Coder, Assist. Artist, & VAs needed for Mystery VN
Posted: Sat May 02, 2015 12:03 pm
Hello! Modus Operandi Productions is looking for collaborator's in bringing what was a small pet project into a full-scale visual novel.
The project, originally known as Weston Devant: Ace Attorney, was initially designed as a simple recolor and rewrite of Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney using the open source program PWLibrary designed to create custom Ace Attorney cases and had only a single person working on it as a labor of love. As more and more writing and character development occurred that the program couldn't handle in scope, as well as a lingering desire to set the game apart from it's basis, it was decided Weston Devant needed to be it's own game made in Ren'py instead of a recolor program.
Now tentatively entitled Cold Cases: Wesley Devant, (Cause Wesley's a way less pretentious name than Weston) the game is an episodic mystery game taking nods from not only Phoenix Wright, but other mystery kinetic novels such as Professor Layton and Zero Escape. Wesley Devant is a part time private eye with a bit of a bad habit of being at the wrong place at the wrong time, and his former occupations as not only a detective, but a war veteran and university professor have netted him more than his share of enemies such as the spiteful Pria Heu; a Vietnamese prosecutor and former student of his and Cael Coleman; the lead homicide investigator of the Capital City precinct who's concerned Devant's meddling could cost him his job. Thankfully, Wesley is assisted by Victoria Aliquet, his ever faithful assistant in olive drab along with a budding law student by the name of Lisa Tornby.
So far, five cases have been sketched out ranging from a royal assassination to a murder in a hedgemaze to a locked room case with only a robot as a witness. Concept art has been done for most recurring characters in the story, and several mockups of the game's intended appearance are made as well.
I myself, am a character/background artist and designer primarily and serve that role on this project in addition to my role as the Artistic Director for Modus Operandi. For the early parts of the game, I've also been serving as the primary programmer. However, my minor programming abilities fall short for the vision we have for the game now that we have moved into a much more dynamic vision. As well, I recently suffered a catastrophic hit of losing my art computer which, while I was able to save WIPs for the game, I lost my access to art programs and a medium for programming. As such, I am asking for the following assistance. (Organized in order of importance.)
-A programmer capable of making minor GUI and features that make the game feel like a true mystery novel.
-An artist good at recreating the established style for the game in order to create digital copies of the character sketches until I can procure a new computer, and from that point, provide assistance by tweening and cleaning up character sprites and assets. (Examples will be provided to all who express interest in the position. We would rather the designs stay as private as possible until we begin showing off the demo to investors.)
-Voice actors and actresses. At the very least, we want the main recurring cast to be vocalized and if we can find minor talent to do so, we'd be floored. A link containing a master list of characters and voice requirements will be provided upon request.
-(Optional) Additional Writers for our writing team. Our pool already contains some great talent, but there is no such thing as too much. There is a far less impending need to fill these roles, so we will likely be very slow to responding to these requests.
-(Optional) A composer willing to make a small scale soundtrack (5 or 6 songs at most) for the game.
To tell you a little more about us, I'm the Artistic Director and a founding member of a larger group known as Modus Operandi Productions. We're a group of passionate multi-talented individuals from across the world (members from England; Portland, Oregon; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; and more.) who met and decided we wanted to make art. We are still very young in our endeavors, and Cold Cases stands as our first effort we intend to publish commercially. Our requests here are inherently for non-permanent members of our team, but should we find you comfortable to work with and vice versa, we would not be opposed to accepting additional permanent employees for our later endeavors, especially as we push towards obtaining a physical location. (I don't make those decisions anyway.)
If you have further questions, feel free to ask within the thread so I can clarify any information and expand as necessary for all individuals reading this.
Anyway, thank you for reading, I know this was a lot so thanks for bearing with me. If you are interested in the project, by all means, post in this thread or PM me with examples of your work, the extent of how you'd like to be involved, or even if just to say you really like Wesley and hope we succeed. Moral support is important too.
Talk to you soon,
~Audrey
The project, originally known as Weston Devant: Ace Attorney, was initially designed as a simple recolor and rewrite of Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney using the open source program PWLibrary designed to create custom Ace Attorney cases and had only a single person working on it as a labor of love. As more and more writing and character development occurred that the program couldn't handle in scope, as well as a lingering desire to set the game apart from it's basis, it was decided Weston Devant needed to be it's own game made in Ren'py instead of a recolor program.
Now tentatively entitled Cold Cases: Wesley Devant, (Cause Wesley's a way less pretentious name than Weston) the game is an episodic mystery game taking nods from not only Phoenix Wright, but other mystery kinetic novels such as Professor Layton and Zero Escape. Wesley Devant is a part time private eye with a bit of a bad habit of being at the wrong place at the wrong time, and his former occupations as not only a detective, but a war veteran and university professor have netted him more than his share of enemies such as the spiteful Pria Heu; a Vietnamese prosecutor and former student of his and Cael Coleman; the lead homicide investigator of the Capital City precinct who's concerned Devant's meddling could cost him his job. Thankfully, Wesley is assisted by Victoria Aliquet, his ever faithful assistant in olive drab along with a budding law student by the name of Lisa Tornby.
So far, five cases have been sketched out ranging from a royal assassination to a murder in a hedgemaze to a locked room case with only a robot as a witness. Concept art has been done for most recurring characters in the story, and several mockups of the game's intended appearance are made as well.
I myself, am a character/background artist and designer primarily and serve that role on this project in addition to my role as the Artistic Director for Modus Operandi. For the early parts of the game, I've also been serving as the primary programmer. However, my minor programming abilities fall short for the vision we have for the game now that we have moved into a much more dynamic vision. As well, I recently suffered a catastrophic hit of losing my art computer which, while I was able to save WIPs for the game, I lost my access to art programs and a medium for programming. As such, I am asking for the following assistance. (Organized in order of importance.)
-A programmer capable of making minor GUI and features that make the game feel like a true mystery novel.
-An artist good at recreating the established style for the game in order to create digital copies of the character sketches until I can procure a new computer, and from that point, provide assistance by tweening and cleaning up character sprites and assets. (Examples will be provided to all who express interest in the position. We would rather the designs stay as private as possible until we begin showing off the demo to investors.)
-Voice actors and actresses. At the very least, we want the main recurring cast to be vocalized and if we can find minor talent to do so, we'd be floored. A link containing a master list of characters and voice requirements will be provided upon request.
-(Optional) Additional Writers for our writing team. Our pool already contains some great talent, but there is no such thing as too much. There is a far less impending need to fill these roles, so we will likely be very slow to responding to these requests.
-(Optional) A composer willing to make a small scale soundtrack (5 or 6 songs at most) for the game.
To tell you a little more about us, I'm the Artistic Director and a founding member of a larger group known as Modus Operandi Productions. We're a group of passionate multi-talented individuals from across the world (members from England; Portland, Oregon; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; and more.) who met and decided we wanted to make art. We are still very young in our endeavors, and Cold Cases stands as our first effort we intend to publish commercially. Our requests here are inherently for non-permanent members of our team, but should we find you comfortable to work with and vice versa, we would not be opposed to accepting additional permanent employees for our later endeavors, especially as we push towards obtaining a physical location. (I don't make those decisions anyway.)
If you have further questions, feel free to ask within the thread so I can clarify any information and expand as necessary for all individuals reading this.
Anyway, thank you for reading, I know this was a lot so thanks for bearing with me. If you are interested in the project, by all means, post in this thread or PM me with examples of your work, the extent of how you'd like to be involved, or even if just to say you really like Wesley and hope we succeed. Moral support is important too.
Talk to you soon,
~Audrey