Sprite Discovery Discussion

Unfortunately, we had to delete a post in this thread that was made with the intention of provoking a fight and making a number of accusations against staff members. We spend a great deal of time ensuring that PokeFarm users treat each other with respect, and we hold player-staff interactions to that same level of civility. PokeFarm is intended to be a child-friendly site, and part of that is fostering an environment of treating others kindly even when you don't agree with them or consider them a friend. In addition to re-lining and sometimes even re-posing the revamped sprites, there has never been an occasion where only a single version of the sprite was created for recolouring. Up to 10 colour combinations have been proposed, tested, and discussed for every sprite. This process takes time, while the same artists are generally working on multiple projects. The copyright link at the bottom of the page also lists the regions where all sprites were created by the PokeFarm art team, as Gamefreak never created sprites for those regions. Please understand that the Staff are volunteers with lives outside of PFQ. We as a team are committed to working with the community and the artists have shown time and again that they are willing to take constructive criticism and make adjustments when they are needed. We appreciate those of you who share your opinions in a manner that is respectful and constructive. This is what we take into account and what helps us improve our artwork.

I'd also like to add, as someone in the original exchange of three (3) posts, that in my opinion I wasn't particularly heated in the exchange-- I even ran my reply by a friend to make sure it wasn't combative!-- and the resulting thread lock seemed a little heavy-handed, giving the impression that any disagreement in discussion wasn't allowed. Forgive me if I'm wrong, but since this is a discussion thread, it should be fine to discuss disagreements, yes? I didn't continue the discussion because it felt like Seejay wasn't interested in actually discussing anything from the passive-aggression in his reply. But that's a done deal. Relevantly, I also really like the adjustments to the solosis line's base sprites. I think the adjusted shading actually portrays their squishiness a lot better than the canon ones! And while I personally think the colors on the specials are so-so-- the albinos are nice but the melans are ehhh-- they're still certainly an improvement. The old sprites had the basic albino creamy pale yellow with pink/red details and "solosis line but black and white" melan, but now they have much more personality :)! I do think that the line's color palette could be improved by bringing the melan's saturated magenta-ish colors a little closer to the body color with a more blueish-purple than a reddish purple. Especially since the melans are "intended" to follow the shiny coloration, more or less, perhaps a more indigo-blueish-purple color would suit the line? Also, shoutout to how the little orbs in the arms go from green -> blue -> purple. mirroring how the base sprite's go green/yellow -> orange -> red. That's such a nice little detail! And as one last note, very loosely addressing some of the comments here about the revamp project as a whole that've come about while I was typing, something that I remember seeing way back when the recolor project started is that the goal of the revamps isn't "just because they're old" or whatever. The goal is consistency! IIRC, art staff wants the albinos to follow the color schemes of the base sprites, and the melans to follow the color scheme of the shinies. So, the revamps not only often use better color palettes for more cohesive sprites, but they also adjust the color schemes/placements to reflect the melanistic design being, quite literally, a shiny albino. A really good recent example of this is in the new melan Ducklett line sprites, where Ducklett has a much darker/more saturated color while Swanna is paler/lighter, reflecting how shiny Ducklett changes a lot from the base sprite to a bright pink while Swanna's changes are much more subtle. Additionally, Swanna's color cools from the pink of Ducklett into a soft purple. The original melanistic sprites for both Ducklett and Swanna used the same grey and blue for the base color and the feather tuft, completely ignoring these nuances within and between the line's shiny sprites, so they were changed. It'd be silly to expect everyone to like these types of changes, but I respect that art staff decided with later generations of sprites to commit to the melans being "shiny albinos" and strive to make that consistent through the entire pokedex. I didn't even realize myself until I typed out the above example how much thought went into these sprites.

I also think having some sort of user input would help in reducing the amount of backlash that happens pretty much every two weeks now. Since you're saying that there are multiple options made already, maybe you could have staff vote it down to 3-4 instead of just the one final and then, without actually showing the sprites, poll the users if they would like a blue, green, red, etc. (could be general colors or more specific shades of colors) albino/melan color scheme. That way there would be at least some expectations met when the sprites are released. I think that would prevent something like the Vanillite expectations issue (although I was one of the few that liked the green lol) that just happened. I don't know the full process that goes into the sprites, so I'm not sure if something like this would be feasible, but I thought I'd still throw the idea out there

i don’t think it’s very fair to delete posts that criticize the staff’s actions just because they have a sharp tone. putting accusations of intentional fight provoking(??) aside, i agreed with them that the locking of the thread felt incredibly preemptive and uncalled for, and it seems as though i’m not the only one who feels that way. this is supposed to be a discussion thread, not a perpetual positivity thread, and deleting critiques just because you don’t like their tone isn’t very mature.

