If anyone asks me "How do you design these characters?" or "What's the Nova art style?", I usually just tell them, cartoony or stylized. as much as I could go on for hours about my dumb little OCs and their worlds, I've noticed that I can't pinpoint what makes the style unique in words. I think simple is one way, or sketchy. even when art is finished, it has this old flash cartoon feel that I go for.

Like look at one of the cutscenes for the mod, it looks complete, but also a bit purposely janky and jittery, that's mostly just because of how rushed I feel when drawing. so I decided to make it a quirk of the Nova art style and why I'm a fan of Newgrounds animation to begin with.

One of the WIP cutscenes for the mod (some animation may be different in the final version)

I'm still new to animation and am still lazy with some things. I have been taking my time with things, and me and the team

are going through ideas and trying to decide if they are good or not (stuff like feedback for music, ideas for songs, etc).

I personally wanna thank Emily and TonoTim for helping me think of ideas for this thing. I can't thank them enough, also Gamingmania being there to help is nice...

Anyway, I'm thinking of finding another animator, I'mma have to do heavy background checks and stuff, but if I'm able to find someone who isn't problematic, who can animate some of the Nova stuff, I'd be very happy. Music is fine at the moment, I have some people helping with mixing and stuff.

I still have a ton of work art-wise, making sprites usually involves sketching idles and poses, then some other animation frames if needed, and then slowly working on making the frames into actual animated sprites. it's a tedious process, but once you get into the groove, you become a drawing machine.

you draw stuff like this

and it takes me a bit to draw the whole thing, sometimes an idle for the character in question can take more than an hour somehow. animation is hard, even the simplest of things can take a while.

I'm not gonna repeat myself about progress and release dates, it comes out when it's out, yada ya. but I will say, in a bit, I'll be on a bit of a soft hiatus per say, I might work on things here and there, but I have some IRL things to work on.

I'm hopeful we can get this out when we can, we're maybe halfway there if I'm being generous, but progress is being made, one step at a time I guess.

-Isabelle (GiffanyCD)