Realizing I never shared this WIP. Enjoy the Adam.
I explored the idea of CGs in YAGS briefly, but ultimately decided it didn’t make financial sense. But the first (and, now, only) one that I commissioned, as a test, is making good progress!
I think this is going to become the cover for the Behind-the-Scenes book instead (and maybe also a desktop wallpaper), so at least it won’t go to waste.
Final Adam sprite, via the talents of @stollcomics
He fits into the game pretty well 🙂
I’m still in the middle of my TODO list, so I’ll probably wait on a final James sprite to push a new release. But still… I’m excited about this progress!
Adam ended up being a huge pain for @stollcomics to color, but here’s a preview of his final sprite. (I think the head, or at least the expressions, are still a WIP, but he’s looking great anyway.)
Progress!
Progress! (Also that background is kind of gorgeous.)
My sprite artist should be back from vacation later this week, but then I’m away next week, so hopefully by the end of the month we’ll have the first real assets (Adam sprite and dorm room background) in the game!
One thing my sprite artist (the awesome @stollcomics) had been doing was varying the head, as needed, in different expressions. For example, here’s a sample of (inked!) Adam heads, and I think it makes for a much more expressive sprite than the usual “static head and moving facial features” thing.
However! In the process I think we also discovered why head movements aren’t a normal thing in visual novels – because it takes really long to draw and ink so many heads, which multiplies out even more when you want hair and facial hair variations. (We were expecting to have a final Adam sprite, colors and all, this weekend, but instead he only got around 70% done with inks.)
Given that, I think we’re going to be going back to the “usual” visual novel style with a static head and moving facial features. It won’t look as good as these, but it’ll be a heck of a lot easier on him, and generally means this process won’t take as long given the 13 other sprites we have to get through.
It’s particularly unfortunate that a lot of this awesome art isn’t going to see the light of day (other than this post, I suppose), but I’m really glad that we ran into this early in the process (on the first sprite) instead of after doing a couple of simple ones and then having to go back and redo those, as well.
Learning experiences, I guess!
(This also means, of course, that the next game release is delayed for a couple weeks while we redo the expressions and get the new sprite colored.)
More from the talented hands of @stollcomics. Here’s Adam looking good. 🙂 I think his sprite design is done at this point, and he’ll soon get inked and then colored.
Here’s a preview of a couple iterations in design on James.
The second is the more recent one. I think he’s going to be repositioned, and have some slight tweaks, but that’s the general idea.
Sprites are under way, thanks to the infinite talents of the infinitely talented @stollcomics. With luck, I’ll be able to start replacing some sprites in the next game release.
Here’s some Adam sketches.
