

And if you want to take a look at the actual WIPs, check out the next post!

Cheers!
Des