angelcou - Tumblr blog

[angelcou]

Gray sketches (:

[angelcou]

Claire: Origins

We mentioned in a Photobucket Grab Bag a bit ago that Claire wasn't originally a game character, so why not expand on that a little bit? We had the honor of hosting a brief Q&A with Igusa Matsuyama, the series character designer, and at one point they said this:

Claire was a character I originally created for the manga series, but after [her debut], they asked for her appearance in the games. It made me happy.

Yeah! Taking this little nugget of info and investigating further, we can find that Claire was not only originally a character Matsuyama made themselves for use outside the games, but she was the star in some manga created by Matsuyama based on the Story of Seasons series published by Shogakukan. Specifically the year after Pete's manga in the 4th Grade Learning magazines between April '98 to March '99, far before "Harvest Moon for Girl" would even be conceptualized and eventually released in 2000. The magazine would probably look a little something like this:

Huh, I guess this would be the earliest point Doraemon and Story of Seasons were hanging out together. Then there's Tamagotchi, Mario, Kirby, Puyo Puyo, Pikachu, Detective Conan... everyone is here! Anyway, Claire would go on to be a bit of a regular for Matsuyama and appear in other later comics such as the ones included with guidebooks.

She's not the only Matsuyama-original character that would appear in the manga either! There was also Sakuramaru, Pete's horse who is a bit anthropomorphized to walk on his hind legs and even has his own story in Pete's manga. He would appear in a few future guidebook manga alongside Claire and also occasionally feature in artwork on Igusa Matsuyama's personal site. One interesting example of Claire's appearances on that site is a play journal of Harvest Moon for Girls that featured a Star Trek fanfic twist where Claire was a member of Starfleet! Matsuyama goes out of their way to make sure the reader knows that it's just a fun scenario for their site and not actually related to the canon of Story of Seasons though.

So now you know the rest of the story. Well, mostly. Hopefully we can actually get the original manga translated and released some day to share. If you happen to know (or are) someone with time and expertise who wants to give it a shot, feel free to stop by our Discord! Now, with all these revelations out of the way, please enjoy what I believe is Claire's first ever appearance in Bokumono media:

[angelcou]

commission gift from @modern-tsunamis to @krosaceae !! 🥰💖

[angelcou]

me: Just starting playing Pokemon Arceus.

me: Am I... Am I going to turn into a Pokemon, aren't I?

[angelcou]

Gray heart event from HM BTN for girl❤

[angelcou]

Trying to draw buildings

[angelcou]

They pierced my ears when I was a baby, maybe 1 year old or less like all my sisters. But the curious thing is about my baby earrings. Originally they belong to an aunt (when she was a baby, just a couple years older than me) but she had an allergic reaction to them so they pass them to me later on, because they are good quality gold. So I grow up with them, never taking them off. If I wanted to use other earrings, I would just put them in the same hole of my baby earrings. It was not until highschool, during a break that I realized I could take them off, but I put them back on immediately. So, these gold baby earrings, have being with me all my 28 years of existence and will be with me until my death. They are part of me, my tiny golden companions.

reblog and put in the tags what age you got your ears pierced

[angelcou]

Thanks you so much! It's so cute! I love it 💕

My entry for @bokumonoexchange Summer 2021 for the other GrayxClaire biggest fan I adore, @angelcou! 💕 I hope that you like it as much as I enjoyed creating it! 💕

[angelcou]

My entry for Bokumono Exchange Summer 2021 by @bokumonoexchange . I named my piece Walking Home. I enjoy working on it, it was a challenge. Hope you like it @sosfomt-freaks, I know you love GrayxClaire as much as I do.

[angelcou]

Married Damon and now we have a random cabbage baby.

[angelcou]

Making some OC, a beast-man species named Joajoa, based on Jerboas or commonly known as jumping mouse, because I like them a lot, I think they are very cute.

[angelcou]

Covers of the Otome Visual Novel I’m working on: The Color of Stars

Based on my country Costa Rica, this otome is almost a telenovela, full of romance, mystery, drama and magic.

With the intention of being an otome for both Spanish and English speakers, I welcome you to follow our progress and get to witness this story in the Santa Lucia Academy with our two female protagonists.

[angelcou]

Hey, I wanted to thank you for recommending Gleaner Heights, I'm really enjoying it! I do have a question though (I don't Google it anymore because when I tried to find out what kind of gifts someone likes I found out he can die), what happens if you max out hearts with someone? I'm already on the red heart with Fiona but I don't intend to actually romance her so I'm getting a bit worried haha

Nothing really happens, just give you friendship bonuses. They’re your friends until you gave them the Wedding Ring to get married.

[angelcou]

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Sometime ago I had to help my friend with his animation project and since he’s not so good at making stories, I shared my ideas of a Visual Novel with him and we made this trailer. This is a work in progress, we are writing the story and making better assets for the game. I will share our progress if anybody is interested. The game is based on my country Costa Rica.

[angelcou]

That’s sad the game ended like this. I’m also a Claire x Gray shipper from back in the day. What a disappointment. Also the hat needs to be worn!

