Backup!
StandardAfter a long time, I just checked my ren’py projects. I have this Notebook where I list all my ideas for visual novels. It’s categorized into Ideas, Completed and On Hold. For the On Hold part, it’s the visual novels that I am currently working on. Well, let me tell you that I have three visual novels in the On Hold part. What a joke. I can’t even focus on just one!
But now, I just want to focus on one visual novel: Twisted High School, which name is kinda sucky to be honest. I want a more unique name than that. But it’s not really the title that is the problem. It’s everything else. From the storyline, the script, the art. Everything. I haven’t done anything at all! I have zero progress. I was just planning all along! And now that I checked my laptop for whatever work I’ve done, I just found up that everything was lost.
So, see why I named this post “Backup”? That’s right, people, YOU NEED TO MAKE BACKUPS! I just recently cleaned my computer and I think one of the script files I did was lost forever into the abyss, the moment I clicked Delete Permanently, thinking I had backup in my hard drive. Boi, was I ever wrong?
And so, I’m trying to look on the brighter side of things. Let me tell you that this visual novel I was making has a heavy plot. It’s too serious. It’s too much. From the script, from the drama, from everything. Is there a way to make it more KISS? Keep It Short and Simple!
But hey, when I actually googled what KISS meant, it’s Keep It Simple, Stupid, so yes, basically, it’s speaking to me. KEEP IT SIMPLE, STUPID! It’s now my opportunity to start anew. However, I plan on keeping the nine parts of the story which I made just to make things quite simpler. The story still has a huge background, but I want to make it much lighter. I want to keep the script much shorter. If I just make it bigger and bigger, I really won’t be able to make it near completion. I want to get done with this visual novel already, and make a new one, and I promise to myself that I will not make another VN unless I finish this (except for NaNoRenO stuff).
We’ll see how it goes.
Ep 7 – New Friend
LinkCami Fai – New Friend | LINE Webtoon
http://www.webtoons.com/en/challenge/cami-fai/new-friend/viewer?title_no=100340&episode_no=7
Ep 6 – Statistic
LinkCami Fai – Statistic | LINE Webtoon
http://www.webtoons.com/en/challenge/cami-fai/statistic/viewer?title_no=100340&episode_no=6
Ep 5 – Not Strong Enough
LinkCami Fai – Not Strong Enough | LINE Webtoon
http://www.webtoons.com/en/challenge/cami-fai/not-strong-enough/viewer?title_no=100340&episode_no=5
EP 4 – More for Girls
LinkCami Fai – More for Girls | LINE Webtoon
http://www.webtoons.com/en/challenge/cami-fai/more-for-girls/viewer?title_no=100340&episode_no=4
God, my back hurts, seriously. I feel like an old lady about to ascend the heavens as my soul leaves my body, but anyways, here’s the fourth episode of my shitty comics. So far, I have, like, 10 strangers subscribing in my webtoon excluding the other 10 who are my siblings and friends. You have no idea how happy I am! sheds tears of joy
And now, I shall sleep because I have work later on. Goodnight everyone!
EP 3 – Trade Me
LinkCami Fai – Trade Me | LINE Webtoon
http://www.webtoons.com/en/challenge/cami-fai/trade-me/viewer?title_no=100340&episode_no=3
EP 2 – Creating Fai
LinkCami Fai – Creating Fai | LINE Webtoon
http://www.webtoons.com/en/challenge/cami-fai/creating-fai/viewer?title_no=100340&episode_no=2
Cami Fai
LinkCami Fai – Cami and Fai | LINE Webtoon
http://www.webtoons.com/en/challenge/cami-fai/cami-and-fai/viewer?title_no=100340&episode_no=1
This is my very first comic. I’m really unbalanced with doing my hobbies. I know I have a visual novel to write, but here i am drawing a comic strip!
My Walter Sketch!
So here I am, updating this good-for-nothing, old blog. I haven’t done any visual novel updates for a while because of internet connection issues, work and laziness.
While the script progress becomes stagnant for a long time, I’ve been practicing my sketches for one of my next visual novel’s character, Walter. The very first version of him is the feature image of this post.
In my opinion, he looks like a boring character and he doesn’t appeal to me at all. Maybe it’s because of how I drew him? Or how I colored him? It could be the wrong choice of color and pose. I’m not really sure, so I went ahead to the Lemmasoft forums. I made a post on the Personal Art sub-thread to seek help from the other members. From what they have told me, my Walter lacked of “pose flow” and my coloring should be a bit “colorful” to make it look interesting. One can also add accessories to have the drawing match up the character’s personality. My second version of Walter is also a bit “boxy”.
