Breaking News – Samukun Hired; Leaving Blog and Visual Novel Development for Immediate Future

Well, something rather completely unexpected happened this week. I was HIRED to work as a real video game story writer.

Oh boy, how did this strange turn of events happen? Well, I can say that 99.99% of all of it was just damned luck. I happened to have good relations with someone who worked in the career services of the university, and she caught wind of a part time job offer for a video game writer. Thanks to her, I was able to apply for the position before the job offer was even publicized, and after resumes, cover letters, writing samples, and letters of recommendation, I was hired.

I will be penning a high budget educational video game that’s being financed by the federal government. Luckily, the project is centered around the university, so I won’t have to commute anywhere. In approximately five years time, the game will be coming to a high school or science museum near you.

Unfortunately, I think that will just about end all of my personal projects and this blog. Starting next week, I will be writing and attending staff meetings 15 hours a week, on top of being a full time student. I’m pretty disappointed to have to end all of my projects, but seeing how I’m supposed to be a professional now, I’ll have to dedicate myself to my new job. Not to mention that after nearly a year of poverty, I finally have a source of income again. Hooray! Maybe I’ll finally have the money to buy commercial visual novels again.

I know, I know, you’re now angry and jealous of me. I’m sorry. I admit, this was almost completely because of just flat out damned luck. You can leave your hate mail on this blog. I’m not sure if I’ll have enough time to read them any more, but feel free to vent your anger. XD

Well, it’s been a crazy ride writing visual novels for the past two years. I won’t say that all of it was enjoyable, but it certainly did have its occasional moments of glory. In fact, I kind of still want to keep working on visual novels, but realistically speaking, I’m probably going to end up focusing on what pays the bills.

I’ll probably be dropping by at Lemmasoft occasionally. I might even post a random blog post or two every now and then. But by and large, I don’t think I’ll have the time any more to contribute significantly to visual novels. If all goes well, I will be working on this project until I graduate, so it’ll be for quite a while.

See you folks. Keep making your games.

Back to Symphony – Making the Characters

The previously mentioned secret project didn’t survive the two week trial period, so I’ve returned to working on the When They Cry game. I’m still not entirely sold on its real title, The Shrill Symphony of the Crimson Fairy Tale, so I’ll probably end up changing it sooner or later. It feels a bit wordy and it’s also kind of hard to remember. (Although wordy titles have worked for horror interactive fiction in the past… “I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream” ring a bell for anyone? And it’s still easier to remember than something like Xenosaga Episode III: Also sprach Zarathustra.)

Now that we had decided upon the setting last blog entry, now the task was to put together a cast of characters for Symphony. I wanted the main heroine to be a quiet character with whom the audience could sympathize. In the end, I thought a bandage girl would fill that role the best. The bandage girl’s an older moe archetype that we haven’t seen lately. Basically, the main idea is that a girl wrapped in bandages appears to be injured and the player feels compelled to protect her while she heals. Well, I’m not sure whether I buy that or not (I’m not sure how comfortable most males would be in romantically pursuing an injured girl), but since I liked Rei Ayanami from Evangelion, it felt like a good time time to bring back an old archetype anyways.

By kamerow

The bandage girl has received considerably less attention in recent years.

Also, I thought the character design of Komori Kiri from Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei was cute, so I gave her extremely long hair as well.

By dowman_sayman

Ridiculously long hair moe

So, here was the original design sketch of Marie Seule, the main heroine of Symphony.

It’s always shocking how much more terrible everything looks once I’ve scanned it on the computer. In fact, it’s probably just a trick of the eye: the sketch was terrible from the beginning, but after staring at it for the entire duration of the design process, my eyes got accustomed to its faults and it was only until I viewed it through the medium of the computer screen that I could notice all of its flaws. In any case, I continued with the painting process and began the process of fixing all of its mistakes.

At first, I thought it would look nice if I adopted an extremely simple shading style and applied a filter in the end, like the art of Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei.

Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei employs an extremely simple shading technique that still produces impressive results.

