Lemma Soft Forums

Welcome to The Silent Column's (new) work in progress thread!

The Silent Column is a free visual novel that's being made in the Ren'Py visual novel engine. It has supernatural, philosophical, mysterious, horrific, romantic, and science-fictional elements and isn't intended for younger audiences. I make an update video about the project once every two months.

Here's the latest update video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eihC0QfFvbw

This thread has changed a few times by now and some of the things I've talked about and shown have either been changed drastically or have been discarded.

Finished another character portrait.
Unlike in chapter one, these portraits will change their expressions.
I have a lot on my plate, though, so I don't think I'll have characters change their poses. That would pretty much double my workload.
It took me a while to get her to look good, but I like how Helper turned out.

Did Serra's base portrait. I'll post it when I have one of her expressions done.
Serra's the character I've drawn the most over the years and I feel like I did a good job.

In the mean time, here's her previous portrait. It'll be nice comparing the two when I upload the new one.

https://pre00.deviantart.net/1ba2/th/pr ... beu9l1.png

Here it is.

Hi everyone.
I was originally planning for chapter two to be kinetic, but now I'm going to put a choice in it.
I don't yet know how many extra art and writing assets I'll need to make because of the choice, but I think it will positively add to the chapter.
I can't see it forcing me to draw too many extra pictures, anyway.

Planned out the writing structure and wrote, more.
I currently estimate that there will be 25 scenes. I now have 7 of them written and edited.
Just for comparison, chapter one had 13 scenes and I was originally planning for this chapter to have 14.
Scenes vary in length, so this chapter may not end up having a larger word count than chapter one, but I think it probably will, which sounds good to me.
Current word count for this chapter is 4,963 words.
Chapter one's word count is 9,863 words but it does still need some light polishing, so that will probably fluctuate a little bit.

Edit: I also currently estimate that I will end up doing 30 pictures, of which I have 6 done. All these estimations may fluctuate slightly as I write, though, of course.

Hi everyone, I did a new picture and wrote a new scene since the last update.
I'm going to try to aim for 20 pictures rather than 30ish, just to lighten the load.
I was at 7/25 scenes written, before, and I'm planning on adding the new scene to the end after the other writing, so now I'm at 8/26 scenes written.
I'm switching back to drawing characters without mouths and with more neutral/thoughtful eyebrows so I won't have to change their facial expressions.
It's less work on me, it's the same thing I did for chapter one, and there's something surreal about needing to fill things in with your imagination as a character keeps eye contact with you, never blinking and without having a mouth...

https://s1.postimg.org/7r0xglx9hr/Helper.png

Also, just like in chapter one, I'm going to be doing close ups.
Unlike in chapter one, though, I'm scaling the images up for the closeups. To avoid them looking pixelated, I'm applying an oilify filter to them in Gimp.
It's pretty subtle but does give a weird, painted feeling to the closeups, which might add to the surreal look of things.

https://s1.postimg.org/8egfdrf65b/Helper_cu.png
https://s1.postimg.org/2vyaxm88cf/Serra ... ads_cu.png

I'll see you next time.

Edit:
Also, I will still do CGs for some really important, emotional scenes in the story. It's not as though characters will never be seen with emotion.

Chapter one is pretty scattered with its story telling and chapter two has similar segments where it jumps to and from different events, people, and times.
I'm thinking of editing, cutting, and adding more writing to the chapters to make the writing more coherent.

I'm thinking that I may give the player the option to follow one of three protagonists per chapter, which they may have to unlock as they progress through the VN. The writing would only follow the selected protagonist, instead of going everywhere.
But they wouldn't always just re-reading things from another protagonist's perspective: some events may also be different depending on who they pick.
There also wouldn't be any choices other than which protagonist to follow.

I think that would be an interesting way of story telling. The way I've been writing is hard to follow and I feel like writing more coherently would make for better mysteries and such.

What do you think?

Edit: On second thought, I like the freedom of being able to write however I want to so I think I'll keep doing just that. Also, I feel like I should leave chapter one alone. Sorry for the redundant post: I guess that's sometimes what happens when I share my thoughts.

Wow! This art style is amazing! Could you share some gifs from the demo?

Aureus wrote: ↑Sun Nov 05, 2017 9:33 am Wow! This art style is amazing! Could you share some gifs from the demo?

Thanks. I like the art, too.
It's not going to be animated, though.
Rather than sharing gifs from the demo, I'll just release the whole game when it's ready and share screenshots.
Chapter one is also not animated, but you can see screenshots from chapter one on its demo thread and itch.io download page.

Done with pen and edited in Gimp.

Kichi will appear in The Silent Column but she isn't actually planned to be in chapter two. I was just happy with how she turned out and wanted to share, and then I remembered she won't appear in the chapter.

Amy will appear in this chapter, though.

Hi everyone. I just thought I'd let you know that I'm almost done doing the pictures for this chapter. I have three left to do, or four at the most.

I have to do:
- empty room
- Tashen's house
- hospital

and optionally:
- border

Then there will be the rest of the writing to do, and I want to do some songs too, of course.
I'm looking forward to it.

All that's left to do now is the border. I think I will do it.

The pictures are done.