Yuuko II: The Librarian Strikes Back

I could repeat what was said in the Emi upgrade blog post here, but that would be redundant, so I'll just keep it short. Produced by Kamifish, these new sprites wholly replace the Yuuko art from Act 1 and have a few tweaks to her character design in addition to higher quality art in order for her to better suit the other sprites in the game stylistically. Some on IRC may have seen this thanks to an accidental leak sneak preview given at the time.

We hope you enjoy her new look.

Aside from the new Yuuko sprites, progress on the game has been progressing smoothly. Lilly and Hanako's Act 2s are complete in terms of writing, art, and now direction, and so are now complete. Emi's Act 2 is very nearly in the same boat. In addition to this, new scenes and art are being produced as always.

 - Suriko

Edit: This is the last Act 1 character that will be recieving sprite changes.

500,000 Blog Hits

Just a little while ago, the KS development blog reached the 500,000 hit mark. We'd like to thank all our fans for their patience with us, and we all hope that you'll enjoy the full game. In the meantime, we'll continue trucking on and giving you any notable updates as they come.

In celebration of this occasion is an image drawn by me of my dear Lilly, providing ample proof of why I am her writer and not her artist. You can thank the rest of the development team who was on IRC at the time for this.

- Suriko

Happy Birthday, Lilly!

As February 7th is Lilly's birthday, here is a celebratory picture of Akira and Lilly, drawn by Weee.

There is also another announcement to make:

Pimmy, a talented fanartist many of you may have seen on the forums and on the Shimmie (and, for the attentive, the staff page of our website), has now joined the ranks of the developers as an artist. Congratulations, Pimmy.

Development of the game itself is still progressing, with scenes and CGs still being steadily produced and the paths directed. Once again, a big thank you goes out to all who are patiently waiting for the game's release.

 - Suriko

Are you ronesome tonight~♪

Not much to say about the KS development as usual (I am currently working on directing Lilly's Act 2, and if you think that this is any kind of progress indicator, you're wrong). But, there are a couple of other things worth mentioning that might be of interest to people not intimately familiar with what's going on.

Personas

Firefox 3.6 is out now (and if you're using Firefox, you should have gotten the update prompt by now), and with that, Personas have become standard. These are essentially wallpapers for your browser window chrome. Since they're easy to make, you can now now have your KS character of choice staring at you all the time. Cool, right? In fact it's not cool at all, but anyway, here they are:

Misha
Emi
Hanako
Lilly
Rin
Shizune
SD Girls

Rin is missing because her Persona contained the mural, hence boobies, hence it was not approved. (if you are curious or want to stick it to The Man by making your own, it looked like this). IT'S ART YOU PHILISTINES! I made a new one but it's stuck in the approval pipeline. Once it's through you'll find it along with the rest at my account page. There are also a couple of tweaks to the existing ones based on feedback submitted, but they'll hopefully have the same ID.

Dakimakura

In case you haven't been paying attention, there's been a trend in the KS fanartist scene to draw hug pillows. So far, pretty much every major character but Hanako has been (un)covered, a fact that amuses me to no end. Even though these are technically not unsafe for work, you'll probably not want to be caught looking at scantily clad disabled girls (or men) at work in any case, so proceed with caution. The exception to this is of course Lilly, which is not safe for work in any definition of the term.

by pimmy:
Misha
Emi
Rin
Shizune

by climatic:
Lilly (double NSFW)

by konflikti (DO NOT VIEW WHILE DRIVING OR OPERATING HEAVY MACHINERY):
Nomiya
Nurse

by VCR:
Hideaki

Twitter

We have a Twitter now, for things that are too unimportant, irrelevant or vapid to warrant a blog post. In case you don't like unimportant, irrelevant or vapid things... well, then you are probably not using Twitter anyway. If nothing else, it's a decent way to keep up with Mishimmie uploads. Also, in keeping with the theme of this post, it will be like you really have friends.
FOLLOW US ON TWITTER!

–delta

Happy New Year!

1990 was 20 years ago.

Am I Going to Be Popular Now?

Hello and hope you all had a great Christmas. Here at 4LS, we love to redo old work and throw dozens of manhours worth of production material away, if it's for the sake of art and ultimately, a better game. A lot of that stuff doesn't really strike the eye because you never see the old versions that have been discarded. However, one change is definitely going to make some waves, so I thought I'd announce the fruits of a couple of weeks of hard toiling by moekki and delta:

We upgraded your loli.

The new Emi has a bit more mature air than her earlier design, perhaps more appropriate of a teenaged girl  rather than a REALLY 18 YEAR OLD pseudo-loli. She grew almost 3 inches, but is still the shortest of the characters (so we can make bad jokes about it) and still of the same general build and shape. The reasons for redesigning a main character had mostly to do with stylistic consistency, we felt keeping the old design drove her too far away from rest of the art that features her (as you can see from the 100% completion CG in Act 1). Anyway, apart from maybe promo pictures and such you won't see more of her until full releases, any further Act 1 versions, released mostly for various translation projects, will retain the old sprites.

 

-Aura

Merry Christmas

Reimu wears red and white, that makes this a Christmas image.