On characters

[lightbulb]

Hello,
I have seen quite a few visual novel and am fascinated by how you guys drew your characters. I am thinking of making a visual novel for my school project. May I know how I can draw my own characters even if I am not an artist? Are there certain software that can help make the drawing process easier. Thank you for replying.

[Dalton]

To make it easy: No.

If there was any software for that, we wouldn't need artists. The result you will get when drawing depends on talent, training and experience.
However, most artists use software like photoshop (or GIMP if you are short on money) to colour their work. Those come in really handy.

[JQuartz]

May I know how I can draw my own characters even if I am not an artist?

MS Paint can do that (yes, you'll be able to draw characters even if you're not an artist but the quality of the drawings done might be a bit...) If you just want to save yourself from doing the artwork, you can get free to use character images from a lot of sites such as the ones here:http://wiki.renai.us/wiki/Main_Page

[cynic]

yes!

Grab a 3D customizable character hentai game like Polygon Love 2 or Schoolmate. Take a screenshot. Get Paint Tool Sai or photoshop and trace over said screenshot (you can find lotsa tutorials on tracing online) in a new layer. Then discard the base layer (the screenshot) and you've got yourself an (almost) original character lineart all ready for coloring. You can find tutorials for anime coloring everywhere on the internetz

[Satoh]

yes!

Grab a 3D customizable character hentai game like Polygon Love 2 or Schoolmate. Take a screenshot. Get Paint Tool Sai or photoshop and trace over said screenshot (you can find lotsa tutorials on tracing online) in a new layer. Then discard the base layer (the screenshot) and you've got yourself an (almost) original character lineart all ready for coloring. You can find tutorials for anime coloring everywhere on the internetz

Haha, I laughed when I read this, and I'm sure someone else would too, but in truth, this is a good method of making characters.

I use Artificial Girl 3 for its character generation engine.

[PyTom]

For a school project, I'd suggest either buying character art, or hiring a character artist. In both cases, you can get decent art relatively cheaply.

[DaFool]

yes!

Grab a 3D customizable character hentai game like Polygon Love 2 or Schoolmate. Take a screenshot. Get Paint Tool Sai or photoshop and trace over said screenshot (you can find lotsa tutorials on tracing online) in a new layer. Then discard the base layer (the screenshot) and you've got yourself an (almost) original character lineart all ready for coloring. You can find tutorials for anime coloring everywhere on the internetz

Haha, I laughed when I read this, and I'm sure someone else would too, but in truth, this is a good method of making characters.

I use Artificial Girl 3 for its character generation engine.

Or 3D Custom Girl

Or heck even Poser or DAZ (which I use. Even if you don't trace everything, if you trace the postures, that's already a huge improvement.)

[dstarsboy]

There's some manga character clip art packages on Amazon that you can use. They're all photoshop layers, so you can swap out body parts, heads, clothes to make different poses and stuff. The art is 100% licensed for anything you want to do.

The drawbacks are the cost (like $20 per package), they're black and white, so you'd have to color them yourself and, lastly, the facial expressions are somewhat limited. From what I can tell, most VNs require a minimum of 3-4 different expressions per char, but ideally you'd probably want 6 or 7. Getting the range of expressions is key, but could be easy enough to add even for newer artists.

[usul]

What about the free character packs on the oelvn wiki? If they suit your story you want want to go with that.

[rioka]

These are the books dstar is talking about:

Manga Clip Art
Manga Female Clip Art
500 Manga Characters

They're reviews I did so you can get an idea of what's in each book. They also have backgrounds so that can help you out but as dstar mentioned, they're all black and white so you'll have to do some coloring (or get someone to do it for you).