[Art update] Beaches, sprites and ice cold retribution

Hello! It's been a while! A few months have passed since the last update, but we got some Spicy New Art Previews(TM) for everyone in store. Battle backgrounds, battle sprites, vs sprite updates, oh my! We've got it all... and more! Remember that popularity poll back in 2020? I've got something to show off in regards to that as well. Spoiler tagged just in case, as there are spoilers for V13 in this post! Disclaimer that everything shown here is still subject to change (except for the last thing I'll be showing) as we continue development, but without further ado, let's start with the first thing; battle backgrounds.

Backgrounds

Three of new variations of battle backgrounds being added are for beaches, Grand Dream City and... Zeight? Oh boy. Wonder when that's gonna be used The backgrounds were made by yours truly!

Beach

Grand Dream City

Zeight

Battle sprites

Our lovely new artist Dallas has been working hard on making and updating some more of the battle sprites for some of the NPCs, as some have gotten a makeover! Say goodbye to the Hardcore Trainer's and the Battle girl's old sprites, for your new ones have arrived! Old sprites are on the left and the new ones are on the right.

VS Sprite updates

I've also been working on updating some of the VS portraits as some had some crust on them from being outdated compared to the rest. I won't be giving a full on explanation for each of them this time, so it might just be best to see the results for yourself. The updates include Zetta, Kieran, Erin and more! Can you spot the differences?

Oh, and speaking of Erin...

I mentioned the popularity poll, right? Well, back in 2020 Erin placed third in the poll, meaning she would receive some special bonus artwork alongside Aelita (1st place) and Venam (4th place, getting the prize instead of Melia who placed 2nd as she was slated to be getting artwork for V13 to begin with and has already been featured in official art a ton). And after like 209381029381 years of being too busy to work on this, I've finally gotten around to working on the art that she'd be receiving! Please take a look!

As per usual with any official art I make, the artwork has been uploaded to the official art thread as well as having a sta.sh links to two different wallpaper versions (with 1440p being the full resolution version). The only one left to make bonus art for is Venam! Maybe I'll have it done in time for 13.5's release? Who knows, entirely depends on whether I get around to doing that on time. Otherwise it'll be somewhere between 13.5's and V14's release! We Shall See(TM)

That being said, that's all for now. Hope y'all got a kick out of these and enjoy all the new work! There's more to come, but some of it will remain a ~*~*~*Little Secret*~*~*~ until 13.5's release, so hold onto your horses until then. Our dev team is working hard to get everything working again and slowly but surely everything's starting to come together, but we ask for a little bit more of your patience for the remaining time!

Thank you again for enjoying the game and see y'all on the flipside!!!

o7