Coloring Event Images

Hey folks!

It’s been forever since I did a blog; I really tend to be the kind of person who likes to wait until I’m done with something before showing off what I’ve created, but today I suppose I can give you another peek behind the scenes. This time around, I’ll show you a bit of the process we’re using for event images.

Event images have been one of the last big hurdles for us to get through in completing Errant Heart. Unlike the sprites and backgrounds that get a lot of use throughout the visual novel, event images only show up briefly to punch up important moments in the story. They’re a lot of work for something that will only be on screen for a moment or two, but the effect they have is worth it.

In order to get through the creation of all these images, I’ve been trying to streamline the process a little with with a new coloring method.

System Building

In my last post, I talked a bit about how we decided to give visual novels a try since the more text-heavy approach provided us with a chance to tell more story than we’d be able to in other media. But even with the focus on more written story, we still want to make the visual part of the visual novel as interesting as possible.

Something I noticed in a lot of the visual novels I’ve seen, is that they tend to stick with a very specific layout for their entirety. It’s usually something along the lines of this:

A background that fits the screen, a medium shot of a character (or two) in the center, the text box and…well, that’s pretty much it. This approach struck me as a little boring, and given the flexibility provided by the RenPy engine, completely unnecessary.

Why a Visual Novel? (or The Evolution of Pseudomé Studio)

With the Errant Heart Kickstarter going on right now, I figured I was overdue on making my first post for this development blog of ours. I was struggling for a bit, trying to think of what to contribute to this, and while I’m in a good position to talk about a lot of the art and technical aspects of Errant Heart, I thought it might make sense to delve a little bit into just why we’re making a visual novel in the first place.