@SUNNELIØN in my opinion, it was less your response then it was Seejay's that could have escalated it. --- for those that keep forgetting, We Need to remember Folks, that the pokemon arnt necessarily colored to match 'Albino' or 'Melan'. that discussion has already been done to death, and a Name change has already been discussed to Death as well. --- neway~ i've been loving the shading on all the sprites lately. and the Birbs look great! and i have a question! is there a place where we can view the old sprites and the new sprites? i dont see them on the wiki. and on occasion i like to see what things used to look like, and i have a Terrible memory. xD

from This page you can click on the sprites themselves to see the history record of the sprites. Not all sprites will have a full history as we lost a lot of data on the wiki a while back

aannd theres the bad memory again! Hah. i thought there was somewhere~ :D thanks Shazi! :D

I just want to put some of my cents in. I do not mean to attack anybody or target anybody, I just want to say my own opinion… and I don’t mean to continue the argument if it is considered one- I wholeheartedly agree with this. I would love for there to be a poll or specific discussion thread (other than this thread) after every sprite release or before sprite releases that lets users input their own opinions of new sprite colors/palettes that the artist team would release soon after, maybe similar to the Type Race Leader poll that gets put into the News/Announcements whenever it’s time to vote, but adjusted to fit with these circumstances. I do not want to offend anybody or attack anybody, as that isn’t really the way to go. Just maybe communication with the staff and other people about these new sprite recolors would be good, so that both sides could reach an agreement somewhere and be benefited from the whole experience. Not everyone will be happy, I know, some aren’t preferred by everyone. But at least we get to communicate our opinions fairly and that’ll be a stepping stone for future remakes. Thank you for reading, hope y’all have a wonderful day! :)

Btw, I wonder why melan Swanna is so drastically different from its preevo? I understand when it's consistent throughout all the variants, but shiny and albino don't change much from ducklett to swanna, and melan is somehow?? looking like two sprites were borrowed from different coloring variants and mixed? ==> Brighter pink body+violet underbelly goes into pale pink/violet+purple underbelly = just fine (you wait for this rendition, you can easily imagine how pink goes into purples) ==> Bright and darker mint goes into paler mintish = wonderful (even more expected) and then... ==> Purplish-navy ducklett into greenish swanna, why??? You would expect dark color to become paler purplish in consistency, and navy to somewhat dark bluish, but why this variant was chosen? I'm really confused tbh

@Celestane I'm not art staff so obviously I can't comment on, like, other potential sprites or anything, but I do think I can potentially offer some insight into their methodology, or at least what I can gather: Base line: Saturated body with slightly darker feather tuft --> Very light body with same color feather tuft. Shiny: Saturated pink body with slightly darker & warmer purple feather tuft --> Very light purple body with slightly darker & cooler purple feather tuft. The difference here is that while the base line keeps the same blue, the shiny changes color between Ducklett and Swanna from pink with warm purple to purple with cool purple. Swanna's shiny colors change where regular Swanna's don't, basically, so shiny Swanna is cooler colored than regular Swanna when compared to their Duckletts. Therefore, while the albino keeps the same tone of mint green because it's based on the regular Ducklett line coloration, which stays the same between evolutions, the melan does the weird hue-shifty thing like shiny Ducklett line. Because shiny Swanna is cooler colored than shiny Ducklett, melan Swanna is cooler colored than melan Ducklett (in this case, going from a warm purple to a cool blue-green). I, personally, as an advocate for less gurple and green in general (as much as I love it), think that it could look better as less blue-green and more just blue, but this sprite overall, I think, is an improvement on the old one. Those had the exact same colors between Ducklett and Swanna despite the fact that Swanna is definitely supposed to be lighter than Ducklett. It all ties back to melans being shiny albinos :3 And! You can also see this happening in the new Solosis line sprites! Because shiny Reuniclus's goo stuff is a slightly warmer color than shiny Solosis and Duosion, melan Reuniclus's goo stuff is more reddish purple than the pre-evolutions as well. I think it's a really neat touch that shows how much thought and effort is being put into these revamps :D