OELVN DEV SELF ASSESMENT RATING... Let's be honest guys...

[mugenjohncel]

OK... as an OELVN Dev... you have been called many things... Great Artist, Great Writer, Great Composer and so on... but let's be honest... what do you feel about it?... Do you think you deserved it or perhaps they are over praising or maybe not enough praise and you prefer to be called God of Art... Words and descriptions are great but we wanna see some sort of easy to grasp graphic representing what your assesment of yourself looks like as an OELVN dev. Here, I listed several traits and skills necessary for OELVN production and also my personal assesment accompanied by TLDR justification and a quick description of who I am.

Character Art : 7/10
Why 7 out of 10 you ask... isn't this kinda arrogant... not when you asked me. You see, before I engaged in this whole OELVN thing... I am a professional illustrator working for several Comic Books, Children's Books and lastly as Storyboard Illustrator and poor modesty tossed aside... I'm good. Long story short... I got my good hand messed up for good and have to re-learn drawing from scratch using my other non-good hand... at first my drawings resemble kid scribbles but as time went on I got used to it and while it pales in comparison to my former drawing skill it's still decent enough to be shown in an OELVN game... so 7 out of 10... give me some slack here guys... I'm drawing on my non-good hand... let me see you draw using your non good hand... Lol!...

Background Art : 9/10
Arrogant?... Nope... this is something I'm really proud of... I can produce high quality BG's that are decent enough to be shown in an OELVN. True, compared to hand drawn BG's my BG's still sort of pales but if you look at the amount of time and effort spent on them... I win hands down... I barely move a finger when Rendering those soft shadows and the BG's are pretty much editable and reusable made possible by Sketchup. What really made me rank myself really high there is not the BG's themselves but the workflow and process that I developed to create those decent enough looking backgrounds at the fraction of the time compared to more... traditional methods...

Event CG : 5/10
While I can draw decent character art... one would assume that I'll be also good at Event CG... You bet I am! So why the average rating you ask?... Well, the problem is me and my approach to OELVN production. I focus and specialize on using cheap but high efficient methods to produce content to be used on free OELVN projects and will set (x) amount of time to do a specific task. If it exceeds the (x) time then I better get paid for this or I simply stop. I'm doing this for fun and doing something that I don't want or like is not fun. Besides, money is the least of my concern for I made some really smart moves a few years ago that will ensure I regularly get a large steady stream of money even when I don't do anything.

Writing : 2/10
Visual Novels is composed of two words... Visual and Novels and to produce Novels you need to be good at writing and that is something I admit I'm not good at. I seriously am wondering what goes into the minds of these writers... when I think of something I effectively convey them through illustration but they can convey it in a couple fo words or sentences... yes envy much I am... the best writing I can do is to exploit existing works and try to corrupt them in ways I find amusing... very niche...

Music : 0/10
If writing is mysterious then music composing is something beyond my comprehension. I can hear and memorize a decent tone or music, even compose one inside my head but to convey them to the audience using a multitude of methods like software or even actual instruments... is something way WAY beyond my scope... total failure in this category...

Coding : 4/10
Coding is a decent 4 out of 10 because I've been doing this for a while I have plenty of opportunity to streal err... I mean look at other people's works and improve it to suite my needs.

Marketing : 5/10
OK... Marketing is ALSO very important aspect of OELVN... You make games for two reasons... Profit or Bragging Rights and both need marketing to reach audience. I rate it a decent 5/10 because being at the scene for a while I already enjoy some form of reach via existing ties with other developers not to mention my past trolling exploits in 4chan/jp/ as Uncle Mugen did have some considerable impact on extending my reach to places that are otherwise not within the expected reach of the typical OELVN dev...

Overall as I look at the bars I can cleary see that the awesome stats are dragged down by my really awful shortcomings... so what about you guys?...

Here is template in case you wanted one...
http://i.imgur.com/Oitv0l.jpg

"PFFT" (Silent but Deadly Gas)

[Samu-kun]

Is this gonna be like a collectible card game of developers here?

The scale's inherently unfair too. You just liked inflating your own score by having three art scores and one score for everything else! If you were a crappy artist and a good writer, you'd probably have split the writing score into "character writing," "plot writing," and "dialogue writing" just so you could fap to your own self!

[Ziassan]

Interesting but rating himself isn't easy/fair, even more because everybody have a different idea of what is a 10/10 for instance. A rating is always "compared" to the environnement.. so is it compared to the OELVN community ?
Still a good idea, but as pointed out Samu-kun, this allows a lot for the art, and only writing without the story building part. (And I don't even speak of the "sound" part in addition to the music itself, all the ambience, the SE etc.)
Also, team management or something like that ?

