The development of the SP-Studio remake in 2020

    Finally some problems with the development were solved and so I can give you a detailed update on the current situation. Some time was lost, but it looks good now! :) A new programmer offered me to help with the coding: Lars. He uses React and what he created during only a couple of days already is really impressive. I will show you screenshots and talk about new features as soon as we are 100% sure about it.


    Read the whole blog post here:

    https://www.sp-studio.de/news-about-the-new-sp-studio/


    If you have any questions about it feel free to ask here or in the blog comments.

    I have two:


    Are you going to add more long hairs, Heidi Turner’s hat and Annie Knitts’ hair in the new version?



    also, do you guys pretend to revamp the South Park styled avatar by making it look more accurate to how fourth graders look in the show?

    Quote from ArtisticFangirl

    Are you going to add more long hairs, Heidi Turner’s hat and Annie Knitts’ hair in the new version?


    There will be new long hairstyles. But I am trying to not copy South Park items anymore since 2015.

    I thought about this decision a lot but stick to it for a while now (as good as I can ;) ). It feels more creative and fun to draw my own things. While I know many visitors of the SP-Studio are fans of the show and like the original SP characters I did not even watch the last couple of episodes... I kinda lost touch with it. I still love the drawing style, but I feel no deep connection to the South Park characters. This might sound strange, but I hope you understand what I mean.

    In addition just copying South Park items might result in copyright problems at some point, so this is the second reason why I stopped doing it.

    That said: Heidi's hair already is in the SP-Studio. :) Go to the long hairstyles, you don't need to scroll to the right. But you should remove the shadows/highlights to make it look like Heidi.

    I might add a curly hair-style inspired by Annie someday, but I won't just copy it then.


    Quote from ArtisticFangirl

    also, do you guys pretend to revamp the South Park styled avatar by making it look more accurate to how fourth graders look in the show?

    Do you mean changing the base shape of the SP-Studio characters? It will be improved a little bit because it was not 100% symmetric. But I felt no need to change it a lot. Big changes would not be possible because then I'd have to redraw all clothes to make them fit again.

    Here are some fresh news about the new SP-Studio:


    THERE WILL BE A REALLY COOL MOBILE APP!


    Yes. Until now I was not sure about how to handle this, but Lars made it work. :thumpup: It is a Progressive Web App (PWA). This type of mobile apps gives you the user experiences of native apps without the need of installing it through an app store. You visit the website, save a bookmark to your homescreen and easy as that it works like an app. You can use it offline and it downloads new updates automatically.

    Of course you can also access the SP-Studio with any mobile browser without saving it to your phone. The only visual difference is that the browser bars show up while the PWA runs in full screen mode.


    We also changed the mobile design dramatically from my old layouts.


    I bet you want to see it now, right? You will! Join the special livestream this Saturday:


    FIRST LOOK LIVESTREAM:

    https://www.twitch.tv/zwergimbikini
    Saturday, 26.9.2020 at 16:00 UTC (18:00 CET)


    I hope to see you in the chat to discuss the new features and design! :)

    There will also be a blog post with screenshots for my Patreons a couple of hours before the stream. A public blog post with screenshots will follow next week.

    Janina, i have a question for you: Is the mobile app going to have South Park stuff?

    I’m currently working on a fan series of the show and i got curious to know if you’re either going to keep the South Park stuff from the old version or remove it in the development?

    The South Park items will stay. :)


    I would delete or change them if I had to use an app store for the mobile app (because of the strict rules), but since it will be independent I can keep South Park fan art in it.

    Weil, I did change some South Park drawings to improve them... like the beer bottle. But as far as I remember no character related items.

    Thanks to all the nice people who joined the livestream! :)

    It was great to get positive feedback and talk about your questions. I will do a similar livestream for the desktop version when new features are included.

    A new blog post is online now:

    New SP-Studio: mobile version

    This basically recaps what I talked about during the last livestream, including some screenshots of the current state of development.


    In other news Lars implemented the color picker and I am currently including all the color buttons for the new palette. It will change slightly from the old one because of the limited space on a mobile screen. But I will make sure most colors will stay the same.

