Break Chance Memento

[Auro-Cyanide]

[Auro-Cyanide]

So, anyway, thought I would post this now since we are actually going to start working on this again after 2 months of being distracted by Nanoreno and a mini project. That said, getting two games actually done has taught us a lot, so I suppose it wasn't too bad of a deviation.

We have started talking about the project again and these are some of the things that have come up in discussion:

-Story direction:
So this game has changed a fair bit from it's original conception. It was originally meant to be a fairly short game with just the five sprites, something Camille was doing for some friends. And now it is not so short. Ahem.

So we have been discussing how to handle certain things within the story and we have decided that we want it to remain fairly tightly focused on the concept of family, which I think will be really nice and something everyone can relate to. This means other pieces will be toned down to some degree, but I think it will be more beneficial to the overall story.

-Tertiary characters

We have been try to decide what to do with tertiary characters (so characters that only show up once or twice) and have come to the decision to have them be side sprites. It would be nice for everyone to have a side sprite but asking around people tend to dislike it because it gets hard to figure out who is important and who isn't. It wasn't the answer I was expecting. But it does cut down my work load. Then we were deciding who is tertiary and who deserves a full sprite. Linking back to the previous decision we choose to limit it to the main characters and their families. This is a part of keeping it focused on what the game is about.

-Backgrounds

I've arranged with Samu-kun to use his photos of Japan as bases/references (^o^) This will help a lot I think since I should be able to get a slightly more authentic feel.

-Scenes

We experimented with this a bit in The Elevator and will probably continue to do so. While we will have some more traditional CG scenes, I am very eager to try out some panning and transitions and stuff, especially to spice up some of the more heavy text moments in the story Sometimes they are more time effective, they have a really nice animated feel and you can show more pieces of information as opposed to a static graphic.

[Angra Mainyu]

[Auro-Cyanide]

O, u so punny~

Sprite poses are definitely being done, once I get the other sprites out of the way. I feel much more confident about it now. Before I was kind of terrified of them because of lack of experience and the sheer amount of time it was taking me to to 1 lot of sprites, but I since I have more experience now I feel better about it. Plus, *le sigh* I have a lot of anatomy things I need to go fix *le sigh* Seriously, I'm a little scared to look at them since it has been so long >_>

This GUI was our first and something we commissioned, so we probably aren't going to change it at this point, but it will be something we will keep in mind for the future I'm going to try dabbling myself in GUI with Red Snow and do some really different things as a part of the experiment.

I think the movement of the sprites is really cool, like the distances they place themselves and having that from behind pose, it works really nicely. Planning indeed will need to be involved, but in a lot of cases doing some panel work or small sprite poses is a better use of time than a full CG in cases where the moment doesn't really need it. We have only been talking about it so far since CGs are comming up last, but it's a good thing to keep in mind.

[Auro-Cyanide]

*head desk* If I didn't know better, I would swear it was possible to lose art skill over time. It's only been like 2 months and it feels like I had to learn to draw again. Anyway, Finally managed to struggle my way through a character concept, in line with the family thing I mentioned before.

This is Chiaki's mother. She had him when she was very young, which is why I tried to make her look younger than the brother's mother. I also imagine her to be a bit socially awkward and lacking in self confidence to I tried to draw her stance so it was slightly withdrawn and her clothes are a bit rumpled. She will have at least 1 more pose because it is plot relevant.

[Angra Mainyu]

I like her design. Tho, I'm going to be nit-pick-y and suggest that either her shoulders are a little too broad, or her hips are a little too narrow.

And I think it's pretty obvious that you're most comfortable with a drawing characters in a right-facing three-quarters view. If this character isn't going to be too prominent, you may want to consider trying a left-facing version. Although, that's merely a suggestion in order to beef up your skill / comfort level with drawing from the opposite direction. Certainly not necessary. And given the layout of the other sprites and the situations in which she appears, it may even be irrelevant.

[Auro-Cyanide]

I agree, I rounded off her sholders a bit. Her arm was a bit too longer as well (either that or I had her elbow in the wrong spot...), so that got shortened.

Oh, that. I flip them back and forwards as I draw to check proportions. Best way of noticing mistakes! (even if I am often horrified at how wrong stuff can be). It also hopefully helps in getting the sprites to work in either direction. This DOES create some consistency issues sometimes for anything assyemetrical, but short of redrawing sprites for left and right, that isn't really fixable. Sometimes it is (like removing Josh's tattoo on one lot so he only had it on one arm) or alternatively always have everyone facing the same direction. But mostly it's just a way of checking I'm getting stuff to look okay. I think she started off in the other direction. I think.

Also, she is just getting two normal poses for the moment. The stronger moments in the story are going to covered with CGs or partial CGs.

[Auro-Cyanide]

One more sprite down. I can... kind of see the end to the sprites. Still have 1 minor, 2 major and a handful of bust shots to get done. Then it will be on to backgrounds and fixing the sprites, which I'll probably do at the same time to spice it up a little. I am pretty worried about retro fitting the sprites with poses. Some will be pretty simple, but others may be more complex. I'm not sure. They are easier to do the first time round. Best to decide on these things before you start working on things folks. Wasn't really on the charts when we first started, but at least something I can keep in mind for the future.

I've managed to streamline the emotion creation process pretty well by using duplicate layers when I can. Helps things speed up a bit.

Then I need to tackle Camille to have a chat about backgrounds, like which one's we will want to use for panning or parallaxing or something. I'll need to know those before hand to save myself heart ache.

[Auro-Cyanide]

[Auro-Cyanide]

We are implementing side sprites for tertiary characters (so the player knows they aren't that important, but so they still have some visual form) and we are having some issues with the placement of the name box, which is to be expected. Will require some thinking.



Oh yeah, and these are some of the tertiary side sprites, I used a doll base for them. Still a whoooooole heap of edits that need to be done to the sprites, stuff added, but technically speaking them are all done.