[mugenjohncel]

The scale's inherently unfair too. You just liked inflating your own score by having three art scores and one score for everything else! If you were a crappy artist and a good writer, you'd probably have split the writing score into "character writing," "plot writing," and "dialogue writing" just so you could fap to your own self!

Hmm... valid argument but you see... this is an OELVN DEV SELF ASSESMENT RATING where you rate yourself against the usual and easily identifiable and very much necessary skills needed to produce an OELVN. Most people if asked will definitely be under the impression that a good scenario writer and can and will also be good at other aspects of writing. You cannot get a good scenario if you don't have a good grasp of character writing and once you have something solid... everything else just falls in place like plot and dialogue thus I grouped them into one category writing. All of them have one thing in common... to convey effectively using words and sentences.

On the other hand... art (for OELVN) can be very much distinguished and categorized into neatly categories since each one is using a different approach that might but not entirely apply to the other graphical aspects of OELVN. It's not uncommon to see a character artist who can't draw BG's or vice versa (see the recruitment thread?... lot's of Character artist only few can do BG's) while a writer (from a layman's perspective) can only be categorized in two... either he's good or he sucks... a writer may be good in plot but bad at dialogue then the whole writing will be bad. All it takes is one bad aspect to drag down everything in writing while graphical can be distinctively identified and categorized neatly that when you lack in one aspect you can always identify it immediately.

"STAYS" (This is a good start...)

[SusanTheCat]

I am a computer programmer by day, so obviously that is my best skill.

I gave myself a bump in character and background art because I am a very good modifier.

I added editing because it is a separate skill from writing.

Susan
(who is tired and overheated from excavating her son's room looking for a document he forgot.)

[Sapphi]

Character Art : 4/10
I'm not terrible at drawing, but I really struggle with drawing people in the stiff positions traditionally utilized by visual novels. I am also too impatient to sit down on the computer and color anything properly. Traditional media is more satisfying to use...

Background Art : 2/10
Not sure how badly I suck at landscapes since I hardly ever attempt to draw them. But I think I have a decent eye for composition, which goes a long way. The only way I'm ever going to do backgrounds is if I can do them traditionally. I really don't like the process of digital painting, and IMO the results are never as satisfying as something traditional like watercolor.

Event CG : 3/10
I think I'm better at drawing characters in situational poses than traditional sprite poses... but the terrible lack of skill at backgrounds drags this down a lot.

Writing : 5/10
Probably my best asset, although I have comparatively little practice so even it is not that great...

Music : 2/10
I have an okay singing voice (proof exists on the internet) but unfortunately I can't play the piano. I can sort of play guitar, but not very well. I have a good ear for music but lack the skill to do anything with it. I can come up with tunes, but unless I can sing and record them, there's no way for me to write them down. I suck horribly even at midi composing.

Coding : 1/10
I haven't had a chance to practice much with it, but I catch on pretty quickly since I played with HTML as a kid.

Marketing : 0/10
I couldn't sell water to you if you were dying of thirst.

Hm, overall, this is a pretty depressing analysis.

[Ziassan]

That does a lot of 3... but polyvalence is a goal I plan to acheive.
Still hard to rate without knowing on which basis, but well, here we go.

Art : Can drawn not too bad looking characters, but it takes me a lot of time, and my coloring is meh. For backgrounds, drawing from pictures is okay, and I know enough things in image-editing, but no more than that. For CG well, no comment~

Writing : Often write and already done some short stories but... in my native Language, which is not English.

Music : Favorite field. Hard to give a right rank here, but based on what I got as feedback, it would be almost here. But again, comparing to what ? I cannot really sing myself so 9 would be a bit too much I guess.
Added Sound too because I beleive it's something important and really different than music. I can record decent sounds and am used to audio-edition.

Marketing : Know some basis and others little things, but not my speciality.

Coding : Futur daily job and a 3 years degree completed in that field, that's my second skill after the Audio thing. Altough not that much used to Ren'py itself, so 7.

[Obscura]

Good god, my report card looks like a giant F.

These cards are pretty awesome. They'd be helpful when trying to recruit a well-rounded team, IMHO.

Also, I plan to do non-B/B games, but so far, that's the niche (or ditch) I've carved out for myself.

[Tetiel]

Ahahaha Description is a completely true story ^^; Also I don't mind using my real name on the internet since it's so common that there were three Stephanie Kings in my home town alone (which wasn't exactly large...) To the breakdown!!!

