Sunrise Postmortem: Part II (Background Art)

by S.

Sunrise's cutout-style animated intro

As NaNoRenO takes place only over a month, I had to be careful how I portioned my time. I wanted to create painted sprite art, but I also wanted to animate the background art. In order to have both, I adopted a simpler cutout style for the background art. The 2D style allowed me to create background art more quickly, but also allowed me to easily make multiple movable layers that I could then animate or remove, depending on the needs of the current scene.

Overall I went for a retro collage look, because collage is one method of combining flat graphics with highly rendered images. This combination is also the opposite of the typical visual novel, which generally uses simplified character art on highly rendered background art. I was curious how the reverse would work. (NaNoRenO is a nice time to experiment).

Once I settled on the approach, I began with the most intimidating background first. In this case, the plane. All of the -punks are about technology (steampunk, cyberpunk and so on,) and dieselpunk is no exception. To be true to the setting, some form of dieselpunk technology had to be incorporated. Hazel-Bun (one of my collaborators on Sunrise) suggested a plane:

Sunrise: Shiye's Work Room. It has several layers that can be animated or removed.

Whenever approaching a subject I haven't drawn before, I spend some time studying and practicing . Since I hadn't drawn (any?) planes before, I spent some time sketching WWII planes from reference to get the feel for the proportions of a plane. This later helped when creating preliminary sketches for other scenes that used planes (there are three in Sunrise).

Sprites with halftone outline

Integrating with Sprite Art
In order to make the character art look like it belonged on the background art, I created halftone outlines for the characters. Unfortunately, these outlines tended to flash when ATL (Ren'Py's Animation Transformation Language) was applied. I worked around it for some characters, but with some of the sprites that I coded in early on, such as James's, the outline still flashed every time the character spoke. Next time, I would make any outlines part of the character sprite rather than a separate silhouette.

Unfortunately, there was no time to go back and rework background or sprite art, so if I tried something as an experiment (like the halftone outline), I would lose too much time if I went back and fixed it. In my personal work, I might make several variations on any give piece. (I made five variations on the Tell a Demon textbox until I was satisfied—with Sunrise I only had time for two.)

Sunrise Postmortem: Part I (Sprite Art)

by S.

Sunrise Sprite Breakdown

The above image shows the basic stages of sprite construction in Photoshop. Sofia was the final sprite I painted, and by that time I nearly tossed the drawing stage altogether and went straight to the underpainting stage.

The approach I took with the Sunrise sprites is actually very similar to the one I use in order to paint the Tell a Demon art: a drawing, followed by an underpainting, followed by a final overpainting (example on my Tumblr, here). This basic process, by the way, is pretty similar to that of the Renaissance masters.

CGs? What CGs?

Prior to Sunrise, I was a slower digital painter, probably due to the fact that I did not have clearly defined steps before. Or, not clearly defined like I had for my traditional art. Although I spent more time on the sprites than any other part of the process, I was surprised at how quickly the Sunrise sprites went. Each one took about three evenings, including the expressions, despite that some expressions required me to re-paint significant portions of the characters' faces.

Although I painted the expressions on transparent layers, I painted the poses on an opaque layer. Later on, I cut out the sprites using masks made in Illustrator. I find this to be a faster and more forgiving method since it allows me to easily change the contours of the character and I don't have to worry about accidentally painting on the wrong layer.

Overall, I felt like my work and working method improved over NaNoRenO. Hazel-Bun also helped here by drawing concept sketches and character designs to work from and offering me feedback on the look of each sprite as I painted them.

One problem I stumbled across was the painted style. I used two Photoshop brushes for the character painting, and as a result the brush strokes look very digital. I prefer to combine digital and traditional textures for this reason, but in future I would explore using different digital tools so that the digital look wasn't so overt. I would also prefer to spend some more time on the characters; Sofia, as the last sprite I painted, began to look a little more stylized than the others.

Sunrise Postmortem

Sunrise: A Dieselpunk Fairytale

Sunrise: A Dieselpunk Fairytale, is a visual novel created for NaNoRenO, a visual novel game jam. It's a story about Sofia, a noblewoman who is struck by a curse just when court politics are getting dicey for her and her fiance, Shiye. (Read more about the story or download here).

I'll cover my part (or most of it) in the following posts:

Part I: Sprite Art

Part II: Background Art

Part III: GUI & Design

Skyfish: Introduction to the world

by Aviala

Frankly, I'm not sure how to start writing about this. I've been planning the world for years, so there's a lot to talk about. Bear with me while I try to keep this short and snappy but probably get lost into tangents.

The world of Skyfish is a mixture of fantasy and steampunk, but I've made an effort to make it different from the typical fantasy genre that Tolkien started - which I have nothing against, being a fan of the genre - but I wanted to create something really unique.

I can't talk about worldbuilding without mentioning my partner Tasmir. He has helped me a lot, and the world wouldn't be the same without his extensive knowledge of history and culture - and his sometimes infuriatingly specific requests for things that would actually work instead just looking like they might. Bless him.

The map of the world as it is - still a work in progress. Many of the names are placeholders.

The story of the game begins in Southern Marava, a country stuck in a hundred year long civil war. Southern Marava is officially run by local councils, but near the war-torn border the power belongs to the warlords. The country has abandoned both it's long-lasting traditions and it's former rule under a long line of Empresses. 

