Revamped Angelic Kora

For posting new and revamped pet colours on Subeta.
Wingsrising
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Re: Revamped Angelic Kora

Post by Wingsrising »

bonecrivain wrote:Well, the main differences I see are: ears, wings, paws, feet, headgem, mouth, nose, eyes, posture, body shape, belly, fur, general personality/expression...

Whether the pet needed a revamp or not, it's very difficult for me to look at the two and NOT see how vastly dissimilar they are. Your post just made me scrunch my forehead in confusion.
Ditto here (my forehead scrunched in confusion, I mean). The only really major change I see is the lack of a mouth. Other than that they look pretty much the same the same to me. Not totally identical, no... I'm not claiming one was traced from the other or anything. They've definitely brushed up the art. But I don't see any realy big changes but the mouth.

As far as personality difference... I guess the new one does look a little less babyish than the old one did? But the new one still looks pretty babyish to me, so I wouldn't call it drastic.

:shrug: Just my opinion. I see another one of the only-minor-changes-just-brush-up-the-art revamps, which IMO are the best kind.
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Elzaim
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Re: Revamped Angelic Kora

Post by Elzaim »

I have to agree with the majority of people here - I really don't like this revamp.

I personally, don't own an angelic kora, but I've always liked the pet as a whole, and, unabashadly fawned over the one my husband made (mostly for my benefit). I always found it to be a really cute and beautiful pet with a lot of personality.

That personality is gone now.

I also have to vehemently agree with others here that state that the artist need less strict "rules" about keeping the species exactly the same, and color pallets and so on. It's so restricting and incredibly frustrating to someone who a.) paid real money for a pet like this and b.) obviously got it for the way it looked AT THAT VERY TIME. I've had THREE bad revamps happen to my angelic pets, and every time it makes me so sick to my stomach to know that 60$ of my hard-earned money has gone down the drain because I made a pet I LOVED, only to have it destroyed months later. I totally agree that there really should be some sort of consolation to people who already own the pets, whether it be the chance to keep the old image without have to make an overlay yourself, or to have the potion returned to you and your pet returned to it's "common" state so that you could change it to whatever you wanted an not be out the money.

That being said, I hate the new ears. One of the things I absolutely loved about the old pet was the way the ears tapered to almost nothing so gracefully with those playful little curls - and the ear flaps/membrane, to me, felt very translucent and see-through. This is not the case anymore. The ears themselves look very over-shaded and sqishy - like if I touched them it would feel like goop under the skin instead of muscle or sinew.

I also miss the cute little mouth and they way it conveyed a great expression. This is completely lost in the new version and can't be made again. This is very sad. The missing pads on the paws also sadden me - this goes hand in hand with the "restrictions" above. Why could this tiny detail have been looked over? The pose is weird to me too - it looks unnatural and stiff now, mainly because I find the hind legs to be a lot smaller in the new version compared to the old, giving it a strange appearance. The old pudgy legs made the sitting-up look work because they felt like they had the weight to hold the pet up.

Other then the pose, ears and mouth, my biggest qualm is with the wings. I'm so incredibly sick of seeing these generic, flat "every-feather-is-in-the-perfect-position' wings. Um, excuse me if this is the wrong assumption, but aren't angels supposed to be ethereal? The old wings were fluffy, soft and ETHEREAL looking, and these new ones look so stiff and cookie-cutter. Just look at them - the outside edges are perfectly straight, the layers of feathers don't even stick out a smidgen to define the layers of the wing. :shock:

All in all, very displeased. Again, I don't own the pet, but I feel it's just another angelic that's had the unfortunate destiny that angelics have had of late of being drastically changed when it wasn't needed.
Rah
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Re: Revamped Angelic Kora

Post by Rah »

A nifty add on for all those who don't want to see the old art ANYWHERE

Just posting the link to a firefox add-on called 'My image here'. You select an image from your computer and choose to use it to replace an image on a website. This way, you get to see the image you want everywhere - including the pets page. (I personally use it on my chibi wyllop - hagane did a super cute overlay for me and I like my pink version better than the current version xD) Of course this only would help firefox users, but it's a start!

