Potraying Emotions in Sprites

[wyverngem]

So what do you prefer for portraying emotions in sprites? Simple facial changes or is it better to see it throughout the body when reading a visual novel? I've tried reading them with both and I am a little torn. Sometimes full body changes seem dramatize then actual emotion, but then I don't even notice half the time if it's just a smile or frown. Does it need to be something that tears away the reader from the text and looks at the sprites to see the emotion they want the line to be read in? We can all hear verbal cues, but is it just part of writing visual novels when interacting with other characters?

[Broodelin]

I think that a good mix-up of both is the perfect formula, but it all depends on the style and character you're trying to portray.

[Bto3]

IMO it very much depends on the character and the exact mood they're expressing. Like if they're scared, it should be a full body thing, even if it's just subtle stuff like stiff shoulders and wide eyes.

If they're just pleased, then a subtle smile would work. People might not glance up at the sprite over that, but a full body reaction would be over the top. If they're really pleased though (like utterly delighted), then a full body reaction would work.

But if you have someone that's really subtle or stoic, full body stuff isn't really necessary unless you want to break up poses

[pinkmouse]

Like @wyverngem, I often find that I simply don't notice that a character has changed expression because I get focused on the dialogue box, and in my peripheral vision a mouth curving up rather than down isn't big enough to register. So when I look up there again, I think "hey, wasn't Bob frowning?" rather than "oh, Bob's happy now."

Perhaps a solution would be to have two (or more, I guess, if you're feeling fancy) slightly different body-stances which don't mean anything in themselves, and shift between them at each change of expression? Like someone shifting their weight when they've been standing for a long time.

The apparent movement would be small, so we wouldn't have the issue of characters appearing to be from the silent movie era and registering *shock*, *glee* and so on, but large enough to draw the player's gaze, so they'd notice the character's change in expression immediately.

[sendo]

This is why I love side sprites. It actually lets you read the text and see the character's emotions and expressions.

But for whole sprites, I think simple emotions that can be communicated with a simple tweak of the eyebrow/mouth/etc are fine. But I'd love more poses for more intense emotions such as anger. I think using body language is one of the best ways to communicate emotions, and the change in pose will most likely grab the player's attention.

[SundownKid]

I find the use of static poses a little weird. I feel that you should have at least a bunch of poses to express full body emotions, and maybe add expressions onto that. A static pose might work in a short video game sequence but for a full length visual novel, it doesn't have the same impact.

[pinkmouse]

I find the use of static poses a little weird. I feel that you should have at least a bunch of poses to express full body emotions, and maybe add expressions onto that. A static pose might work in a short video game sequence but for a full length visual novel, it doesn't have the same impact.

Sure, full-body poses work best, but they make more work for the artist. Hence the "static pose + multiple glue-on faces" technique.

[Fungii]

I think arm poses work as a good midway point, because it saves an artist from drawing entirely new poses while not leaving all the sprites all static. The tricky part is trying to get the torso in a good neutral stance.

[Auro-Cyanide]

I think it's important to realise that the reason full pose changes aren't seen more often isn't because it hasn't occurred to people or because the artist is being lazy, it's because it's a ridiculous amount of work. It's a huge time sink a lot of artists would rather spend doing other things, or something people aren't willing to pay extra for.

For this type of thing art will be one of the most time consuming aspects of making a visual novel (and therefore costly) and you will be taking resources away from other aspects. There are only 24 hours in a day and an artist might not be willing to have a project drag on forever.

I would recommend looking at other easier methods and maybe experimenting with them a bit before dumping that kind of workload in an artists lap. Could ATL be used to draw attention to the sprites when needed? Emotion bubbles? More cartoony expressions? Could the GUI layout be used more effectively? I think there could be more than one possible solution.

[Asceai]

I would recommend looking at other easier methods and maybe experimenting with them a bit before dumping that kind of workload in an artists lap. Could ATL be used to draw attention to the sprites when needed?