Character Art 8/10: Perhaps my rating system shows my arrogance, but I both enjoy and am proud of what I do. The only problem is I take a gazillion hours to do it. Plus I have anatomy difficulties particularly with hands and feet, but I'm working on it. Sprites are a heck of a lot of fun to do.

Background Art 5/10: My perspective is bad, but I can do it through... guesstimating where things should be or use references. I'm more used to doing backgrounds for CG art, but I'm currently working on a few for a non-vn project and it seems to be going well?

Event CG Art 9/10: I'm more used to this than the character art, so I bumped myself up one point. I recently did a pose change/expression change CG which was interesting.

Writing 3/10: I just don't have the confidence to write a story, but back when I was in school I took an AP class in writing and a few Rhetoric classes in university. I always worry that if I actually sit down and write a story that it would be completely derivative. I'm not very creative, but if I had to, I could get by.

Music 3/10: I can play the cello, violin, piano, flute, and xylophone. I can also sing, but I don't have a very powerful voice. I can come up with songs in my head, but just like writing, I worry that I may accidentally do something derivative. My understanding of music theory is very good, though.

Coding 2/10: I picked up html and CSS for a job reasonably well back in the day. I could probably do python if I needed to, but I'd be bored to tears by it. It's just something I dislike doing.

Marketing 2/10: We will see how this is actually rated shortly, I guess. I haven't tried, but I do have a semi-large following on deviantart. I fully plan on spamming the hell out of people for Rising Angels.

...I feel bad for marking myself high in some of these, but we're supposed to be honest and I am just that much of an arrogant bastard when it comes to art. Sorry v_v

[Taleweaver]

My stats

Character Art : 0/10
Meh - can't draw people. At least not in any meaningful way. I COULD produce a stick figure VN, but honestly, who'd like to see that?

Background Art : 1/10
I CAN draw landscapes, though pretty lame ones. Wouldn't stand up to any reasonable standard of professionality. At least I understand perspective.

Event CG : 0/10
See Character Art.

Writing : 9/10
Published semi-pro writer, and proud of it. If there's anything I'm good at, it's this, and I constantly practice writing new sorts of stories so that I become even more versatile. My favorite style is dark drama, but that doesn't mean all of my tales come out like this.

Music : 4/10
I can play the piano a little (though not well), and I understand enough musical theory to compose music - theoretically. In practice, I haven't written any sheet music so far, though I have the MadTracker installed on my computer, just in case I need it one day.

Coding : 5/10
I can do all basic stuff with Ren'Py, and then a few non-basic things as well. I taught myself BASIC programming when I was 13, and it still helps with a lot of things. Still can't come to grips with all of the graphical little wonders Ren'Py can do, so I'd say I'm half the way there.

Marketing : 3/10
I work in sales, and theoretically, I could do wonders to promote my stuff. In practice, I'm usually too lazy to do much promo work. I mean, when you spend all day thinking about how to sell stuff for a living, it really isn't much fun to do it in your spare time.

[Graph]

Character Art 8/10: Mostly competent anatomy and craftsmanship, wide range of expressions. Still struggle to get just the right feeling out of characters. (Cute? Cool? Badass?)

Background Art 5/10: It could potentially be 7 at least, but truthfully I'm pretty lazy about backgrounds in my own projects and probably wouldn't spend much more than 2 hours each unless it's a commission.

Event CG Art 7/10: Need to work on composition and certain types of lighting.

Writing 5/10: Good grammar. Eventually will come up with something good but I have to remind myself more about "What is the goal of my writing? What am I trying to establish in this scene?". Also should work on getting outlines together to paint the broad strokes for larger stories.

Music 0/10: Completely tone-deaf!

Coding 5/10: I know enough to get by in Ren'py except custom GUI. Theoretically I know some C++ and HTML... can I do anything useful with it though? No clue.

Marketing 3/10: I believe I can write up a decent pitch, but sustaining a campaign for an extended period of time isn't too fun.