Just wanted to answer/respond to a few points:
And I cannot understand why the decision would ever be to make something that will almost certainly displease many of the current owners...A revamp should keep all the best-loved parts of the old pet, not throw them all out the window while creating something dramatically new.
Ok, the decision was actually made to revamp this pet last year, but I knew it was popular, and I wanted to be better at the whole drawing thing before I attempted it. The sketch sat on my computer for a year - and I showed it to a lot of people and was given the affirmative. The mouth removal was always going to happen, I didn't think it limited me artistically at all. I didn't /feel/ limited. I like the mouthless design feature on the kora, I have 9 other pets with mouths to work with to fill my 'having a mouth' quota.

Ok, so I'm not sure why you would say that I made the decision to displease people. On the whole, I made every decision possible on this pet to please the majority of people whilst keeping in tune with the species. I feel like you're implying I intentionally set out to ruin the pet - and I know you don't mean to and you're upset because a pet you love isn't the same anymore, but I'm going to just respond with the fact that I did actually try really hard to make a mid ground on this pet so that it would be up to date and still have the same feel of the old pet. If you think I failed on this, then I'm sorry, but I did try. Looking at the news posts on subeta, and a bunch of the posts here, as well as on the forums it would seem that I did actually PLEASE a lot of the owners of angelic koras, as well as create a few new ones, so I don't think it was an unsuccessful revamp at all. I think I did keep a lot of the feel of the old one - but a feeling is something everyone sees differently, so the feeling you got from it is likely different to the feeling other people got from it. I suppose that's just the way it goes.

I think the old owners should always be considered first. There are lots of other pets for everyone to choose from, and it's exciting when the artists are working on new pets and new colors. I think more attention should be paid to those. Let people who love their pets as-is KEEP their pets.
As far as new pets and colours go, all mine are done for December. I have left the angelic kora until it was literally the second from last revamp I had to do of my angelic pets. I drew the first one over 4 years ago - my second ever pet I believe. Or maybe it was my first. Either way, I am always working on getting my pets done. I didn't put this over a pet of mine that needed it more. And I really do consider the old owners, so much of the time. I feel like it's all I do sometimes, is think about what the old owners are going to think, and I put my heart in to these pets trying to make them as happy as I can. Again, it can't always work, but please don't assume that I'm not thinking about the users.
One of the things that bothers me I suppose is that back when Rah first decided that koras didn't have mouths, she mentioned something about the Angelic Kora being speshul with Angelic powers that it could have a mouth... I suppose that was just a made up mock excuse and was long ago that she probably didn't think seriously about revamping Angelic anyway.
I think this was the chibi kora I was talking about. Deformed chibiness letting it keep the mouth. Which was indeed a made up excuse for the chibi at the time, I'm still not sure where I stand on the chibi. It's my favourite pet on the site, and I've had one for 5 years, and I don't know what to do about that revamp at all. But I have always thought seriously about revamping both pets, it was just a case of waiting until my skills improved so that I could do them justice.

One other thing - I keep seeing the headgem glow being mentioned as not being there...but it is? I'm not sure what you're talking about. I put a glow on it!

Anyways, I was pretty much prepared for this reaction. I knew whatever I did to this pet /somebody/ was going to be upset, because I've seen all the threads that said the kora was one of their favourite angelics even years after I drew it. I get that dodgy art to someone can be beautiful art to another, and that is fine. Don't feel you have to stop ranting, I just want to maybe put the thought in your heads that I was really not trying to piss you guys off! Happy Holidays! Time for Eggnog :D
bonecrivain
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Re: Revamped Angelic Kora

Post by bonecrivain »

I haven't gotten the impression that anyone here thought you intentionally set out to make people unhappy with this revamp. Like I said, I'm a fan of your art, and I like most of your koras. But I still don't see why, knowing that this was a popular pet, you decided to make such drastic changes. Although I understand the idea behind removing the mouth and changing the ears, I think that it would have been perfectly recognizable as a kora (and "in tune with the species") with the lovely old ears that were clearly many people's favorite part of this pet. But even if you'd just changed those two things, the rest of the pet could have very easily remained the same: posture, scruffy elbow fur, little belly, elements that didn't NEED updating at all.

