Tenkeiteki Tokyo [parody]

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Zelan
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Re: Tenkeiteki Tokyo [parody]

#31 Post by Zelan »

That's probably true for some of us, but as long as the references aren't meant to carry the entire VN, it shouldn't be a problem. c: For me, I know next to nothing about Japanese language or culture, but your characters seem interesting and the plot is hilarious, so what's not to love?

Basically, if someone could still enjoy the VN even if every single reference flew over their head, you've got nothing to worry about.

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Re: Tenkeiteki Tokyo [parody]

#32 Post by Fuseblower »

Yeah, I guess as long as I just keep the references in the background it should be okay. And I can always use the protagonist to explain things. After all : Donkan is not the brightest bulb (his name means "thick-headed"). For the people who don't know the Yamato I could have Donkan say : "Wow, they named this ship after Space Battleship Yamato?" Of course, Space Battleship Yamato was built from the remains of the real Yamato :)

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Re: Tenkeiteki Tokyo [parody]

#33 Post by Fuseblower »

Well, with most of the backgrounds now done I can see a couple of issues (which is okay with me because I see Tenkeiteki Tokyo as a learning experience) :

- The styles are very different. I started out with very coarsely drawn backgrounds but then started to make them more detailed.
- None of these backgrounds have an overarching color design. They're just a jumble of colors. The exception is the background showing the battleship Yamato and that's only because I had the presence of mind to use the colors of the sky as mixing colors for the ship.
- I've found it quite hard to control value with water colors and having all the backgrounds in dusk/night didn't help either. I guess that's why water colors are typically used for sunny scenes :lol:
- On a practical note : the pieces of paper I used were too small (15x20 cm or 6x8 inches) and it wasn't a good idea to color it all the way up to the edges where my finger prints made it hard to paint over
- I didn't take into consideration that there will be a text box over the lower part of the drawing, this will seriously impact some of the backgrounds because that's where all the action is.

Image

The above shows how I can't get any good shading going on in the mid range.

Image

All the interesting stuff in the above picture is where the text box will appear.

Well, they say you learn from mistakes so I'm bound to learn a lot from this game :lol:

I think I take a break from the backgrounds now (interior scenes still to do, they're simple) and do some CGs. I can experiment more with the style with those.

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Re: Tenkeiteki Tokyo [parody]

#34 Post by Zelan »

For those of us (like me) who know next to nothing about art, your backgrounds won't be a problem. c: It's good that you're critiquing yourself, though, so that you can improve your work in the future.

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Re: Tenkeiteki Tokyo [parody]

#35 Post by SexBomb »

Incredible and unique artistic style.
Gorgeous detailed backgrounds filled with life.
Hilarious premise with huge potential and visible comedic brilliance.
Interesting and enticing characters with fantastic posing and expressions.

I sure as heck can't wait to see this one finished!!

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Re: Tenkeiteki Tokyo [parody]

#36 Post by Fuseblower »

Thank you both. I sure can't wait to see it finished either. As it turned out, it takes a little longer than 2 months to finish :lol:

Anyway, here's a little background on the background/exposition of the story. Donkan is chased by the demon Rangaku. This demon senses that Donkan holds the key to the destruction of Japan. Donkan also holds the key to Japan's survival (Japan's destruction/survival is a very common theme in manga :shock: )

Rangaku is Japanese for Western Studies but literally it means Dutch Learning (TL;DR : the Dutch taught the Japanese everything they know :wink: ) The demon is a Dutch demon. He's a bit peeved about the destruction of the Dutch fleet in the Java Sea at the hands of the Imperial Japanese Navy (WW2). The very same navy the Dutch were instrumental in creating.

Image

The famous woodprint painting Youjyo shows the Dutch arriving in Japan somewhere in the 17th century where they encounter an experimental Kabuki troupe (actually, a lot of the Ukiyo-e paintings show Kabuki actors).

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Re: Tenkeiteki Tokyo [parody]

#37 Post by Ghost #9 »

To remedy your concerns over the small image sizes and text box covering part of the scene, you can use a separate letter box and place the text below the images rather than overlaying the text on top.

To give an example, here's a screenshot from the visual novel Narcissu: Link!

