SoulCalibur 6 may be a competitive fighting game, but some see it more as an artistic platform. Many players may hate fighting CaS creations in the ranked, but they truly can be pieces of art. HappyColour is one of those who enjoy this part of SC6 a lot and he even created a platform where those sharing his passion can share their creations: SoulCaliburCreations.com
Twitter: @TheHappyColour & @SCCREATIONNEWS
Twitch: TheHappyColour
Birth Year: 1982
Country: Canada
Hello Happy, can you briefly introduce yourself?
Hello hello! Thank you for having me, online I am known as the HappyColour or Happy for short. Most that know of me know I am super passionate about SOULCALIBUR, I have been playing it since the first casually, and more recently started taking it more seriously. On top of this I am also huge into designing Alternative Costumes for the characters in the game. SOULCALIBUR is blessed with a very powerful character creation tool allowing infinite creativity for those with patience!
Yes, whoever knows you also know you have great interest in CaS creations. Can you tell us more about this passion of yours?
As we will all admit, fighting games are genuinely difficult, for myself, I dealt with the frustration found along the journey by spending time in character creation designing alternative costumes for my main. Funnily enough, in other games I don’t really care that much about character creation, but in a fighting game where it feels your progress is measured in millimeters, I found it to be a really nice escape from the constant competitive grind. It gave me a sense of accomplishment whenever I would see my design on screen, even if I was getting stomped on! On top of this, I consider myself to be a narrative creator, so I feel like my alt costume creations actually add to the lore of the SC universe. It makes me love the characters even more!
You created a whole website dedicated to sharing SC6 CaS. How will you introduce your site to someone completely unaware?
SOULCALIBURCREATIONS.com is a collaborative website dedicated to providing a professional portfolio view of creators’ best works. It is completely populated by content generated by the community, similar to your amazing Portal, and we encourage creators to select and share their creations they are most proud of, be they Alternative Costumes, Cosplays, Original Characters, or Modded. All creators are invited and welcome!
How did you come up with the idea of SCCreations website?
I created the site as I found that many talented creators were hidden in the activity of the creation community, largely due to the very human nature of people liking and upvoting content that is cool or familiar to them. On traditional sharing sites this results in creators who have designed a technical but unique masterpiece, being underrepresented in comparison to someone creating a simplistic’ Sponge Bob’ cosplay. Simply, the more known or relatable a creation is in traditional creation sharing sites the more likely it is to be seen! This is cool and all, and these ‘Sponge Bob’ creations do deserve to be seen as well, but I wanted a place for people who viewed their creations as art to be able to share them knowing that they wouldn’t quickly disappear in a feed due to their work being less familiar. On top of this, I wanted the site to be truly multinational while bridging the gap between the two major SOULCALIBUR communities: competitive players and artistic creators. Hence why the site is made in multiple languages, and we collaborate with tournament organizers to create custom prizes.
On a slightly different note – what were some main challenges or hurdles for you while designing and building the site and its functions?
I built the website using the platform WIX, and lets just say, there are lots of times where I regretted that decision. But I truly feel like the website now is beautiful in current state. There have been many challenges of course, but a challenge I did not anticipate, and that still pops up to this day, is ensuring the site was available in English and Japanese. The issue wasn’t the translation though, it was that different languages take up different space for the same amount of content, and when you have a site that is designed with a unique layout with the intent to be visually powerful this creates many instances of forced compromise in design. Lesson learned!
How are the whole web and the idea behind it developing and growing over time?
In my head, despite the great traffic and use we are getting, I honestly thought that the website would be much more popular than it is, and that we would have many more portfolios. Two issues I didn’t expect that some creators view as barriers: some creators thinking the upload process is cumbersome as it involves manually submitting multiple unique photos at once, and creators having difficulty choosing their best 10-30 creations. The vision and quality of the website is still being maintained at current state which is great, but I would love to get more portfolios up on it from even more regions around the world, and I am currently brainstorming how to make this the case. SOULCALIBUR is quite a niche fighting game after all, and creation is a niche in the niche!
You also have monthly design challenges on SCCreations. Can you tell us more about these?
Every month we challenge the community to design to a specific theme. We utilize these creations to populate a page on our website and we choose the highlights of the favourite entries in the eyes of the evaluator to give a special extra shout out to those creators. The philosophy of the design challenge is to provide a one-third collaborative, one-third competitive, and one-third inspirational arena for creators to hone their skills and challenge themselves. As the nature of creation is very personal and arbitrary in nature, we change our evaluator every month and we task the evaluator with choosing their personal highlights based on their own criteria to ensure that a wide variety of stylistic tastes are represented across the months’ highlights.
If you could change one single thing about SC6 what would that be?
Even though my post has been focused on creation, funnily enough my one change would be the implementation of better netcode (perhaps rollback). SOULCALIBUR, in my opinion, is the best feeling fighting game in the world when played in person, online it feels old and sluggish. If this game felt as good online as it feels in person, I would never put it down, and my salt glands wouldn’t flow so readily!
What do you consider to be your greatest SC6 achievement and why?
This is a challenging question as I actually have three different types of achievements I am super proud of so I must share each.
From a community contribution perspective, the creation of SOULCALIBURCREATIONS.com and the utilization of it by the community is something that I am amazingly proud of, it is a beautiful site with so many amazing and inspiring creations from around the world.
From a change the landscape perspective, I am superrrrrrrrrrr proud of the ‘Add Hilde to SOULCALIBUR VI’ petition. It was something I created, managed, and pushed and was the most successful SOULCALIBUR petition ever from an outcomes and signatures perspective, and I do firmly believe it influenced/buffed the developers in adding Hilde to the game. ARrrrrOooooOooooooooo!
From a personal competitive perspective, winning my region’s major as Hilde was an amazing feeling accomplishment, it was hands down my most heartwarming feeling competitive win, nothing felt as good as bringing the queen to my big regional in person and taking the trophy! FOR WOLFKRONE!
Any final message or closing words?
Other than thanking you for considering me as a interview for the Portal, thank you very much, I would love to add a quick note to the developers in case they glance upon it:
SOULCALIBUR VI, in my eyes, is truly the best SOULCALIBUR ever from a creation, content, competitive, design, and gameplay perspective. And the communication regarding it until the end of Season 2 was great. As we have such a passionate community, I feel the community deserves and is entitled to a road map regarding SOULCALIBUR VI’s planned future beyond Season 2. Especially considering the significant community efforts being made to support the game (tournaments, websites, discords, streamers, modders, etc… we have an AMAZING community). I compel you SOULCALIBUR team to give us a road map of SOULCALIBUR VI’s future from support and planned update perspective so the community can optimize its efforts. Onegaishimasu!
Thank you for the interview!