And so, here was the result of that effort:

Disastrous, it was! It would be an embarrassment of untold magnitude if I actually released a game with character art that actually looked this hideous. I learned that it actually took insane amounts of skill to actually pull off the simple style. Even if there wasn’t any shading required, even the smallest of anatomical imperfections could derail an entire work. After having received my punishment for attempting to cut corners, I fixed up the character design and properly shaded everything.

The final result.

After nearly 20 hours of labor, the final piece finally emerged. As put accurately by a fellow artist, it’s merely “acceptable for now,” but it was still an enormous improvement over the original design.

The original version of Higurashi no Naku Koro ni, the main inspiration for this project, is noted for its mediocre art. However, this entire process has reminded me of just how difficult it is to produce art even at Higurashi’s level. At first, I thought it would be pretty easy to top Higurashi’s art quality.

However, after 20 hours of suffering, the end product ended up looking no better than the Higurashi sprites posted above. I have no idea how long it took 07th Expansion to make his sprites… All I know is that it took me more hours to make a single sprite than I have played on my Xbox 360 for the past two years. My art confidence has yet again taken another blow, and I have realized the necessity of more training. Art is a difficult process, so I have a lot of respect for anyone who’s willing to give up so much time to produce it.

Join us next time, as we get introduced to more characters of Symphony!

THE INDEX
How the Project was Born
The Setting of Symphony

Sunrider’s Landing: DFC Edition

As depicted accurately by some anime series, space travel can be an arduous endeavor. Not only does one need to be crammed into a tiny metal box for months at a time, completely at the mercy of getting vaporized by long range beam weapons, getting the ship’s conveniently placed windshield smashed by a Zaku, and getting turned into Vajira food, but also get trapped hundreds of millions of light years (and sometimes even actual years) from one’s special one back at Earth. Sounds like a completely bad deal, huh?

That’s where our Delightful Female Crewmates are here to help! (Note: “DFC” as used in this blog refers not to the more well known characters of the less endowed variety, but to those brave young women who brave the travails of space travel and join the would be mecha hero on his adventures through the cosmos.) Any top-of-the-line ship needs its crew of only the most skillful and talented DFCs to back up and sometimes rescue the protagonist. Besides, what would be better than finding true love amongst the stars, on top of saving the galaxy from certain doom? We all know the previously mentioned special one back at Earth was just a lie, after all.

As such, I have prepared my roster of the top DFCs. These celestial ladies are at the top of their game and can turn any hopelessly outnumbered situation into an instant success story. A spaceship needs a crew, and a crew we have!

Strategic Analysis
Kaguya Sumeragi
From Code Geass

One of the heads of Kyoto by the age of 14, and later the ruler of the free world by age 15, few other DFCs can match Kaguya’s strategic abilities. Plus, she can officiate all starship weddings using her position as a world leader, which always comes in handy, especially if the said wedding happens to be taking place in the middle of a space battle. (Happens with alarming frequency in these kinds of shows…)

Ship Counselor
Nia
From Gurren Lagann

A bit air headed, and sometimes what she says doesn’t really make sense, but Nia’s still on board to give everyone a smile in case a mission doesn’t turn out as planned.

Bridge Bunnies
Feldt Grace
From Gundam 00

Darry
From Gurren Lagann

Milfeulle Sakuraba
From Galaxy Angel

Every ship needs a bridge team of only the most competent (relatively) bunnies, so here they are! We have Feldt to actually do all the work, Darry to clean up the mess Milfy will cause, and Milfy to provide everyone with food. (Don’t forget to bring someone who knows how to cook along for long space voyages… You know what’ll happen when Nia offers to cook for everyone.) And the best of all, the three of them visually complement each other! That gives them at least a +2 unity bonus on top of Milfy’s already massive luck bonus.

Mecha Squadron Leader
Meia Gisborn
From Vandread
Mecha of Choice: Vanguard

An old veteran who actually existed in a time when Gonzo actually stood for something other than trashy, unoriginal anime series, Meia has seen countless battles and can easily match any new gun to have come after her.

