UPDATE: For available slots for characters, please look here.
Alright everyone. About a few months ago I got some complaints regarding the variety of fan-donated characters that I've accepted into my series but seem to have not been brought up again ever since their concepts were first revealed by the author, one even suggesting that they take back their OC's since I haven't done much, if any regarding each donation.
Allow me to list off why I'm doing character donations in the first place, and further proof that I still have the intention of inserting donations into the series no matter how long it takes me to do the series' first major project.
The idea itself of allowing donated characters was influenced by the
Mega Man series. For all the games from the second to the seventh, contests were held prior to each game's release where fans were able to submit their own Robot Masters design concepts. The top 8 would have their designs put into the game and would receive a free copy of the game enclosed in a special collector's cartridge (minus the seventh). The eighth game instead only had six slots for Robot Masters, and they had to be built from a template, while two (Tengu and Astro Man) were developed in-house by Capcom themselves.
*Similarly, the doujin-soft title
Rosenkreuzstilette Freudenstachel did this, where a total of five new characters could be created by fans and inserted into the game.
The Jetters and A.C.E.S. have already been phased into the story so well that taking them out to create new replacements would be a chore. And they all have good designs to boot (though I may consider reworking Higure a bit to make him a little less flamboyant) and I don't want the efforts their original authors took in to be put to waste. The original nine Jetters are going to be boss characters in the first game while in both 64 and II, they'll be side characters. In any other adaptations of the stories, they'll gain key roles.
This gives out opportunities for multiple very unknown character/conceptual authors to be part of a soon-to-be big-name series; but I guess this doesn't count due to
Aozora's Adventure's very unlikely chances of going mainstream.
Characters that are accepted are guaranteed to make it into the series as either recurring support/sidekick characters (such as Heren, a design of my own), or as recurring/key villains. They won't be simply for just making a design that has no chance of being part of an official/bigger project, alike a few contests I've seen now and then.
Speaking of contests, this really as a whole is not something I'd consider a "contest" as there's really no prizes aside from just having a design of yours become part of the series. Everyone who gets a design accepted is a winner here. I may consider starting up particular contests based around this idea with actual prizes to claim, but not now since I don't want people going to think their efforts were wasted.
Do any submitted designs become 100% my properties only? Absolutely not! Any donated designs can still be used by their creators with no limits and for any necessary purposes he/she desires, such as for roleplaying, entering contests, inserting into one's own story, etc.
Any further questions can be asked.
You may also read the official readme here:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/j89m20f125dwcz9/AozoraCharacterDesigningFAQ.pdf