A revamp for an already-nice and popular pet should ONLY involve updating the line art and shading. You drew a cute kora. But it's not the angelic kora that people paid for many years ago and still continue to love.
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Re: Revamped Angelic Kora

Post by AngharadTy »

I'd like to put in that if anyone even remotely thought that you intentionally set out to ruin the pet, they're crazy. Of course not! Especially from Rah, who we all know is very thoughtful!

It's apparent that there's a lot of thought in the kora about how to adapt old features into a new, consistent pet. The problem is that some of the new features eclipsed the old features, and sometimes look a bit odd. Like the ears; I adore, adore the ears on glacier (my favorite part of owning one!), and on nightmare, and reborn... and I think it looks odd here that they're a tube. That's the heart of what I've been saying about updating things for consistency--all koras have round tentacle-ish ears all the way down, so the skinny antennae of the angelic had to go to keep up with that. But it wasn't world-shattering that it was different; it was cute, and it was a large part of what I thought of when I looked at the old angelic kora--how lovely and unique the ears were. I've always been fiercely in support of having unique features on redraw colors.

If this were a brand new pet, I'd be all on board. But since it's a revamp and has to be compared to the old version, I think it's not the same enough. Similar and very cute, but not the same pet.
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Mistress Morbid
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Re: Revamped Angelic Kora

Post by Mistress Morbid »

I'm also very puzzled by all the comments on the head gem - I can see clearly that it's glowing just like the original, only this time it has some nice shading and looks more realistic and three dimensional rather than a plain diamond shape.
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AngharadTy
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Re: Revamped Angelic Kora

Post by AngharadTy »

Due to transparency and/or a similar brightness, it's really hard to see the glow on the lighter blueish color. It's a much smaller glow, too, so it seems dimmer in that regard; the yellow of the gem is darker, too, which adds the same effect. Yeah, it's definitely glowing. But it is glowing less, which doesn't matter much to me, but I can see why it would matter. It's also only barely three dimensional on my screen, probably because the colors involved are light-on-light, but it doesn't stand out as much as I'd like. To me, that's really minor; I'm just explaining why (maybe?) it was brought up a couple times.
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Tiki
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Re: Revamped Angelic Kora

Post by Tiki »

I guess I'm one of the crazy people who think this revamp is very true to the original. :P I see the gem glowing, I see the elbow fur (are we all looking at the same pet...?) and I see NO armpit fur. The wings are still still attached at the shoulders; if anything, they are actually higher on the shoulders than the old wings. Look again at the image, I think some people are mistaking the middle line on the left wing to be the top line when the top is not even visible behind the head.

Despite this, I can see why people would get upset- but sometimes I think the complete overreactions from some people are instinctive before they really step back and look at the pet. Half of the complaints here I honestly cannot understand because I'm staring at the exact same pixels as you and I'm seeing these features you are claiming aren't even there. (???)

I also have to disagree with the idea that if you paid real money for the pet, it is somehow immune to change. Perhaps if there was a disclaimer on the site's TOS saying that donations received special privileges or whatnot, but we all know that's entirely false. There hasn't ever been a pet site that guaranteed to remain static, and anyone who continues to lie to themselves and think that their money makes them immune to change needs to wake up- I'm sorry if it's blunt, but it's true. It has never been claimed that you are paying for a pet that will last forever, so why get up in arms at all?

Rah's link to the add-on is wonderful, by the way. Remember that everything on this site is imaginary, so using that add-on to add to the imagination and overlay every image on the site really shouldn't affect your enjoyment.
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Re: Revamped Angelic Kora

Post by Cranberry »