Stoic Mecha Pilot
Rei Ayanami
From Evangelion
Mecha of Choice: Eva-00

An even more experienced veteran from the really olden days of no computer generaterated graphics, Rei Ayanami is always willing to sacrifice her life for the sake of the mission. Not that she will ever have to, mind you, since this going to be a fun adventure in space where she learns of the power of friendship, rather than a dreary mindscrew series about how Kikuko Inoue is your mecha and a clone who falls in love with – ah, screw it, what am I saying here…

Rear Guard Mecha Pilot
Anya Alstreim
From Code Geass
Mecha of Choice: Mordread

Any mecha squadron needs a rear guard who can plow away large numbers of weak enemies, and Mordread fills the bill quite nicely. With enough defensive and offensive abilities to blow away entire swarms of cannon fodder, Anya provides the team with the necessary busting potential to remove all obstacles.

Wrathful Loli Mecha Pilot
Klan Klein
From Macross Frontier
Mecha of Choice: Queadluun-Rhea

With our mecha team consisting of stoic, serious characters like Meia, Rei, and Anya, we need Klan to provide the team with some loud wrathful loli action. Somebody’s got to put the protagonist in his place whenever he accidentally walks into the female change room.

Science Mecha Pilot
Mint Blancmanche
From Galaxy Angel
Mecha of Choice: Trick Master

And finally, we have Mint, who can provide everyone with information about the weaknesses of the bad guys and who can also hold her own using her DRAGOON inspired interceptor fighters.

And that concludes our DFC roster! Even though these girls are extremely capable and can bring a quick end to any masked super villain’s schemes, there’s bound to be other yet to be discovered DFCs out there. What will your crew look like?

Still Here and Nursing a Galaxy Angel Fever

Nope, I haven’t forgotten about blogging. I’ve been busy working on my secret project, so I haven’t been slacking off, really. =w=

Unfortunately, I still don’t think I’ve created enough material to justify making a real announcement about it yet. So instead, have some cute pictures of Mint and the Angel-tai.

So cute!

The other space girls

It’s surprisingly that I’ve only learned about the existence of Galaxy Angel just a couple weeks ago. When I originally announced Sunrider, people thought it was a lot like Sky Girls and started calling it Space Girls. In all honestly though, I think it shares more similiarities with Galaxy Angel, (a team of DFCs fighting for peace and justice in space? How’s that like Sky Girls?) so I’m wondering why nobody ever told me about this franchise. Luckily, I randomly happened to stumble upon a couple of Galaxy Angel videos on YouTube just a few days ago and was immediately struck by the sheer awesomeness of GA. A team of cute girls riding space ships and destroying stuff? I like it already!

Please pinch me… Am I dreaming?

Sick, the Long Weekend, and a New Project!

First buried in work… Now sick!

By kt2

The Touhou fever’s been running pretty rampant this year… See what I mean?

Luckily, it’s the long weekend, so no classes for me! I had some time to think about my new project, and then I figured out that I didn’t actually like it that much. Even though Higurashi’s a great anime, spending the next six months working on a murder mystery suddenly doesn’t sound that appealing any more. So you know what? Forget about it for now. It’s only gotten roughly 30 hours of total work anyways. (Character designs, story notes, etc) Compared to the 1000+ hours hours that I’ve put into Sunrider, 30’s nothing.

By orange coffee

Visual novel game development will kill you even faster than this Tsukasa.

Since I did promise to blog more frequently, I’m going to try my best to give everyone frequent updates on what I’m working on. Unfortunately, that also means that I’m liable to blog about projects that I end up changing my mind on a few weeks into production. It’s either use my blog and run the risk of cancelling projects or blog once a year whenever I release something. Since I like talking about projects and I’m not wasting Pytom’s bandwidth by posting on Lemmasoft, I might as well blog about them here.

That said, I’m still not going to say anything about what I’m working on now until a few weeks have passed. It took two weeks of preparation for Symphony before I wrote the first blog post about it, and even then I ended up changing my mind and throwing it out the window. So I’m going back to work on whatever it is I’m working on now… You’ll see it soon… soon…

Mint sure knows what I’m working on…

Swamped

By Studio Ring

It’s only the second week of classes and I’m already swamped with work!

Shall resume blogging operations after I crack through some badass IR theory. BRB.