Just got the samples from zFrontier and overall things are looking great! The surface is actually very lightly textured and same as the sides (feels completely smooth to the touch), no complaints there.
Because I'm happy with the surface quality, I'll be sticking with DSA for this set to keep things moving, but will definitely look into KAM profile for future projects!
– I missed the apostrophe character when prepping my .ai file, fixed that already.
– Esc and Enter keys are basically bright orange-red... need those to match the hiragana legends' red and we're gucci, it'll really make a huge difference.
– The yellow is seeming dull in the modifiers is because the text is rendering too thinly, same goes for the esc and enter keys. Also need to push the color slightly warmer to match the design.
– Alpha black legends are slightly too thick, red legends are spot on though.
– Also oddly enough, the function keys and space bar are a different white than the alphas. Will get those matched up.
I think the hiragana looked great in the renders but turned out a little too thick in the samples. I think they need to be slightly thinner to not look like one mushy blob
I actually made them slightly thicker in my designs to match the stroke of the black letters, they look pretty good to me in person. Maybe the sample photos from zFrontier were a tad fuzzy.
For reference, here's my design in Illustrator, you can also see the cute shiba inu novelty that'll be included: