Why, I think I may have come at the best of times! I'll admit I'm scared of crowds, so it's all good - for all I know I'm talking to myself... in a padded room... O_o
I hope this isn't out of place: I'm not comfortable going into detail with the story yet, but I'm not showing these sketches to prospective collaborators either so I would not think they'd be at home in the Artists Directory... I'd like, if it's OK, to go about the process of (hopefully!) creating a VN my own way. I'm mainly a scribbler, so for me images are always prominent. I have an outline for the story, but I'll get to that in later posts.
What you need to know for now is that Sigil Knight Mio is going to be half guilty pleasure (shoujo goodness!) and half challenge. I want to complete this in a decent amount of time, other commitments allowing, and to approach the evil, evil writing demon.
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Originally, this VN was born with the idea of creating a Tutorial for the Ren'Py DSE - hopefully it will still be - and was going to be a collaboration between Jake and myself but then I started throwing ideas at Jake and insisted on a shoujo story, so I ended up taking responsibility for the story as well.
My main goals so far are:
- Creating a story without making it too big and unmanageable
- Refining my style so that I can output something that suits the story and I can be proud of
- Documenting the process, along with all the screw-ups and second thoughts
- Paying an homage to the fantasy shoujo genre, which is the origin of my drawing bug
Gathering reference images:
Heh, even the text for the Unplannedness corner doesn't fit properly - ah, the irony!
I find this step is being decently useful so far:
- I'm not drawing any outfit in detail for the moment, but I'm coming out with some vague visual cues. When I think that this or that element could do with some nice detail, I hunt around for images to use for inspiration. Yes, inspiration, that's how I call it. *cough*
- Style references are there because I have very little assertiveness when it comes to stick to one colouring style. I collected some images that offered bits and pieces I liked. I plan to copy these to de-construct them, and see which elements I feel more comfortable with and which I want to keep. Inspiration, remember! >:D
I may have used this as an excuse to watch 17 episodes of Hiiro No Kakera in a row, though...
- Alec Guinness is the epitome of the mentor figure. Period. I'm not all that familiar with the stylisation of older men (which is why I'm also collecting examples of older men already stylised by someone else), so I thought I'd target this particular weakness of mine specifically. I will no doubt collect images for the other characters as well, but here I'm trying to address this weak spot early along the way.
First sprite sketches:
First screw-up! Wohoo!
Approaching different projects in different ways:
These are the two more prominent characters and a teacher in the academy the protagonist, Mio, will enroll during the story. It took me a whole evening to draw three meagre sprite sketches which is not ideal... My explanation for this is that I tried to chew more than I was ready for and I was going about this the same way I did for Tristan and Iseult (the only other completed project I have under my belt... :/).
The problem is that for that project I had a strict deadline (10-ish days, during which I had very little time due to work and other commitments) and I had to cut million of corners. While I plan to impose a deadline to myself for this project, I have the time to afford some preparatory studies first!
Trying to come up with the finalised, albeit sketched, look for the sprites in game was a bit of a silly mistake. I was trying too hard, and that translates in stiff poses and a much slower process than I'd have liked.
For the teacher in particular I should have done a couple of studies at least, to translate gradually from realism to stylisation, in my opinion. I tried to go straight to the end result, but I just got frustrated and left these on their own for a fair amount of time as a result.
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I don't know about you, but when I draw after a fairly big pause I always struggle to get back on track. The first few sketches are always disappointing and I'm often tempted to give up.
It took me long enough to go back to the attack and try to attempt a look for Mio, the protagonist of the story.
The idea is that at first she lives a sheltered life, and then leaves her home to look for her own path and independence. This translates in a more doll-like look at first (long hair, more attention to her features such as her lips) and in a more practical look later in the story (short hair, more practical clothes, more determined and less innocent look and stance).
At this stage I also found that even though I'm able to draw something I'm happy with, repeating it consistently is a completely different story...
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I've then attempted to draw another version of Rei, the guy with longer hair in the coloured sketches, and got incredibly frustrated with the result. It seems I find it generally harder to draw men, so I'm also going to copy some from anime, manga and photos as an exercise. The good news the day that I did these was that Mio doesn't look so dissimilar from the previous page's sketch. :D
First outfit sketches:
Still, these look a bit stiff for my taste. I'm not trying as many things as I'd like, and I keep getting stuck. I'd say the mistake here is I've tried to put too many details for this stage. Getting a hazier idea (as I'll do in the next batch of sketches) at first and building up the details later is a more gradual approach.
Thinking about it, I don't know how I didn't realise it right away: it's the same as drawing. Starting from a sketch, then inking and colouring. Similarly, getting a general idea of the costume and trying to make a few iteration of it before going to the next stages builds up a better basis for a decent design.
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It's been suggested to me to try and draw a pose, then trace over it to make the actual costume designs (Jake used this method for the costumes in MorningStar). I ended up just modifying a pose I've found on the internet, so that I could get straight to sketching the designs, and this seems to have helped! I've produced more designs in a shorter time, since I didn't worry about getting the pose and the proportions right every time.
These obviously aren't going to be the base for the actual sprites: I want to make some more iterations for the designs and then take the bits I like the most for each iteration, and draw the pose from scratch.
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What I'm happy about is that I'm slowly getting back on track: while I'm not as fast as a lot of other people, I'm getting the hang of designing characters again after a very long while, and getting to enjoy trying things with them.
I'm more or less sold on the travel clothes and what I've got so far for the mage outfit, but I want to do more iterations for the armour design: this needs to prioritise speed over coverage for what I have in mind with the story so far. I also want to come up with a more distinctive yet practical design for her everyday clothes. Ultimately, I also want to streamline my process more and more, so that I can reduce the wastes of time and be more efficient.
I'd be really happy if (if anyone's still around) you'd shared your opinion on anything you see. Either way, I'll keep documenting my mistakes here! Thanks for taking the time to read!
