I haven't played the game yet but I'm curious, why the gorgeous woman in the banner picture is darkskinned with kinky hair and in all the other pictures she's lightskinned with long curls and just looks completly different ? I was so excited for a vn with a darkskinned woman for once....
Different artists 😔 Valeri's artist drew the UI and promotional art for the game, and she drew it before I had secured Abeni's current sprite. I was in a rush to have her sprite work done as there'd been a long gap between Gnarl and Abeni's updates, and am looking to redo the art (for a variety of reasons, not just the one you brought up although that's a big one) once I can find an artist within the game's limited budget (which is just whatever I can find to pay).
My ideal artist ended up being way, way out of budget (totally fair on her part just deeply unfortunate) and I ended up working with an artist I wasn't familiar with so I wasn't as involved as I usually am (contrasted with Valerian and Gnarl's artists, who are both good friends of mine). When I was seeking Abeni's art, it was in a weird time of year when a lot of the artist I was looking at were simply not open for commission or too professional for me to afford. It had been so long between updates that I went with someone I could find that had any experience drawing black folks (another big problem as I was going through different portfolios was a variety of artists with no example pieces of anyone but white people).
I like Abeni's current sprite art in an objective sense where I think the sprite is very pretty, but my ideal art would be more of a combination between the banner art and the sprite art. My fault for not being as assertive as I could have been and not understanding the commission process as thoroughly as I could have, and will ideally be fixed as soon as her next update, or as late as final release.
Thanks for asking, though !! It's been a weight on my mind for a while.
An unfortunate accident of timelines and different interpretations of the pinterest boards I use for art references. Valerian's artist is my best friend so she barely needed any input to get what direction I was going in, and she'd also read the story versus the sprite artist who hadn't. I'm really looking forward to hunting down the new art once I have the money to do so again !! I've learned a thing or two about commissioning folks since then and hopefully the final product will be worth writing home about !!