One of the more fantastic qualities of Skyfish is the floatstone, which can only be found in the large lake next to Souther Marava. Floatstone is a crystal-like substance with the power to make things (or people) fly. It was only discovered around twenty years ago, and harnessed into powering airships ten years ago.

Marava is just one of the countries in the world we created, but it already has it's own culture and even a language. We're working hard to make both Marava and the whole (known) world even richer and better.

New Contributor: Aviala

by Aviala

Tell us a bit about yourself.
I'm Aviala, a game design student and a visual novel creator from Finland. I'm also the founder of Lizard Hazard Games, my group and soon to be business. Right now I spend a lot of time working on my project, Skyfish. When I have time, I also do art as a freelancer for other game projects.

Why visual novels/interactive fiction?
I don't remember how I first found Ren'Py, the visual novel engine, but I was amazed by how easy it was to learn how to make a simple VN. After my failed attempts to draw a webcomic I decided that a story-based game would be perfect to tell the story I couldn't bring into comic form.

What was the last thing you worked on?
Last night I worked on some commission work, and earlier today I finished writing a backstory for a Skyfish character. Skyfish is my first big game project so I haven't really worked on anything very significant before that.

Working on anything right now?
Yes, Skyfish. I've been working on it on and off for around 3 years, but there wasn't any significant progress before I started focusing on it a few months ago.

What are a few of your inspirations (artistic, literary, games)?
I don't have many inspirations that I'm directly drawing from, but when I was younger I used to read a lot of fantasy literature. The Hobbit is one of my all-time favourites, because my mother used to read it to me when I was little, and since then I've read it multiple times. Fantasy literature helped me read better and inspired me to try my hand at writing - though it's been a long time since I wrote a story before Skyfish, so I'm rusty.

The TV show Breaking Bad inspired me to write better morally ambiguous characters. The show helped me define some characters for Skyfish. As for art... I don't have many specific artists or works that inspire me. I just suck in inspiration from all around me, I guess. Having many artist friends helps.

Other interests?
Lots. I'm interested in medieval combat, and I'd like to try my hand at that someday. For now I only do boffering aka foam weapon combat. I also have other nerdy hobbies like tabletop roleplaying and LARPing. I have a fabulous sense of style and I love to shop at thrift stores.

Plant, animal or mineral?
Plant.

New Contributor: Meagan

by Meagan

From Faust: Scene II

Tell us a bit about yourself.
In addition to game dev and freelance illustration, I also work part-time in a university archive handling cool old stuff. 

Why visual novels/interactive fiction?
I’m trained as an oil painter, actually, and I have a strong interest in digital art and visual storytelling.  Visual novels seem like the perfect way to combine those interests and bring my 2D art to life.

What was the last thing you worked on?
I did some illustrations for Detective City, a Twine game made for Global Game Jam 2015.  I’m also the background artist and UI designer for the upcoming fantasy VN Queen At Arms.

 
Working on anything right now?
My current personal project is Faust: Scene II - an all-female kinetic novel adaptation of a scene from Goethe’s Faust.

   
What are a few of your inspirations (artistic, literary, games)?
Oh gosh, umm…. Northern Renaissance painters, medieval manuscript illumination, the Pre-Raphaelites, Golden Age illustrators, weird atmospheric games like Year Walk and Limbo, and story-driven indie horror RPGs like Ib and Mad Father.  That’s the short list, anyway.
 
Other interests?
Goth subculture, heavy metal music, mythology, folklore, and world religions.

 
Plant, animal or mineral?  
Animal, I suppose. 

New Contributor: OokamiKasumi

From The Adventures of Prince Ivan

Tell us a bit about yourself; why visual novels/interactive fiction?
As an author, I saw Visual Novels as a fantastic new way to tell a story. I was already creating worlds with words alone. The idea of adding images, music and sound effects to a story fascinated me.

What was the last thing you worked on?
The Walk, a Psychoanalysis Game. It's actually more of a Quiz game than a Visual Novel. Truthfully though, I was testing some coding just to see if I could do it.

Working on anything right now?
I'm in the planning (plotting) stage of a couple of new ideas, but I'm either missing needed assets to complete it, or the idea is just to big for me to accomplish by myself.

What are a few of your inspirations (artistic, literary, games)?
My core inspiration for making visual novels is an older game called "Ballad of an Evening Butterfly" (link), one of the VN's translated by DejaVu. With only a handful of choices available, it was far more Story than Game. I played it and pretty much thought, "Hey, I can do that!" However, several years passed before I found the RenPy VN Engine and started making my own VNs.

I have two other sources of inspiration: The old "Choose Your own Adventure" books and Fairy Tales. Many of the older Fairy Tales actually have riddles and puzzles in them, so they work well as VNs, but studying the style of story branching CYOA books use is where I got my first ideas on how multi-path stories should work.

Other interests?
Photoshop. I became an addict after working with a couple of scanlation groups that translate manga from Japanese to English. I adore experimenting with ways to take photos and make them look like paintings.

After too many years of experimentation I finally figured out how to make VN character sprites. However, the 'paperdoll' technique I use is not a popular style. Unfortunately, I just don't have the drawing skills needed to make each character an individual work of arte, so I make-do with the limited skills I do have.

Plant, animal or mineral?
Animal!