How many expressions per character?

[Cutie-Banana]

Hi, this is a big big BIG what if because I am lazy as heck, but lets say hypothetically I wanted to create a VN Otome game.

On average about how many different expressions should each main character / love interest have? Some examples look like they only have about 5 VERY similar expressions, while others seem to have a LOT more. For those of you who have made successful games, how many did you make for each?

Also is it worth it to put in the extra effort to animate said expressions in Live2D or would you say its just as impactful with stills?

[parttimestorier]

I think it really depends on the writing, the characters' personalities, and the roles they play in the story. For instance, a side character might only need a few expressions while a main love interest would need a lot more, and a character who's grumpy all the time probably needs different expressions from one who's usually more cheerful. Personally, my approach to figuring that out is usually to write the story first and then program it all with placeholder sprites, taking notes along the way about which expressions I'm using the most and which ones I'd like to be able to add. One thing you can do to make your characters seem expressive without a ton of wildly different expressions is also have a few separate small variations on their eyes, eyebrows, and mouth, and switch them up frequently.

[SelLi]

I've found that, after I have writing done, I launch the game in Ren'Py without any images and read the text. (Against scene black) As I read, I make #comments in the .rpy file taking notes of how the character(s) are feeling at those points in the file. Sometimes the emotions/expressions I take note of end up being very similar to each other and meld into one expression rather than several, but other times I discover a new emotion that the character's never expressed before and feel like I should make a new expression. Afterward I copy and paste all of the text from the .rpy file into a blank notepad and delete everything aside from the #comments to make a simple list, making sure to leave only 1 mention of each expression. I've found that this method is helpful. I used to think that there was a simple answer to this question and that I'd be able to ask for a rough number, but as I make my own visual novel I'm thinking more and more that this isn't the case because it depends so much on the particular character and story.

It's worth noting, however, that I make all my own art so making new expressions isn't much of an issue for me. For people who are non-artists, or for people who are commissioning artists, I suppose do something similar to what I said above, then you can choose to represent various emotions with a certain number of sprites - whatever is in your budget. I suppose, depending on your budget, you would want the list of emotions to be represented with fewer sprites or more sprites.

Hopefully that helps somewhat.

[qirien]

I like to have about 8 for main characters and 2-3 for side characters (this is in a novel-length VN). The standard expressions I use are:
Main characters: angry, annoyed, concerned/worried, determined/serious, flirting, happy, neutral, sad, surprised
Sometimes I also use cry, excited, laugh, nervous, blush, and sleeping
Side characters: neutral, negative (could be thoughtful, annoyed, puzzled, worried, etc depending on personality), positive (happy, laughing, joking, smirking, flirting, etc)

Of course, the emotions you need will probably depend on the character and the kind of story you're telling! Some characters might rarely get angry; others might not flirt or joke around much. But hopefully this gives you a bit of a start!

You can see some examples in Our Personal Space 2 on github: https://github.com/qirien/personal-spac ... es/sprites