With some help from robovelociraptor and Limabaen, they gave me sketches of their own to serve as an example of pose flow and how to color your characters to make them more interesting.
robovelociraptor’s sketch
Limbaen’s sketch
If you clearly look at the way their sketches pose, the character’s a bit tilted to the other side since Walter is a shy boy, and it looked like the hip is a bit slanted, which means the character could be standing and putting all his gravity on one foot while the other foot remains relaxed. I’ve been trying to remake Walter since then. Redoing the sketch and trying again. I’ve made a lot of versions from the smallest detail up to the whole body.
From the position and size of the hands to the slanting of the hips, to the hairstyle and to the color of the hair, I’ve tried and tried to remake Walter. I also practiced a bit on the color of the shirt and the skin (I don’t think I did a good job on it but at least I practiced!) Now, I think I made my final sketch of Walter and I like how his hair turned out. I’m not really happy with how I colored the skin and everything else but I’ll practice even more and I hope I’ll achieve better results next time. Here’s my latest sketch of him:
Isn’t he so cute? Don’t know. But the accessories that I gave him are definitely cute.
Now that I’m through with Walter, I can do some solidifying of the story and the script! This should be done first but I was kinda bored with it 😛 That’s it for now and thanks for viewing some of my shitty art! Have a great day, everyone!
Played Gulam
It’s been a while since I’ve played another visual novel! This time, it’s an entry for this year’s NaNoRenO entitled Gulam by Aracade. You can find the game’s thread in the Lemmasoft forums or download it in itch!
Gulam is about a red-headed girl named Abby whose mom left for work one day. Bored and alone, Abby searches for a way to survive another lonely night by reading books, drawing, eating and the like, until she found a creepy, talking book in her mom’s room and a demon pig that appeared out of nowhere! Things started to get weirder, with Abby wondering what kind of secret her mom is keeping from her.
Chained book with sharp teeth and weird symbols? Don’t use the key, alright.
The art has a lovely style, the story concept will definitely pique your curiosity, and the dialogues make the characters real! Gulam is a great game for NaNoRenO 2017!
What I somehow find unsatisfying is the lack of answers to questions that readers will definitely want to know about. It’s definitely a short visual novel, knowing it’s for NaNoRenO, and so I definitely get that the developer might lacked some time in completing the story solidly.
The story revolves around the book that Abby found, and the demon pig that she accidentally summoned (this is why I don’t ever read things aloud). But more than that, Abby’s mom plays a big part in the mystery, but the readers don’t know how. This could also lead to the bigger background story of Abby’s dad, which is, another thing that the readers don’t know why. The thing is, the story is completely unfinished in my opinion.
But NaNoRenO doesn’t really have strict rules about updating the game after the deadline is met! I just checked the game on itch and it seems Aracade updated a new version of Gulam. I will be checking it out later on, but since I’ve got not much time nowadays, I decided to make a blog post about Gulam or else, I may end up procrastinating and worst, I might finally not be able to make a blog post about it ever! So for now, I’ll just update this post once I have gotten the other endings.
If I click the choice of wanting to know what’s happening, this is so far, the very ending that was a bit closer into unlocking the other mysteries.
In my opinion, releasing a game without completing all the story’s ending is a bit risky. People who may have downloaded the game might not be able to re-download it again in cases where they might be busy with other things in life that they might not find time to play it again, or if they found another visual novel that they wanted to play so they forgot about re-downloading the game, or if they are not notified that a newer update of the game is released. I actually found out that there was a new update as I copied the game’s itch link to this post!
Overall, it’s a satisfying game if the endings are all completed and if all questions are answered (and I will just assume that it is completed with the new update). And when I play a visual novel, I always want to unlock all endings no matter what, that’s why I can tell that I’ll definitely be re-downloading Gulam again. A walk through for Gulam is also encouraged and highly requested XD
Since I made a challenge to myself that I’ll be doing some character fanart for some of the visual novels that I’ve played in order to improve my own drawing skill! Here’s my very first fanart below:
It doesn’t look much like the characters and I’ve missed to put some details (such as the weird marks written on the book’s cover), but I like to imagine this scene where Abby goes with Gunter for their allegiance. Gunter, the demon pig, is a very cute character by the way!
Congratulations to Aracade by completing his/her very first visual novel! I look forward to the more visual novels that you’ll make in the future and good luck!
Catlip Candy 