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GGGB vs ORS: Art (Patreon)

Published:
2020-12-10 08:46:27
Imported:
2021-02

Content

Visual Novels combine two main aspects, as the name implies: the writing and the visuals. Art has always been very important for me, and I don’t know what I am first: a writer or an artist. In any case, writing and gameplay has to be good and engaging to make the player invested in the game, and even though I think it’s the writing what will make the player stay, it’s the art that pulls you in in the first place. So the art has to be sexy to look at!

I’ve said before that I’m a bit ashamed of GGGB’s production values, but at the time it was the best I could conjure up. I’ve talked about the process I followed to come up with this visual style before, but in short, I wanted naturalistic art with a semblance of elegance that went along the tone of the writing and the overall experience. But most important of all I needed a style that was easy and fast to produce and that would allow me to pump out dozens of illustrations per month while writing and coding the game all at the same time. It was far from perfect, but... It was good enough. And you know what they say, “better done than perfect”.

ORS follows the same principles, but it’s a big improvement: after GGGB’s success I was able to invest in my own game and I didn’t need to do everything myself anymore. Hiring someone to color the illustrations has been awesome: it allows me to spend more time on the art itself, making more polished and sexy illustrations, and drawing more pictures per scene too. And now the illustrations have shadows and volumes, they’re no longer flat colored. I can say ORS looks like GGGB should’ve looked in the first place, or how I would’ve liked it to look.

Truth be told, when I started looking for someone to help me with the coloring I wasn’t envisioning this result. All I wanted was a more polished look than GGGB, but when I found Lenadai and she sent the test back... I knew I had to hire her! Now I can say the game looks even better than my original projection, and that, to a creator, is a great joy. And the backgrounds... well, I don’t need to point out the obvious, do I?

All I want now is to grow my patron base to be able to invest even more money on the project and make it better: more original music, more backgrounds, more art. Do you think ORS looks better than GGGB, or you have a soft spot for the older, simpler art style? Do you prefer 2D or 3D art in adult VNs? And would you be hyped for a future Evas Kiss game with even better art, commissioned entirely to a better artist than I am?

Other posts on GGGB vs ORS series:

Gameplay

Main Characters

Themes

Structure

Themes (2) 

Files

Comments

Anonymous

I totally agree with other patreons about the preference of 2D art over 3D. It makes the game something unique and special. And it is truly impressive how far and better the art has gone from GGGB.

Anonymous

If you were to dip your toe into 3D, I would suggest doing something like the excellent Heaven's Vault - what you have is a 3D world rendered in a toonish style, and the characters are 2D hand-drawn sprites in that 3D world, so when you rotate around the character it fades between 8 different sprites of them standing, walking, or another pose. All of the actions don't have many keyframes either, maybe 4 total for walking, which means walking nets 32 sprites. Now imagine instead of allowing the player to control the camera, the game controls the angle. That way you can put characters into a 3D scene and have them seem to occupy a specific space instead of seeming to hover over a background. And then you could do a more cinematic dialogue where you switch between two cameras, but the background will be then keep the player situated in space. I would not suggest allowing the player to control movement, I think the overall structure in your games is highly efficient in terms of delivering content without the horrible grind of other sex-oriented games, and is very replay-able. All I'm suggesting is adding 3D sets to augment your already excellent art style, but now you would not have to draw new backgrounds when you want to show the characters sitting on the couch, bending over a pool table, or in bed. If you were to go this route (for a later game) I would suggest hiring someone to work specifically on the game engine/coding so that you could concentrate on art/story as you have been.