Technical Post #4 - Visuals in a Visual Novel (Patreon)

Hi everyone! This month has flown by. For those of you who went to AWA, we hope you got a chance to see some of us at the Sekai Project booth! If not, I hope you had a relaxing weekend.

Onto this post: The “Visual” in Visual Novels.

Visual novels are best known for, of course, the ability for the reader to see the events play out in front of them. Like a play, many visual novels focus heavily on their actors, music, and effects to push the story forward (admittedly, they don’t have nearly as many musicals).

As the resident programmer, I have the title of “visual director”- it’s even on my business cards! My role extends into each aspect of the VN’s presentation; I’m given the assets and work to turn them into a playable product.

I’m going to be walking through my general process for scene direction in visual novels, and reflecting on how it plays out.

Writing a visual novel takes a lot of work, both in time and energy. Of course, I start by scripting the scene’s writing before anything else. Since writing can go through many drafts and edits, it’s better to wait until a final draft to begin scripting. If there’s an upcoming deadline, though, sometimes we have to make changes directly into the script file rather than the writing…In any case, after a scene is finished, I script in basic movements and expression changes.

On that note! Visual novel writers also have a very important tool that needs to be used well- their character expressions! Getting tone across in text is difficult, and without the right character expression it can fall flat or be extremely different than what the author intended. Especially dialogue that’s meant to be sarcastic or actually mean- It really shapes what expressions we choose for the characters!

After basic expressions and movements, I usually find a few places where the eyes will need a rest. Using backgrounds is a great way to let the reader take a pause in what they’re reading; I find it’s better to show characters only when necessary, and even hide them during a scene to show introspection and narration.

In Heart of the Woods, when Maddie and Tara leave the train there’s a slow shot of the background. I created an overlay with glittering snow for that. As for The Waters Above, the amount of animations that went into a lot of the backgrounds is a whole different level!! I created a dynamic light system, so in the wilderness scenes it looks especially tranquil. In Leannan, the backgrounds slowly get darker and more desaturated, and I made a vignette to demonstrate her tunnel vision. As you can see, making effect assets at the drop of a hat is a good skill to hone, as a few well placed ones can really make a scene shine.

(There’s also things like the Tara’s emoji stream in HOTW, Clio shoving a generated sand animation into Tara’s mouth in TWA, Tara’s faces falling from the top of the screen in Tara Mode… )

After this, I play through the scene once more to make sure it looks good. I can fine tune from here- maybe another expression would work better? Maybe I can add a character animation to make their energy pop? Is an expression changing at least every line of dialogue? These things are the most time consuming- but they’re especially important. At this point I add in music, playing around with different start times and fadeins to ensure their timing. In Heart of the Woods, when Abigail’s name is revealed, I started the music a little bit earlier so the crescendo would (likely) kick in at the right point. I think it did! Let me know what you think~.

Thanks for tuning in to this technical post, brought by yours truly. As a thank you, I attached the Tara emoji stream code for all of you to use as you see fit. Just extract this right into your Ren'Py's game folder! Thank you again. -minute