Just in case anyone is confused why the characters look less 2D, its due to a shader I USED to use for the characters being scrapped

it was pretty resource heavy on my PC and gave me concerns about certain renders.

My suspicions were confirmed when I did a few renders and blender crashed... more than once

so unfortunately the shader is no longer being used, but if you're worried about the character designs looking "worse" it actually doesn't change much, since in certain lighting conditions the shader actually isn't visible.

with these changes out of the way, (and a few tweaks to the existing character designs) I can now get back to working on the office, some code, and other stuff

For now, enjoy these new renders of the characters in "Night Mode" i think they absolutely rule.

thank you!