A newbie's questions about sprite-making and other stuff

[melancholinista]

I'm working on my first big visual novel project. I'm basically a one-woman team; I'm doing absolutely everything by myself (Except composing music, of course; I plan on getting royalty-free loops and arranging them as I need them. ). I've made a few practice novels with clip art (That I'm not releasing; those were for learning Ren'Py's code), and I also want to do a few small visual novels with my actual artwork (That I'm actually going to show to people).

I have a few questions about making sprites, though:

1) When you make sprites/have sprites made for you, how do you decide what expressions you need?
1a) Do you just use "basic" emotions (Happy, sad, angry, etc) and display those as the situation calls for it?

2) How many different poses do you plan for? (IE: Following the 'emotion' question above, do you do a different set of poses for each character featuring each emotion?)

My major visual novel takes place in one (large) setting, and the characters don't have any costume changes or anything. I don't imagine they'll need too many sprites, but I also want to "animate" them as much as I can. I actually planned to make this in Flash initially, and make the game fully-animated, but unexpected computer death left me without most of the programs I'm familiar with. I see this as a challenge, though (This game is going to take a long time, no matter what program I make it in), and I can basically do the same thing I was going to do in Ren'Py, anyway, give or take some stuff.

I have a bad habit of overcomplicating things, and I'll be making unnecessary sprites forever if I don't ask now.

Also, if any of you guys could point me towards some well-done, free, English visual novels, I would really appreciate it. I've only ever played one (Katawa Shoujo, lol, I really enjoyed it, and I'm looking forward to the completed version), and most of the other games I'm interested in playing are commercial, Japanese games. I wouldn't know how to go about getting them in ways that aren't illegal-- I'm not much of a pirate. XD

Thanks a lot!

[Tachyglossus]

About the sprites, what I would do is get most of the script written first. Then as you look over the dialogue of the script, figure out what expressions would be suitable for most of their comments. Some sprites may not have some of the same expressions as other sprites, or may convey a feeling differently. Some may have fewer varieties of expressions depending on their personality. Sometimes when I do expressions I take one string of dialogue and say it over and over in my head, and as I draw the face, I imagine them saying that piece of dialogue and if it looks right, I keep it. However, don't split hairs! Don't keep inventing slightly different expressions for every piece of dialogue, try to cut it down to a manageable amount. I'd personally say 5-8 sprites per main character is fine, and around 1-3 for minor characters.

Poses would be entirely up to you, however. I'm usually quite happy with one larger sprite to represent and show off most of the character, and then a smaller face sprite in the dialogue box that shows their expression changes while the nearly-full-body version stays static. But that's just me. I mean, changes in poses are awesome and I like them MORE, but I am content with the above method for someone who doesn't want to tax themselves too much.

As for good free english visual novels, I'm not really sure I'm the best one to recommend anything. I'm quite new to both reading and making visual novels, so I've only seen the tip of the iceberg.

[Camille]

Of course it's easiest if you have more of the script written so you can think of what expressions would be appropriate. But I also go based on the character and their personality. For example, Lucien from my current project is rather serious and sarcastic. Thus I figure I probably will not need a sprite of him looking extremely happy and jumping for joy. You know what I mean? But usually we go with just basic emotions at first and display those as the situation calls for it, maybe with a couple extras depending on if we really need it or not. Sometimes there are subtle emotions like "surprise" and "suspicion" that would not go as well with a general "sad" or "angry" sprite.

For poses, it's all about what you think you need. You can always "animate" them by making them blink or have their lips move. I think poses are generally unnecessary (but a cool addition) unless the situation really calls for them. "Necessary" is very much up to you. Nobody can tell you how many sprites are "necessary" for your particular project--only you can be the real judge of that.

For the good free English visual novels, I think the best one I can think of in recent memory is this one, but you can go to the Completed Works section of this forum and find a bunch of good ones, too. "Well-done" is also very much up to your own opinions. XD

[melancholinista]

XD I do have the script underway; I'm not doing anything until it's finished.

But thanks for the input so far; it gives me an awesome starting point to go off of. My main background is in animation, where I can make characters express themselves on the fly, so I'm not used to having to preset everything. XD I'm the sort that would probably do two sprites with very subtle variations on the same emotion, and I really want to avoid that-- I'm willing to go all-out, but there's going all-out, and then there's being ridiculous.

[edit] And I'll totally check out that link, Camille. Thank you very much!

[Aozora210]

It... depends actually.

1. I usually put the expressions as I made the script, so i won't forget eventually.
2. Well, basic emotion are quite important, but it depends on the character, actually.
3. Regarding poses... I'd say, if you want to torture yourself, you could to The World Ends With You method of creating sprite (you may check it here and look with the "portrait" tag). Their method is one pose = one expression. It is nice, as it makes your game more lively. However, doing so is quite a work, and if you prefer to keep the simple way, I guess just changing poses slightly as in thinking pose, angry pose, and alert pose.

Nice free English game... you could check the finished work section and look for Frozen Essence. It is quite a nice game with examples of simple changing poses sprites.

[melancholinista]

It... depends actually.

1. I usually put the expressions as I made the script, so i won't forget eventually.
2. Well, basic emotion are quite important, but it depends on the character, actually.
3. Regarding poses... I'd say, if you want to torture yourself, you could to The World Ends With You method of creating sprite (you may check it here and look with the "portrait" tag). Their method is one pose = one expression. It is nice, as it makes your game more lively. However, doing so is quite a work, and if you prefer to keep the simple way, I guess just changing poses slightly as in thinking pose, angry pose, and alert pose.

Nice free English game... you could check the finished work section and look for Frozen Essence. It is quite a nice game with examples of simple changing poses sprites.

XD I don't mind doing multiple sprites. Thank you for that page, though; that is excellent. -bookmarks- And I'll definitely make sure to check out that game!

[EternalDream]

1) Like Aozora, I write the expressions I want that character to have in the script, and then when I finish an arc, or section, I start proofreading, and editing. When I do that, I copy all of the expressions I need of each character into a table and then draw from there. (I'm mainly an artist above anything else so I draw my own stuff)

1 a) Wouldn't this be 1b? Anyways, no. I actually make an expression chart so that I don't get confused what type of emotion I'm talking about in the script. Since I'm picky about details, I actually call smirk, smile, and grin different emotions. XD;; Then I paste the chart somewhere easy to see and use it as reference. Of course, I sometimes name a scared kind of emotion as "surprised" but that's only when I run out of words to describe the emotion.

2) Poses, huh? Probably depending on the importance of the character. So if the character is a pretty main one then probably 3+ poses and if they're just a side character, only one... even if the side character might have more expressions. Then I just do expressions divided by number of poses, and group them equally into each pose so that each pose will have around the same number of expressions. =v=+ I'm a very mathematical freak so yeah.

Of course, that's just my way of dealing with it. And for game, I also point out RE Alistair and Frozen Essence. OvOb

[YonYonYon]

1) Use differend layers for eyes, eyebrows and mouth. Then you can combine them in differend way



2) Poses... 5 is my maximum