I miss the hat too, a great part of Gray's personality was lowering his hat's bill and hide his face. That made his shyness different from Cliff.

Also the hat +(the work clothes) made him look more rough. I love seeing the fanart or redesigns with the hat on.

[angelcou]

Story of Seasons: Friends of Mineral Town Review

Let me tell you, my first HM game was Back to Nature, around that time I was a child that didn’t understood English, then came the GBA version, which was nice, but then around 2008, it came what I can call “My dream” the FEMALE version of that GBA game, I could finally be a girl and marry a guy. Claire and Gray became my first shipping, the reason I started to draw and study animation. 

I have been a fan of HM and SOS for years now, I have played all the games, some I love, some I don’t care for. And Mineral Town was always my favorite, my childhood, but then I played the PSP port called Boy and Girl, which was BTN and Female BTN, a game I had never had the chance to play because it was in Japanese before. In my PSP, I played BTN again after some many years, this time as a girl, and gosh, it was an experience, so many things, new fun, cute and interesting things, so much content that wasn’t in the GBA version. It was missing in some aspects, especially the game ending in marriage, but it was so much fun. It gave me so much canon information to use in my fan fictions.

Then it was announced last year, a remake of Mineral Town for Switch, I was

excited, my childhood game in a modern console. The reveal of the new characters designs were coming out, everybody had a opinion about them, some like them, some didn't. And after so long, the game came to the Western. I was so ready to play it. And I did, and honestly, it was disappointing. 

The graphics were fine, they were cute and very similar to the GBA version, I was hoping for more proportionate designs, since the Switch is a powerful console, but it was fine. But then not only the style was the same, but the dialogues were the same, bit by bit. They gave us all this drama with the confession flower and boyfriends/girlfriends thingy, but the dialogue didn’t change one bit after that. I already made my opinion about that in a comic. It was the first red flag.

I played Trio of Towns, the last installment, I knew what the saga of HM and SOS was capable of, how was the confession and reverse confession, how the dialogue and attitude of your partner would change, how they would treat you after winning or losing a festival, how it was a fact you be together at romantic festivals. I was hoping for that in this rendition of Mineral Town, but nop. No changes at all in the characters, the same dialogues as the GBA version, nothing new at all.

You remember when you would use certain clothes and people would comment about it? That was nice. All that new dialogue and characterization. Well, not in this game.

Well, after that, ok, I was fine, no big deal with this lackluster romance, but then it came this: Starry-night festival in Winter 24.

This made my blood boil, in this pursued to be loyal, a copy paste remake of the GBA, that they leave this stupid posing, leaving the characters standing up behind the chairs. WTF? This is a Switch/PC Game, a 2019 game with 3D models, and they just leave it like this. I can tolerate this in the GBA version, those are sprites, a game from 2003, but we are not in 2003 anymore. 

I have seen the characters in previous games, sit down and have lunch. I know it is possible, it is the same company after all.

The Switch is a powerful console, there are not limitations and excuses for this laziness.

I commented this on Discord, and the excuses they gave me to defend this:

“It was the developers intention to homage the GBA game.”

Excuse me, but nostalgia is not a excuse to mediocrity. 

Some other told me because “They were in a time limit” Like making the models bend their legs and move the chair is going to take them 3 months or something.

Other told me “You don’t know about  3D Modeling” I study animation, I have made 3D models and made 3D animations. My internship was in a Game Company. I know how this works.

They used LGTB and nostalgia baiting to cover their laziness and mediocrity. I have played indie games with much more work put into them, and you can be gay as well.

I love Mineral Town, it was my childhood, but I can’t be blind by nostalgia and ignore all the laziness. Specially because I know how capable they are, all the amazing game mechanics they had implemented over the years. I was hoping for a Mineral Town with all these amazing new mechanics, not a re-skin of the same game, with the same stupid mistakes. 

I have seen games and movies being guilty of nostalgia baiting and criticized a lot, so I don’t think SOS Friends of Mineral Town should get a free pass. I had high exceptions, because I knew what could be done, I have seen the progress of HM/SOS franchise.

I know a lot of you are enjoining the game and reliving your childhood, I’m not telling you to stop loving it or hate it, I myself don’t hate it, I just feel disappointed. 

But remember to never let yourself be blind by nostalgia, this is a goddamn Switch game, from a company that has been making these games since the 90′s.

If you want me to review the rest of the game, well, it’s the same as the GBA version, with the same festivals, events, mechanics. 

In the end, I gonna finish it, since I already paid for it and want to see if there is some post marriage event (hopefully). But I’m going to get my revenge. Some day.

[angelcou]

“Once you taste the dating system in previous HM/SOS games, you can’t go back”

I loved Gray’s orange event, it was sweet. But the whole dating/couple/boyfriend thing just left me salty and kinda confused, because there wasn’t any sign of him being in a relationship with me, and I thought I did something wrong.

I know this is a remake of the GBA version, but come on, you can implement the good stuff from the other games.