The Homestead: A Centaur's Story [Archived]

[noeinan]

Hello, all! Sorry it's been quite a while since the last update. Our team has had a run of bad luck this past month, including job hardship, illness, and on a happier note graduation for family members. We are still chugging away, although at a slow pace, but here are a few more background WIP for you all. As it turns out, some of the sketches I made have some issues with perspective, so it's taking a bit longer to get the paintings finished. Sorry about that! Background art is not my specialty, haha.

[Fungii]

That countryside view...

[noeinan]

Lots of gorgeous background updates for you guys!

[DarkShockBro]

Wow, those backgrounds look fantastic. I can tell this game is going to be great once it's released.

Speaking of which, do you need another editor? I'd be more than happy to take a look at your script and just help you out with this project in general. I'm looking forward to when this game gets released, or at least when a demo gets released. Keep up the great work.

[noeinan]

Thanks! I'm not sure exactly when we'll be ready-- there is still a lot of writing and a decent amount of art left, but we'll let you know once we're further along.

[noeinan]

Moar backgrounds!

[Mad Harlequin]

These are so gorgeous! I might just cry. The light playing on the hills . . . wow. And the clouds look so fluffy!

[noeinan]

Okay, I made a lot of art progress while out of town! I finished coloring 3-4 more expressions for each centaur, I finally got around to coloring the human girls' sprites, and I've finished inking one of the CGs. Not going to post all the expressions, because I feel that would get repetitive, but here are the sprites for Lisa and Millie.



Lisa's feet are super messed up, but I figured what the hell-- they won't be showing in the game and I'll fix it later if I need to.

[noeinan]

Eeeeh, changed my mind about the expressions since I made previews of them for my facebook artist page anyhow. Hildegarde's smiling face is perhaps too similar to her neutral face, but I didn't want it to be super overt. I think the fact that her skin tone is so dark makes it harder to differentiate small differences in expression, what with the lineart in black. I will consider this and see what I'll do about it.

These are just the preliminary expressions, and most of the characters don't have altered eyes. (Half closed, wide open, looking in a different direction, etc.) I plan on expanding on them for the future, though.

[noeinan]

Took some time to finish the CTC button last night. Not sure how the sprites look in front of the background. I'm really no good at shading, but I'm worried the flat colors clash with the painting. :/ Hrm...

[nipaa_kazuma]

Hello =)

To me, one thing is certain : you made such an amazing job so far.
The dialogue box really blend well with the backgrounds and the theme of your VN.
You said you were worried about the sprites clashing with backgrounds so I'd like to ask :
Are they your finalized sprites or are you thinking about working on them a little more ?

If they are finished then yes, I would think that they could use a little more shading just like you said.
I don't feel that they're really clashing since your use of color is really good.
I also think that having a little contrast between the sprites and the backgrounds isn't necessarily a bad thing.

When I look at the last picture you published I immediately think the backgrounds are superb, but I'm still appealled by the characters sprites.

I'm not sure this is helping but I simply couldn't leave your post without a comment.

[noeinan]

Thanks, Nippa.

The character sprites aren't completely done-- this was what I was planning on using when the Homestead was a NaNoRenO game, and had to be done in a month. Now that we have a bit more time, I'm planning on making adjustments, adding accessories, and trying a bit harder on shading. Thanks for your input, I was kinda worried about my sprites since they aren't painted-- even when I do shade they will probably be cel shaded and thus have sharper lines.

[noeinan]

I've been working on CG art for the game recently. Here's a small preview of a CG I'm currently working on.

[noeinan]

Decided I really need to be able to shade, so I've begun the learning process.







Also doing some tests with colored lines, now that I've figured out an easy way to do that. For now, here's Abdera, but I think it will really show with Hildegarde. And especially once I've reached the point where I can shade actual characters. Once I can shade, I'll probably end up making versions of each sprite based on the light in the room. I have no idea how I'm going to organize that in the code, but we'll see how it goes!

[noeinan]

Trying my hand at soft shading a face. Definitely need to study the "planes of the face" more. Will continue to practice.