Got enough design previews for another update post, I think. Decided to knock out the single old men of the town in one go since I had a couple of ideas just burning a hole in my brain.
Clint has gotten a rather poor reputation in the western Stardew fan community over the years, which ConcernedApe has leaned into a bit with his dialogue and events, but I think he originally just came off as having crippling shyness and low self-esteem. I think that same type of character is often much more endearing as a girl character so I want to emphasize the shyness angle with Chloe's expressions and mannerisms.
As the little caption suggests girl Marlon's design is rather similar to Yagyu from Senran Kagura... and the reason for that is that for the longest time, I could swear I once saw a portrait replacer mod that switched his appearance for Yagyu's, but I never found any trace of such a thing existing. Whether it did exist at one point or it was purely a delusion, my brain's associated him with Yagyu, so now I'll unleash that on the rest of the world!
I realize that switching out his outfit for black bikini armor is a rather significant shift from his original color scheme, but between him, Marnie, and Lewis, I feel like we won't miss out too much with one fewer character who can be described as "unmarried older villager with green and brown color palette"...
As an aside, Marlon seems to be the only one of these four characters who is expanded much in a particularly popular dialogue expansion (SVE) but he's still not that deep a character in that. On the flip side, he has an expansion that makes him marriable and involves a full set of eight portraits, but is explicitly incompatible with SVE. Not sure if I should give her the full varied poses treatment or not, here...
her eyelash is a fish i just thought you should know
Linus was, surprisingly, a bit complicated to decide on an angle for. He doesn't make a great first impression on most players when you find him digging through trash, and his other dialogue about being an outcast establishes him further as a poor homeless fellow, but it seems as though ConcernedApe decided to pivot him more towards being a nature hermit kind of character with the later events added in content updates.
So, I decided to represent the nature look more than the homeless part, and since a plant bikini is a pretty simplistic design, I plan to swap out the cloak of dead yellow leaves for a seasonal look that has fresher plants in springtime and summertime but goes to the original color scheme in autumn. Not totally sure what she should do for winter yet, though.
I also want to give her dazed-looking expressions so that the first impression is that you can't quite tell if there's something wrong with her or not since she IS a strange homeless hermit, but I hope the impression you get after you've gotten to know her is that she's just a fluffy harmless weirdo.
I'll probably be working on depictions of the married couples, Jodi, Kent, Robin, and Demetrius next, but I don't really have solid ideas for them yet so I'll probably get started on another higher-res bachelorette set as well. See you next time!