The method used there was very straightforward and simplistic, but you can still have a fancy text box even if it's below the main scene, if that's what you were wanting.
Last edited by Ghost #9 on Thu Sep 22, 2016 4:34 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Tenkeiteki Tokyo [parody]

#38 Post by Taleweaver »

Fuseblower wrote:Image
So. Many. References.

Vegeta. Aramaki and Major Kusanagi.

Mind blown.
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Re: Tenkeiteki Tokyo [parody]

#39 Post by Zelan »

Heh, I didn't notice the Jigglypuff in the cage the first time I looked at that background.

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Re: Tenkeiteki Tokyo [parody]

#40 Post by Fuseblower »

Image

So, okay, this thread didn't get updated for quite some time but that doesn't mean I'm not working on Tenkeiteki Tokyo. In the "Doomed Diner" thread I was speaking of animation (inspired by a thread about animation on this forum). After hundreds of frames for that one I realized that :

1 - I never designed the characters for Doomed Diner to be animated (characters in animation need to be designed to be used in animation)
2 - I still suck at animation too much to do things like 100 frame "straight aheads" (oh, the lost hours!)

Then I thought : why on earth am I doing all this for a small project while my Magnus Opus is Tenkeiteki Tokyo? So, I've started to work on an anime like intro for Tenkeiteki Tokyo.

I've looked at some anime (that means DBZ) and noticed how "animation runs" hardly ever continue for more than 2 seconds (unless some cycle or just some talking head). Actually, in old Tom and Jerry shorts (from the 40s and 50s), it's much the same. Also, anime openings are typically 1.5 minutes long.

I would show the storyboard if I had one :lol: (don't worry, I got lots of drawings of what should happen)

But the basic gist of it is this : we get introduced to Donkan, he greets us, gets scared for some reason, runs away, gets chased by 5 Japanese lanterns with the kanji for "Tenkeiteki Tokyo" on them (that's one kanji character for each lantern). He gets chased all over Tokyo (hilarity ensues) and inbetween we get introduced to the other major characters : Dojikko, Jukujo, Youjyo, Rangaku, Kitsune, Otenba, Oresama and Papa-san Mario (spoiler : Abe Shinzo). They perform a short 32 frame action, then we're shown a static of the character with some camera action and are introduced to the name of the character with the kanji sounding like the name but signifying something completely else in good Japanese fashio :lol:

(For example : Jukujo is not a name, it means "attractive old lady" or "milf" and is spelled in Japanese as 熟女 but I spell it as 呪苦女 which sounds the same but means "curse pain woman", I hope...)

I've watched a bunch of anime intro's (check them out on youtube) and it's interesting to see how the creators could get an energetic opening to the anime with so little animation (half of it is pans and zooms and Godknowswhat of static pictures with some flashes added). That's something I'm going to try for the Tenkeiteki Tokyo intro.

I see it mostly as an excercise to get better at animation so that I can add some half decent animation to the VN. The above pencil test is for one of the characters (Dojikko). Also got one for Jukujo already. It takes me about two days to make a 32 framer (animators at Warner were required to do about 64 frames a day, to put it in perspective). I seriously hope to be able to speed it up :lol:

One more thing : I've decided to make the characters all chibi (head = 5, body = 8 ratio). That seemed like a good idea to me.

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Re: Tenkeiteki Tokyo [parody]

#41 Post by UPA »

This game looks great! And I think it's a good idea to make everyone chibi, considering how stylized your art already is.

It looks very 90's, humour, aestetics, and character-wise. Was this a favorite decade, or just a fit of inspiration?

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Re: Tenkeiteki Tokyo [parody]

#42 Post by Fuseblower »

Thanks Upa! Actually, the 90s were not my favorite decade (the music sucked, the movies too). I liked the 80s better and actually managed to finish a couple of games in that time (on the old MSX computer before moving to the Atari ST). But the 90s were the time I got introduced to anime and manga. There was already some of that stuff in the 80s and even 70s but that was Robotech, Thundersub, Battle of the Planets, etc. (on the telly on wednesday afternoons) That was very different from what it is now. So, perhaps there is some 90s influence 8)

In other news : here's the pencil sketch of Otenba's 2 second animated introduction

Image

Unlike Dojikko's animation, I didn't treshold it (it's a glorious full 12 color gif). For those who like to try their hand at animation (there are a couple), it looks quite complicated to do but I've saved a gif of how I start out (the last couple of frames are slightly different, she jiggled too much in the preliminary sketch) :

Image

In the finished pencil sketch you can still see some traces of the old sketch. It's important to get the flow of the animation right from the start. If the animation doesn't work at this point then start over (or correct or whatever). Simple drawings like that don't cost a lot of time and if the simple version doesn't work then adding the details won't make it work either.

