Technical Post - PBH CG Process (Patreon)

Meowdy everyone! It's nearing the end of the month, which as usual means it's time for a PBH technical post! I hope you all have been well.

This month I decided to focus on CGs - in particular, the ones I'm creating (but I'll show you a step by step for a kobuta CG as well 👀)

For Please Be Happy, there is a mix of two kinds of CGs - the big moments CGs, which are illustrated by our wonderful character designer kobuta! They are all so wonderful and also all done! The remainder is on me to fill in the gaps! I try and round out any gaps we might have in the storytelling to make it more visually fun to look at. I've done quite a lot - maybe even too much in the first five minutes of the game..? But it's been incredible fun!

Today I wanted to highlight the Juliet first meeting CG that's been shown off a little bit here and there.

As usual, any kobuta process begins with a writeup! I try to be as succinct as possible, and straight to the point. I have context, but I keep it relatively low, and I write in key points in bullet points. 

Kobuta took around 1 month per illustration, and sent us a WIP somewhere in the middle.

WIP right, final left.

Their WIPs were of very complete quality and always excited us so much to receive!

With kobuta CGs, they're done before the writing's complete and we fit the writing to make these scenes happen. I wanted these moments to be visually memorable and I am an artist first and foremost, which is why I took this approach.

For the CGs I created - I've put in a couple requests for scenes I'd like to see, but the approach I take is to go through the build and find moments that would be good to have an illustration for, or moments that's hard to represent with just sprites and backgrounds.

Thanks to Clip Studio Paint Technology(tm), I've recorded the process for these CGs too! My goal is 'storytelling' over 'technical polish' for these, and I prioritize speed where I can so I can illustrate more moments where possible.

It's an interesting struggle, trying to draw in kobuta's style, but it's always very rewarding and fun! I hope you enjoy the final result of our game!

Link to video process! 

My 'potato sketch' stage - I struggle a lot with sketching actually, and it takes be several passes to be something I'm happy with.

I then do a much cleaner sketch, usually with kobuta sprite art up as a reference as a style reference. Sometimes I do more clean sketches in between, but for this CG it was relatively painless! Juliet holding the painting frame was quite tricky, but I figured it out in the end!

Using a thin, pencil-textured brush (specifically Colored Pencil in CSP) I do the lineart! I try not to sweat the details too much. By the way, the canvas size is 3840x2160! So the lineart isn't that thin in terms of pixels, but looks thin zoomed out.

I apply flats and shading! This process I study kobuta's art a lot as well, and I colourpick the sprite artwork to get the relative colours correct. I apply adjustments later, and this is time-wise very efficient!

Then I add the background and adjust the characters to suit (+ touching up some details, like the hair shading!) I try to avoid doing new backgrounds if possible, so this is a zoomed in, blurred version of a background in the game.

Thanks for sticking with me until the end! I'll leave you with one video process of me drawing Miho with her jacket on!