    Here's the reply from Lars (in my rough translation): The image on the website is in SVG format, but to make it possible to download it, it is converted to a HTML5 canvas and then to a png file. Since the original images are svg files there is a slight chance to find a way to make the browser export it this way. Right now this is not possible though.


    So... it maybe could become a possible update in the future. But not for launch, that's for sure. Unfortunately there is no easy solution for this problem and so other thinhgs are more important now to focus on.

    Quote from Janina

    Here's the reply from Lars (in my rough translation): The image on the website is in SVG format, but to make it possible to download it, it is converted to a HTML5 canvas and then to a png file. Since the original images are svg files there is a slight chance to find a way to make the browser export it this way. Right now this is not possible though.


    So... it maybe could become a possible update in the future. But not for launch, that's for sure. Unfortunately there is no easy solution for this problem and so other thinhgs are more important now to focus on.

    Agreed! The images are in SVG format, I think it would be possible.

    However, i don’t mind if this wouldn’t be implemented in the day of the launch, but keep in mind that some fans don’t have enough art skills to create their own South Park avatars and tracing or/and recreating the South Park characters in editing programs over and over again can be pretty exhausting.

    Quote

    but keep in mind that some fans don’t have enough art skills to create their own South Park avatars and tracing or/and recreating the South Park characters in editing programs over and over again can be pretty exhausting.


    But there is another problem I really need to think about before I give my okay for exporting svg files...


    Unfortunately it would make it easier to steal my art. And while I want to help others to be creative and have fun it makes me really sad when people use my drawings without giving me credit. Its extremely rude and disrespectful. :( When you put years of your life into something and don't ask for anything else in return than to mention your website this hurts a lot. It's not just unfair to me, but also to "real" fan artists who draw everything themselves. Unfortunately I notice many people on DeviantArt and other websites use SP-Studio characters or backgrounds for their own art projects without mentioning sp-studio.de in the descriptions. This is a big problem. I don't want to encourage them by making it even easier to steal all my drawings in high quality vector files.


    So even if it will be possible I won't promise yet that I'll actually include this function. Too many bad experiences with art thieves...

    Good news! All item options are working! :)


    During the last couple of weeks Lars coded more functions from the item menu and so now all of them will work on launch day. That's more than I expected and I am very happy about it! I was sure we had to get rid of some of them because of the limited time. So now the new SP-Studio has buttons for "delete", "move", "flip", "rotate" and up to two custom colors. I will publish a blog post with new screenshots soon (I just wrote one for Patreon).

    Quote from Janina

    But there is another problem I really need to think about before I give my okay for exporting svg files...


    Unfortunately it would make it easier to steal my art. And while I want to help others to be creative and have fun it makes me really sad when people use my drawings without giving me credit. Its extremely rude and disrespectful. :( When you put years of your life into something and don't ask for anything else in return than to mention your website this hurts a lot. It's not just unfair to me, but also to "real" fan artists who draw everything themselves. Unfortunately I notice many people on DeviantArt and other websites use SP-Studio characters or backgrounds for their own art projects without mentioning sp-studio.de in the descriptions. This is a big problem. I don't want to encourage them by making it even easier to steal all my drawings in high quality vector files.


    So even if it will be possible I won't promise yet that I'll actually include this function. Too many bad experiences with art thieves...

    I know you had bad experiences with art thieves in the past, but i honestly think you should write at least a warning to people credit your art like you did with the Classic SP-Studio.


    While i know that a lot of people used your art without credit, as far as i know, most current South Park fan artists on DeviantArt mainly tend to use references from the official avatar creator and the actual show, yeah, they still occasionally use SP-Studio, but many of them tend to credit it.


    I’m not denying that you’ve struggled with art thieves, but i think you should think more before making a tough decision, a SVG export could be useful due to the fact that a lot of South Park newer fans are unable to afford better programs or just can’t draw at all.


    But this is up to your word, I’m not forcing you to add a SVG export because I’m just giving constructive criticism if you want to create a more improved version of the SP-Studio.

    I will think about it again after launch when the more pressing features are running smoothly. Until then I feel like transparent png files are more important to a wide range of SP-Studio users, because it is a popular file format even my mother knows about. ;) And I have been asked for png files and / or transprency a lot, while svg did not come up often.

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