[Camille]

(I added in another "s" to "assessment" because it was bugging me orz)

- Character and CG art are at 0% because my art skills are generally at the stick figure level.
- Background art is at 10% because I can at least use Photoshop to make some rain, clouds, and lensflares and whatnot. |D I did the rain BG used in The Elevator! generally I will leave this sort of thing to Auro, of course
- Writing is at 70%. Based on our surveys, people generally like my writing. If I based the score solely on others' opinions, I could probably give myself 80% or 90%, but personally I feel like I still have a long way to go, so I bumped myself down to barely passing. This is not the same as thinking my own writing sucks, I just feel like I can still improve in many ways.
- Music is at 30%. I can play piano, sing, and theoretically I can compose music, but I decided that I didn't really want to do the writing, programming, AND music for our VNs because I'd go crazy. I can, however, edit music a bit and am pretty good at choosing music tracks. owo
- Coding is 60%. I think I can do all the basic VN stuff in Ren'Py now and I'm pretty good with screen language at this point, but I definitely can't do anything super complicated. XD; Inventories and RPG frameworks are way out of my depth. I'm also bad at explaining how to use Ren'Py to other people. @_@ It just makes sense in my own head.
- Marketing is at 50% because I think I'm pretty good at doing promotions, copywriting, and that sort of thing. I keep up with various social media very well (I'm really active on Twitter, haha) and the two free games Cyanide Tea has released so far have been fairly successful. (at least, way more than we expected—seriously, I would have been totally ecstatic if even 50 people had downloaded RisAmo) I have nothing to base this on, though... What would 100% even be like?

[KomiTsuku]

I don't like people known exactly how I look. Always suspect everything from me to be a charade! MUWAHAHAHAHAHAHA~ On to the show!

Character art: 4/10
I don't show a lot of my character art, but that's mostly due to me not doing a lot of it very often. I've spend many years studying and practicing. There are noticeable improvements from when I first started, but I don't practice enough to be decent.

Background Art: 2/10
Like character art, I've studied and practiced background art. Unlike character art, I haven't managed to acquire even the most basic ability to turn a decent background. I almost never do them. I think the last time I did one was 2009.

Event CG Art: 1/10
I'd probably be better doing stick figures than attempting to draw dynamic poses.

Writing: 10/10
Grandpa has been doing this for a long, long time. I went to college and studied English, I still assist with writing technical papers, and my day job has me serving as an editor and quality assurance for officials. I'm woefully blind when it comes to my own work, but I dare you to find me an editor who isn't. I may be more of a technical writer than prose, but I still maintain confidence in myself!

Music: 1/10
Does drunken karaoke count?

Coding: 5/10
I'm well-versed in several coding languages and have build several systems for RPGs. Since this isn't my primary focus, I'm not as sharp as I need to be, but I can handle almost anything I need for my visual novels.

Marketing: 6/10
I'm sure many people will look at me skeptically on this one. Just because I don't utilize my abilities and contacts doesn't mean I don't know how. I'm an experienced actor and know exactly how to cajole to get what I need. However, I rarely use any of my IRL contacts in the anime industry and do a lot to disassociate myself from my creative works. I'm just content on using this as a form to vent my angst, which I've have been assured is bad marketing. Everything is in place for when I make my move for world domination, but... meh.

[Sapphi]

I have nothing to base this on, though... What would 100% even be like?

XD That's the problem I had too. Once you hit 100%, you might suddenly realize the 10 boxes only made up one box on a greater scale. Fill up that scale, you meet another scale where you are back at box one... etcetera etcetera, ad infinitum, ad astra, forever and ever... with zero, my hero, how wonderful you are!

Anyway, looking at it this way, I probably rated myself too highly. But I didn't want to come on here with a chart full of ones and twos and have people throw things at me

Even if comparison from chart to chart is useless, I think in-chart comparison is helpful as a visual aid of where our skills are relative to other skills. Also, I really like seeing everyone's different areas of expertise. It is interesting to see the patterns.

[VenusEclipse]

This is based mostly on being an OELVN dev itself. If it's a self assessment for my skills overall, some are higher than others and some are much lower.

Character Art : 6/10
Most of my art are plagued by anatomy problems. Recent VN art is passable.

Background Art : 5/10
I'm not good at perspective, and prefer to paint freestyle without drafts.

Event CG : 6/10
Same as character art. Some are better than others, and some look rushed and are worse than the sprites themselves.

Writing : 7/10
From feedback, people get absorbed by the story-telling.
For overall writing, this is the most I can give myself due to grammar and structure while telling the story.

Music : 4/10
The music I make in my VNs are passable, with some people saying it's annoying or it makes their teeth bleed? XD. In reality, I can't play anything or sing. I was the worst player in my high school band, singled out by the sub all the time for a year makes me hate music for a long time. The only thing that saved me is being able to mimic other people's sound and playing.

Coding : 4/10
Coding is a four in the VN scene. It's only this high due to the documentation. I can actually make things here. If I am to code in any other language I'll die and never make anything. Yup, it'll definitely be lower if it's not here. XD

Marketing : 4/10
I'm not sure where to rate this. I have accounts on social media sites and I do update from time to time.