Since recasting myself as a VN designer as opposed to purely a VN player I've been paying attention to this a lot more and it occurs to me just how much commercial VNs use sprite effects to do things. I've been playing ひこうき雲の向こう側 and characters nod, bounce up and down, shudder and lots of other stuff and it really adds quite a lot, even though I wasn't really perceiving how much there was. There's really not that many distinct poses for each character- the job is done quite well and the overall impression is of high production values. So yes, more ATL please =P

[OokamiKasumi]

So what do you prefer for portraying emotions in sprites? Simple facial changes or is it better to see it throughout the body when reading a visual novel?

Conversation and the expression of emotions is more than just facial cues, plus you may need costume changes too which means reproducing those same expressions multiple times. However one doesn't want to overload one's artist, so what I do is break them into separate pieces that I combine to make different expressions.

• base character
• arm positions
• facial expressions

By combining them in different ways using LiveComposite I can get a wide range of expressions, body motions to go with those expressions, and costume changes without taxing my artist. (This particular artist being me.)

[Rosstin2]

Auro-Cyanide=wisdom

[Gospel]

I think arm poses work as a good midway point, because it saves an artist from drawing entirely new poses while not leaving all the sprites all static. The tricky part is trying to get the torso in a good neutral stance.

That's basically the way I'm doing it.

Drawing completely new sprite poses for every portrayed emotion would be overkill.
It's just too much work.
Sometimes a simple change in facial expression is perfectly fine (like going from a faint to a huge smile).

But at other times, it's not enough. It really depends on the emotion, though.

Changing arm positions can help a lot, and it's not too much extra work.
Like when someone's angry (in a comical way), just raising one arm and turning the hand into a fist, for example, makes it look a lot better than merely switching out the facial expression.

So yeah, when I read a visual novel, I don't expect every sprite to be drawn from scratch and the poses to look entirely different, but only changing facial expressions (while not that big of a deal to me) can be a little bit boring and sometimes make it hard to notice a change of expression.

[Kam]

For my own (for now) I've decided to use 3~4 differently posed bodies per character, at least for the long-lasting ones.
One might only have neutral and crossed arms poses (with maybe some head tilting), while a more important character will get an extra thinking pose, a hand on their side, situation-specific ones, etc.
Then the various expressions on the faces.
If you've got a character that panics a lot, you'd definitely need a body that expresses that when s/he well.. Panics.

That way, you won't end up with a Battler.



He didn't exactly cry silent manly tears like Kenshiro.

Though be careful with giving everyone the exact same pose. At least make the angle different.
With Remember11, I started to notice everyone had the same holding-out-hand pose and it kinda got to me.
Even flipping it would already give some variety.

[KiloTango]

TK and I use im.Composit as well, but I've been getting her to be even more granular with the expressions, so I have separate eyes, brows and mouths to play with that I combine in-engine, plus arm and costume variants (and colour-matrix lighting FX). I rolled a quick function for each pose that lets me declare a combo really easily, so it saves time on exporting and also on file sizes. If I need a particular expression pushed more, TK draws more specific features for it, and in the interim it's a quick way of experimenting with the acting as I can knock up an eyebrow variation or whatever myself if I think it'll really help. I really like subtle expressions and characters emoting to lines that aren't their own, so having that control is handy for me, especially without having to do a new export for every costume change/arm position/etc.

We've been working with a few poses per character but most of the people in our current project are static enough to mostly use the main sprite with a few arm movements. When we get to more expressive characters we'll use more poses, with fewer facial expressions to each... but it's worth saying we've been going for a style we can mix and match really easily: if our stuff was full paint style sprites we'd be way more conservative with numbers of expressions, whereas cel lets you get away with a lot of very fast variations.

Ahaha, that Battler is amazing. That said for all the 'TAKE YOUR HAND OUT OF YOUR POCKET', I really like some of the expression work in the PS3 Umineko sprites. Facially, Battler is great. Maybe Beato glued his hand in there.

Also even worse than pockets is the 'my hand is permanently stuck to the back of my neck' sprite. It shows up so much and it's always really distracting to me.