Chapter 12 Status Report (12) (Patreon)

Work on the last part of Chapter 12 continues. This weeks I've been writing, amongst others, some texting scenes between Ian and two members of the female cast. Can you guess who? I've also been working on some drawings, and I've been finalizing some images. Some are new, but others are drawings I already did that are being re-purposed for this new setting.

Reusing art assets is something most VNs do to save resources and time, since creating each image takes a lot of time, even when you use a simplistic approach like the one used for ORS. That seems about to change with the arrival of AI, but that's a topic for another time... Making little modifications like changing the scenery, clothes or expressions, or even the lighting, can reframe the image into another setting without having to draw everything from scratch again. After all, how many images of Ian and Lena in a missionary position do we need? (still a few more, but I'd rather save them for new highlights in future scenes).

I've always tried to reuse assets very sparingly, for minor scenes like kisses, or swapping a character for another one in the same drawing for scenes that could happen in different paths, but I started using it more heavily in recent chapters. I felt quite hesitant about it at first, but I think it lets me create more expansive scenes that would be cut-short otherwise. The moment that made me decide to take this route was Cindy's last lewd scene in the Tournament update. I knew I wanted to include an intimate moment between Ian and Cindy that would advance the plot of their emotional, and physical relationship, but I didn't have time to create an entire set of illustrations for that scene (and I tend to be especially meticulous with Cindy's drawings). My first idea was to start the scene in media res, that way I could show only the plot point and player interaction that was relevant, but it felt quite underwhelming. But now I have a ton of Cindy illustrations, that cover a lot of poses and actions...

I'm creating a visual novel, after all, and I relized that aside the little graphical changes I could do to the image, the most powerful tool to reframe the context of the illustration is the writing. I hope the text can give the re-used asset a new context, or use it to enable a more fluid scene that couldn't happen without the proper visual support. Don't get me wrong, I wish I could accomplish this without reusing any images... but I also think some of them turned out too beautiful to just show them once :P

In any case, this is one of the compromises I take to push the development of this project. I know it's not ideal and I hope you're not too bothered by it, but hopefully this will allow me time to focus on creating new and more interesting images instead of drawing the same basic poses again and again.