Codex’s Pets & Items Design Notes

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Codex’s Pets & Items Design Notes

Postby Codex » Thu Dec 07, 2023 12:27 pm

Thought it would be interesting to compile some fun facts and notes about the things I’ve designed

If you’ve any questions for me feel free to ask in the Ask The Staff thread.

General notes
I made a colour palette that I use to colour my items, this is to ensure my items across different releases don’t have wildly varying colours that may make it difficult to put together. Sometimes if I don’t have the right colour I’ll add it into my palette. The colour palette does not apply to pets.


I usually only participate in designing pets if there is line breaking allowed. Sometimes I make an exception though. My main interest and priority is in item designing.


I check the item suggestion thread regularly for any new suggestions, sometimes I hop into a random page to see if any of the prompts inspire me. I check more frequently just before events to see if anyone has any suggestions for the upcoming event.


Initially my art style was meant to be purely cell shade but I’ve changed the way I render now, which is why some of my older items may look a bit flat compared to the newer ones.


My store item set is usually a mash up of 2 or more themes. In the event it is a singular theme it usually means I had plenty of inspiration for the set, but that is quite uncommon.
Last edited by Codex on Sat Feb 03, 2024 1:06 am, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: Codex Design Notes

Postby Codex » Thu Dec 07, 2023 1:25 pm

2022 Design Notes

July Store set
Image The star constellation is Aquarius.

Image Inspired by konpeiko candy.


Internet Summer event
Image Inspired by the Starry Night painting.

Image Inspired by Stardew Valley game Home Screen.

Image I actually made a replica of the Window Home Screen but then I found out it was copyrighted so I had to change it.


Halloween Event
Image This set was initially planned to be a store set but I didn’t feel like it was one. So I pushed it into the Halloween event instead of keeping it in the back burner.

Image Inspired by Grow My Grandpa game.

Image The horns are growing from the ears, it was meant to look like it was made out of paper but somewhere along the colouring I forgot so now it just look like some sort of horns I guess.


November Store set
ImageI had planned for it to be a perm store set but I forgot about it until it was released as a limited-- oops.


Christmas Event 2022
Image I drew all of the blankets of 2022 dog litters into this scarf set. I thought about making it a regular thing every time Christmas came around but I quickly scratched that because it took too long.
Last edited by Codex on Sat Feb 03, 2024 1:15 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Codex Design Notes

Postby Codex » Thu Dec 07, 2023 1:40 pm

2023 Design Notes


January Store Set
Image

The whole set was actually drawn before I became an official staff artist. It was a warm up and a practice to the art style I wanted to use here on CS. The lines here are a lot thicker because I was still trying to figure out my style. I don’t actually remember if this set follows my colour palette.


Valentines Event
Image While drawing, I was comparing the tree size next to a Western Dragon. While I wanted it to clip so you can see mostly the underside of the tree (to give a feel of being under it’s shade), I didn’t realise how big it was until I noticed almost a good chunk of the tree is clipped on regular sized pets :(


March Store Set
Image

I was playing Cyberpunk 2077 recently, this set took me almost a whole month to work on because I was having trouble rendering the colours and lights. The floor and wall took the longest to complete.

The wall background is intentionally huge to accommodate for larger pets and also to give room for users to wiggle the background around to display whichever part of the wall they like.

Aquarium Hologram was made to match the full size of the background but I had only realised how badly it clipped on regular sized pets after the release, it’s one of my regrets.

ImageImage These two windows were originally one, but when I tested them over the background I found it was too big. I was planning on trimming it to a smaller size but I had put in a lot of time in the window background and decided to cut it up to preserve my efforts.

Image Inspired by the Sakura tree holograms in one of the districts in Cyberpunk 2077. I didn’t want to draw a big Sakura tree but I thought a small plant vase would look nice.


May Store Set
It wasn’t inspired by the Treasure Planet movie until much later when looking for more nautical references. I think this set took me a month too.

Image This was the hardest to draw, there were so many overlapping circles I kept losing track of my layers.


CS Birthday mini event
Image Item suggestion fulfilled.


Mid-Autumn mini event
The items were made in 2022.


Halloween Event
Image The apocalyptic wasteland set was not meant for store but I almost had to use it because I didn’t have an item set ready for November. Luckily, I found inspiration at the last moment so I decided to put this set into the event. There was also a plan to include a Phoenix but I scrapped it because I could not find inspiration to portray it.
Last edited by Codex on Sat Feb 03, 2024 12:30 am, edited 3 times in total.
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Re: Codex Design Notes

Postby Codex » Wed Dec 27, 2023 3:52 am

September Store Set
ImageSet was supposed to be called 'Magical Hunter' because it was a mash up between 2 themes: Magical Girls & Supernatural Hunters.
I forgot to inform the admins so it was initially released as 'Galactic Royalty'


Christmas Event
ImageItem suggestion fullfilled.


UR items Advent
ImageThe cakes were designed for CS birthday but I couldn’t get them out in time, that’s probably how they became a UR. All of the UR cakes were colour picked from the UR pets, they do not follow my palette.
Last edited by Codex on Sat Feb 03, 2024 12:37 am, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: Codex Design Notes

Postby Codex » Tue Jan 02, 2024 3:40 pm

2024 Design Notes


New Year
The Tess zodiacs were made in 2023 and my plan was to release them on the same month as the zodiac dogs like a regular litter. The dragon colours are not referenced off Homestuck but the first website I found when googling Horoscope colours. There was no reason to my choice of colours.

Edit: January is now over and I want to add onto my own notes here. I'm really sorry for disappointing the community with this set, I had underestimated the importance of the zodiacs/horoscope to people and did not do it justice. But now that I understand how popular the zodiacs theme is I hope I can improve in designing better zodiac themed works in the future. The reason why I'm putting my apology here is because I don't want this to become a bigger deal than it has been.

If you see this message feel free to share me your suggestions on what you'd like to see for your zodiac sign in the pet or item suggestion thread!


March Store Set
I had some drafts ready in January but I had an incident with my laptop, then I had to work on an many items as possible 3 days before the deadline aaaaAAA

I might consider doing a pt 2 to upload the rest & add more columns


Easter Event
The gold dragon design was the first of the set made for LNY but my laptop broke down before I could upload them so they were never released, I offered it for Easter and was encouraged to try making more.

The dragons were inspired by art noveau usage of flowers and flowing lines.

-------------+-------------

Might have to rearrange my notes to add this somewhere
Theme/Inspiration for each store set
2022 July - Space x Backyard garden
2022 November - Biker Jackets (item suggestion)
2023 January - Scarf x random themes
2023 March - Cyberpunk
2023 May - Pirates x Astronomy x Sea
2023 July - Painting tools x Environments
2023 September - Magical Girls x Vampire Hunters
2023 November - Navy blue x Filigree x Lake
2024 January - Environments (based on multiple item suggestions)
2024 March - Marble Columns x Gold
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