Scripting chaos

So, I guess I should make a post on the project that I’m working on now – the secret otome project.

Since all my free art-time is being spend on a race for the finish line for a few commissions before I leave the country, most of the work on this project is still focused on the script. Like with Angelic Orbs I prefer to write a good deal of the script before drawing any art assets for it anyway.

So, how is the script coming along?

One thing is for sure – since I have decided that this game is going to work differently than the somewhat “linear” paths with choices in AO, scripting can be really hard. Harder than I thought <_<;; Keeping track of what comes where when takes some work.

One good thing is that the map system is mostly finished. Coding really isn’t a strength of mine, so getting that out of the way is a relief. (Know that this isn’t some impressive walk-around map, it’s actually pretty simple “choose where to go” map )

Because of the way that I organize scripts at the moment, I don’t really have a clear number of how many words have been written yet, but most of the prologue has been written along with events for something like 6 days.

So yah. What is the story even about?

Unfinished costume-test-sketch-thing

Who knows! This is all for now

My Eternal Rival – oh so Cute and Fluffy

The “Cute, Light and Fluffy Project” has finally been released!! You can find it:

Here (LemmaSoft Forums)
or:
Here (RenAi Archives)

4 short stories are collected in this OELVN anthology. One of them is my own “My Eternal Rival”. I really hope you’ll check out these stories and enjoy the results!

“My Eternal Rival” is about the black witch Luna and her desperate attempt to get even with her rival, the red witch Lera. A story of rivalry, servitude and frog cakes.

On another note, I’m finally updating my blogroll. It was about time, too many were missing there (and a few links had even died).

Angelic Orbs: Broken Memories released!

Angelic Orbs: Broken Memories has now been released!

Go to the website to download the game, or to Lemmasoft to read up on the release and leave a comment (Or you can do that here )

OP video:

Yes, I’m lazy….

Edit: The first version of the game had a buggy sound effect that made the game freeze on some computers during Tia’s path. Ver. 1.1 fixes this bug and download links have been updated with this version. Please re-download if your game didn’t work. Enjoy!

Bottle Bunnies and Magical Horses

Hello again.

Instead of ranting about my computer breaking down again, or make lame excuses for not having released my game or comic yet, I am going to talk about something completely different today.

As my motivation for looking up on the Bella Sara card game has recently been rekindled, I happened to stumble upon the artist blog of Jennifer L. Meyer, one of the artists of said card game.

And I must say, just looking over a few of her pictures made me fall in love with her art right away. I mean, there are cute bunnies everywhere, who can resist that?

Cake-baking bunnies, electrified bunnies, warrior bunnies, winged bunnies… and they all still look like real, fluffy bunnies.

Of course she draws other things than bunnies too, and it’s all worth a look. And if you want to avoid all the text and blog-ness, you can also just visit her portfolio.

Looking at her Bella Sara horses almost makes me loose the little confidence I had just gained in this area. I mean, this is what I have to compete with? Dear me.

So, don’t wait for me to get my act together and say something analytical and profound about her art – just go look at it already!

(And man, I really do need to do something more out of this blog too.)

Vjutsu.com!

I’m sorry for falling off the face of the internet for a while! My new job sucked up a lot of my time, but especially the death of my laptop has been the cause of this. Recently I got my laptop back in great shape, and life can continue once again.

Which means I have an announcement! Everyone go join Vjutsu.com, the new community centered around the Vjutsu doujin-group, of which I am the artist See that cute ninja up there? She’s asking you to go… no, asking would be too kind of a word. She’s ordering you to!

See you there

Smile

Returning to the original purpose of this blog, here is a short progress update on the game.

All Yoko’s CGs are now coloured and done. In principle, the same can be said about any other character in the game – all images are now in a finished state! I could actually release this if I wanted to! But I don’t! Ha!
Two CGs still need to be rehashed, although I don’t believe a complete remake of them is necessary. Not if I’m lucky…. I may have to redraw an entire sprite set though. *Shot*

Also, even though the music for the game is also completed, I need to get a few of the tracks in their polished and final versions. Yay, another good excuse for being slow
I also want to have another look at the text, but at this rate the game will never be finished… so I may just want to ask for proofreaders soon.

I’m off!

Transforming Tia

Having some time between my last commission and another big project coming up, I’m working on getting some more CGs finished. Some of that work has consisted of fixing or redrawing a couple of old CGs. One of these are safe to show here, since it was one of the first screenshots I ever showed anyone from the game – here you can see the old and new versions of this picture:

The date of the old picture says “3.-10.-07″, almost a year ago. I guess that means that you can see almost a years improvement between those two images. I find it kind of strange myself to look at these pictures – it doesn’t feel like so much should have changed in that time, but that new picture is still a huge improvement. There is still so much left to learn though…

I hope that doesn’t mean that the images in the game will vary too much in quality ^^; I’ll try my best to avoid this. Fortunately that picture was one of the worst in the bunch.

Apart from that I can happily say that all linearts for the CGs are done at this point. I only need to colour 3 more, and get the last piece of music!

I’m such a slowpoke…

On the drawing table

Thought it was about time I made a post about something else than playing games. So here’s an update on the projects I’m working on right now!

Shades of Grey

I have earlier brought up the question of whether I should continue shading my comic pages, or just upload them as pure lineart.

To be honest: the one thing I dislike the most about drawing AO is the shading. Putting the story together and struggling with lineart and backgrounds can get annoying and frustrating, but in the end I still enjoy it. It’s the moment the page gets scanned, and I have to sit in front of the computer to finish up the page with shading and lettering that things start to really get on my nerves.

It’s a shame really, since I like how the page turns out with shading. Especially pages like this one really has a lot to gain with proper shading. As a result of the first blog post, I decided to keep shading the pages, and instead cut down on updating. Now the comic updates only once a week instead of twice, and I still miss an update sometimes, even though all pages for part 2 are actually drawn.

But after working with that schedule for a while, and a short discussion I had on Gaia online, I have decided that maybe I should change this after all. I am seriously considering that after part 2 of Angelic Orbs ends, I will begin updating with black and white pages. I will most likely also go back and repost a batch of pages from time to time with finished shading, but this will only happen when I feel like it and have the extra time.

If I do this I will most likely be able to speed up the updating schedule to twice a week again, and that results in me being able to do what I want most right now – get on with the story! Unfortunately it will also break consistency a bit. Besides, the shading helped bring up my lousy lineart by a notch

As a reward for reading through all this, here is a small preview of a page from part 3 that I have been working on:

Now back to the game…. and remember, next thursday a new character will finally be introduced in the comic! Hooray!

Kyonko-ism

A couple of days ago I was shown a new, strange trend on another board – genderbending the Haruhi cast.

I guess it’s one of those jokes that only work when you already know the characters. In some of the comics in that particular thread show how much the story can change, just because the characters’ genders were reversed (This is one of my favs)

I even ended up doodling this lame sketch myself after a few bored minutes:

I feel sorry for “Kyonko”…..