Recruiting for Revolutionary Project

[monele]

Woop~! Dafool to Rika-chan ganbatte~!

[DaFool]

Update

Script is now fully plugged in, except for pans/zooms, voice and music commands (which will be done later)

So how long does a slideshow with 237 images take, but with no more than 2.0 seconds per pause?

20 minutes and 54 seconds

Hmmm... commission an animation studio to animate your story (which will set you back up to $100,000), or you can use the Ren'Py Cinema Technique [TM] which guarantees
*you won't find butchered low-res versions of your work on YouTube
*with no image larger than 200kb, and movie-like novels requiring less music (replaced by voices and ambient sounds), the filesize will be estimated to be a very portable 70mb.

Time to get cracking on the linetests... by the time we're done, animation studios will be obsolete

[monele]

you won't find butchered low-res versions of your work on YouTube

Wanna bet?

Joke apart, I'm surprised that there's already much progress on this. I say yay

[miriam]

Ummm... I've worked in animation (at Air Programs International in Sydney, Australia, and after that at Hanna Barbera) though I haven't worked in a studio for years now. You can see some of the kind of artwork I do at my website http://miriam-english.org though I haven't got any animation up there.

Do you still need someone to do artwork? I might be able to help out... depends on workload more than anything. I'm supposed to be doing an AI (artificial intelligence) program at the moment, though I've been fiddling with writing a ren'py script instead.

I have a lot of experience in making very efficient images, with filesizes as small as possible with no noticeable quality loss.

[DaFool]

Wow, thanks miriam.

We'll be sure to contact and send you the work in progress once I've finished storyboarding.

(Some of the folks at my studio used to work for Hanna Barbera projects about a decade or so ago)

[miriam]

Hi DaFool. Thanks for the vote of confidence.

Rika-chan has been in touch with me and is, I think, unsure about whether my style suits the project. This is quite understandable, as it is important that the artwork have the same feel as the story. I love anime, but my artwork tends not to be in that style. I'm pretty sure I could draw in that form, but to be truthful I've never actually tried. I suggested she wait a few days and see if she likes the renpy script I'm currently working on. I hope to announce it when it is finished later this week if all goes well.

If she thinks it is suitable then we can take it from there. If not, then no hard feelings, I completely understand.

[lordcloudx]

off topic: I like the literary style of your stories miriam.

[DaFool]

Rika-chan has been in touch with me and is, I think, unsure about whether my style suits the project.
...
I suggested she wait a few days and see if she likes the renpy script I'm currently working on. I hope to announce it when it is finished later this week if all goes well.
...
If she thinks it is suitable then we can take it from there. If not, then no hard feelings, I completely understand.

Regardless, I'd love to be able to work with you. I was not really officially trained in the stuff I do, but I realize it should be pretty simple to accomodate another style. For reference, look for Kosuke Fujishima's (Ah! My Goddess, You're Under Arrest, Sakura Taisen) character designs -- that is what we're aiming for (although right now, my blobs of graphite will have to suffice ^_^)

I'm curious about that script you're doing...is it an optimization for this project, or is it another project (such as your own)?

Yeah, no hard feelings, although I hope I won't get offloaded for someone who evidently has superior skill ^_^. I'll await Rika-chan's direction.

[miriam]

Hehehe "Superior skill" -- I don't think so. I am a total newbie at this.

I love the artwork of "Oh My Goddess". I'm not familiar with the others though. I'll have to look them up. I've been watching "Strawberry Panic" lately and am in complete awe of the artwork.

My script is pretty simple. It probably won't even have any decision points. The story is one I wrote a couple of years ago and I think suits the form... I hope. We'll see, anyway. I'm doing it more as an experiment than anything. I am so full of admiration for you amazing folk who do this stuff...

Having found RenPy and ren'ai so late and so accidentally I have this odd feeling like I was exploring a large, many-roomed building where I hoped to find some mildly useful information and opened a wrong door to find a vast, luxurious apartment filled with beautiful treasures that sing and beckon to me. I'd never even suspected such a place existed, but here it is. I'm astounded.

[Rika-chan]

Don't worry about your art style, miriam. I might be convinced to go with a different art style (I get tired of typical anime sometimes). It's just that most people here expect anime-style, and they watch anime, so I figured I'd give them what they expect. Maybe I should reconsider doing that. That said, I can't wait to see your project.

[monele]

so I figured I'd give them what they expect.

Honestly, go with what you feel is right. Originality can't happen if you give what people expect ^^

[DaFool]

Honestly, go with what you feel is right. Originality can't happen if you give what people expect ^^

True, except there is a reason why character designs are simplified for animation studios... so that you can get 100 animators drawing the same character and it not looking like crap

Very innovative animations can be made by single people... except they typically take 2 years ^_^.

This isn't a full-on animation, but still...standardization applies. We got to split up the work somehow ^_^.

If it were just up to me I'd go with superflat for its ease of effort, and when people comment, I'd just shrug them off with "Studio 4C baby, studio 4C, yeah..."

[miriam]

...character designs are simplified for animation studios... so that you can get 100 animators drawing the same character...

single people... typically take 2 years

...We got to split up the work somehow

Excellent points.

Give me a couple of days to finish this simple experiment. After that, maybe we can work out if you'd be interested in me being involved. (My experiment might be a huge piece of steaming garbage.)

There is also the fact that I have until the end of June to submit a paper for a conference being held near the end of the year. I still haven't completed the initial work that I was going to do the paper on yet... I got distracted by all this wonderful stuff. So for the next two and a half months I probably wouldn't be able to devote too much time... though after that I could.

Interestingly, my research could end up giving a simple way to animate inside RenPy using extremely small filesizes. What is even more exciting, those animations could alter when other decision-points are taken -- I don't mean that you'd load a different set of animations; I mean the original animations would play out differently. (This isn't what I'm doing in my small experiment though, which is just a "conventional" visual story.)

[miriam]

lordcloudx >> sorry, I missed your post. thanks for the compliment. I appreciate it.

[DaFool]

Give me a couple of days to finish this simple experiment. After that, maybe we can work out if you'd be interested in me being involved. So for the next two and a half months I probably wouldn't be able to devote too much time... though after that I could.

Hmmm...I seem to have been forgiven for delaying this project as it is. I doubt you'd not be excused for doing anything similar to it

Interestingly, my research could end up giving a simple way to animate inside RenPy using extremely small filesizes. What is even more exciting, those animations could alter when other decision-points are taken -- I don't mean that you'd load a different set of animations; I mean the original animations would play out differently. (This isn't what I'm doing in my small experiment though, which is just a "conventional" visual story.)

I'm curious about that and looking forward to it. By the way, this is a linear story, so the way 'altering animations' would be used will be to tweak, say, the characters's clothes or the backgrounds just slightly so that the same resources can be used in a different scene.

What I had in mind would be an engine-dependent method of positioning and coloring, but I don't know how insane that could be. Since there will be no decision points, a lot will be riding on the actual presentation. The story's already good, but it will be the art and music that will make or break it.

One thing I hope is that this won't look like a cheap animation...and that means having to use a lot of gradients in the images, especially the backgrounds. Now I won't mind spending 6-12 hours on each image, but hopefully there would be some batch recoloring or something of the sort.