Of course, I looked closely at examples and tutorials of butterfly kicks on youtube since I don't do them on a daily basis myself :lol: It's important to make thumbnail sketches so you "get" the motion (just looking isn't enough, you have to draw it anyway).

I'd advice against rotoscoping for this type of animation (it's quite tempting, especially with a Cintiq). The results of rotoscoping always seem like slow motion and have no weight. Getting weight right is the Holy Grail of animation but you won't learn it from rotoscoping. Also, you can always tell when something is rotoscoped. Some scenes of Mowgli in Disney's Junglebook screamed "ROTOSCOPED!!!" at me :lol: And they didn't quite fit the rest of the animation. Good examples of rotoscoping are Ralph Bakshi's work "Fire and Ice" and "Lord of the Rings" but that's a very different type of animation.

As for the drawings themselves : they must be made accurate enough so that you don't scratch your head if you ink and color them

Image

I think I'll do Rangaku next. He's got a really heavy sword so that should be a nice excercise to get weight 8)

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Re: Tenkeiteki Tokyo [parody]

#43 Post by Fuseblower »

Well, just a quick update to show that I'm still working on Tenkeiteki. The animation of the intro takes a long time and it will take a much longer time before I'll put it on youtube.

Image

Here's an example of the logo of Tenkeiteki. It's not colored yet and without the background (it flies backwards through a typical shopping street like Shibuya). I get a bit of a Gertie the Dinosaur/Winsor McCay vibe from it. Possibly because it's made in the same way (no held stuff, everything done with ink on paper). Basically, I traced my own drawings but I didn't trace each previous frame. There are a couple of "key frames" which were used to trace over a series of subsequent frames (in order to prevent "wandering", amplifying errors). Once the logo is fully transformed at frame 28, all the subsequent frames are traced from frame 28. Believe it or not but I tried maximum accuracy and it still vibrates (just like Winsor McCay's "Gertie the Dinosaur" which also vibrates). This tracing is also used in old 40s and 50s animations for "held frames". A frame and a second frame which is traced from the previous are alternated to prevent making it look too stilted.

Image

Of course, the logo is based on the Ameyoko signs (famous shopping street in Tokyo) and I thought it was fun to make it transform. It amazed me that making that logo took way more time than animating characters.

As for the coloring, I will go about it as follows :

Image

This is an example from a previous game (which sucked). First there's an ink drawing. The scanned ink drawing is set with color to alpha so that white is transparent and black is opaque. Then a faint tracing of the ink drawing is made on water color paper (this is where the light box is needed) and a water color painting is made (notice how coarse it is). This is scanned too and the ink drawing (which is transparent where there are no lines) is simply put over it. Of course, it's a little bit more involved but that's the basic gist of it.

so, why two drawings (one for the lines, one for the colors)? Ink works best on the smoothest paper but it works terrible on water color paper. The ink bleeds so no thin, sharp lines can be made and the pen doesn't move smoothly over it. Water color, OTOH, works best on coarse and thick paper (to prevent warping). But you can't get any thin black lines with it. An added advantage is that with two drawings, the two can be balanced separately. All of the water color backgrounds in this thread have the contrast turned up and the brightness turned down, the real painting are far less saturated.

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Re: Tenkeiteki Tokyo [parody]

#44 Post by Hojita »

Just came here to say that your are is marvelous and those animations you have been showing are excellent. Very fluid and detailed.
About the game itself, the story is kinda typical, but the characters and the art are charismatic and gain a lot of attention by themselfs.
I'm looking foward ot this.
Hope you canshow us a little more of your progress soon!

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Re: Tenkeiteki Tokyo [parody]

#45 Post by Lodratio »

Those are some very nice animations! It's also really refreshing to see someone doing traditional artwork.

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