Tiki wrote:I guess I'm one of the crazy people who think this revamp is very true to the original. :P I see the gem glowing, I see the elbow fur (are we all looking at the same pet...?) and I see NO armpit fur. The wings are still still attached at the shoulders; if anything, they are actually higher on the shoulders than the old wings.
Agreed with all of this. I definitely see that the belly's been changed, and the ears (and I liked the old pudgy belly and skinny ears better, too). However, I clearly see the glowing gem and the elbow fur (slightly less shaggy, but it's still elbow fur), and I see the wings as attached at the shoulders and not the back (something which always bugged me about the Neopets old eyrie, grr -- I hate bad wing placement!). Overall, I think it's quite true to the original. I know how hard Rah works to please the users and to change popular pets as little as possible when she redraws them, and I'm surprised/puzzled to see this much anger over this revamp.
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bonecrivain
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Re: Revamped Angelic Kora

Post by bonecrivain »

Tiki wrote:Rah's link to the add-on is wonderful, by the way. Remember that everything on this site is imaginary, so using that add-on to add to the imagination and overlay every image on the site really shouldn't affect your enjoyment.
With that argument, we might as well just save all the Subeta images to our computers and pretend we own them all. If you see them as just imaginary pixels, there doesn't seem much point in ever paying real money to own any of them. Overlays are good in some cases (I have two, for special pet designs), but they are not an overarching solution to disappointing revamps.

I concede the glowing gem point; the new one does have a glowing aura, but it's not as visible to me, and I don't see as much glow from the gem itself. It's not that important of a change, though.

As far as the elbow fur: yes, the revamped version does still have some fur, but if you compare them side-by-side, the old version is MUCH shaggier. This is one of those little details that may not make that much of a difference to most people, but the little details are what make me love specific pets. Maybe the fur's meant to look exactly like it does on the rest of the koras, which is, again, my problem with focusing so heavily on consistency.
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Re: Revamped Angelic Kora

Post by Alicorn »

An angelic kora was the very first pet I had on the site. As soon as I joined I was determined to get one and I felt so good when I did. I knew the revamp was coming this year and was ready for it. That said, I love the revamp. The wings are much better (I disliked the old ones, they always looked wrong to me). I'm glad to see the belly go. The mouth and paw pad removal doesn't bother me in the least. The ears I'm not totally sure on, the tube ears look a bit weird. But I know they will grow on me as time goes on. And I like the positioning of the new paws a lot. It reminds me of a gesture that my character Alicorn (who is my angelic kora) does a lot, so it works perfectly for her.
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TCStarwind
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Re: Revamped Angelic Kora

Post by TCStarwind »

I've been gone all day, so I'll just slide my comments in and move on. :)

First of all, I like the revamp. It's nice; it's great. To me, the new art is vastly superior, but I do see why it's upsetting people. That said, I never really cared for the original (not that I didn't like it, I just never really noticed it), so there's no reason for me to hate the revamp. And honestly, looking at the old one, I don't really like the belly fat or the paw pads, but the the ears were really cute. The only things that're really bothering me are the position of the ears (shouldn't they be a little farther forward? they look like they're coming out of the wrong place of the head to me) and the loss of expression. It doesn't really have the happy, cute look the old one had and seems fairly neutral to me.

But, like I said, nice revamp all together. :)
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Re: Revamped Angelic Kora

Post by Wingsrising »

bonecrivain wrote:A revamp for an already-nice and popular pet should ONLY involve updating the line art and shading.
And then you'll get a contingent complaining about how the line art and shading were what they loved best about the pet, and now their pet is totally ruined.

You can't please everyone... even by not revamping, since there are plenty of people who have pets with old art who want to see them revamped. (I was ecstatic when the Aerie was revamped, that's for sure! Man, it needed it.)
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Bumblegoat
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Re: Revamped Angelic Kora

Post by Bumblegoat »

I adore the revamp. I think it has the same feel as the old one, while updating the art and being consistent to the species. Well done!
Wingsrising wrote:You can't please everyone... even by not revamping, since there are plenty of people who have pets with old art who want to see them revamped.
This.

There are also users who like consistency (believe it or not!), myself being one of them. Having features unique to the different colours is something that bothers me, and I really like the route Subeta is taking on this - to try and be consistent. I value updated art and consistency, and I doubt I am the only one.
bonecrivain
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Re: Revamped Angelic Kora

Post by bonecrivain »

Bumblegoat wrote:Having features unique to the different colours is something that bothers me
Why? How do other people's pets have any impact on you?
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