What's Your Motivation?

[Kinjo]

As someone who doesn't consider himself an artist, I was wondering what exactly motivated artists to draw for English visual novels in particular.

Please note that I'm not asking about people who first decided to make a visual novel and also happen to be doing the artwork. Just the people who specialize in drawing and have chosen to do artwork for visual novels. What exactly motivated you to get into this niche game industry?

[Sharm]

I've been trying to be a one woman army with my in the works VN's but I think my opinion can still be useful.

I was drawn to VN's specifically because of the relatively small workload of art needed to make a game compared to other game genres I enjoy. You could make a whole game, a good one even, with only one background and one character graphic. Most of my other favorite genres require years of artistic work or a team of creators. I tend to get bogged down with perfectionism so the smaller the workload the more likely I am to actually finish something.

[Heartstrings]

It all started when Welcome to the NHK inspired me to want to make visual novels. Since I'm an artist, doing the art for them seemed like a given (though I code as well). I also played games like Katawa Shoujo and they just really made me think how great it would be to be able be a part of something so powerful, and the art style seemed to fit what I was doing anyways. Mostly, though, I just love painting and visual novels, so now I get to make both

Hope that helped!

[Sonya]

Motivation wise, it's movies, or great shows like Game of Thrones, etc. Story is my number one motivation for drawing. I wanted to make stories come to life, and the easiest way was to create the visual art to go along with it.

[hiko27]

I've known about visual novels for a long time now, ever since I was in middle school, and when my skills have improved enough for visual novels imo, I just went ahead and joined the OELVN scene basically. I just really love visual novels so I guess that's my motivation? I do kind of want to work in the Japanese VN scene when I've managed to pass JLPT N1 but that doesn't mean I'm going to be leaving the OELVN scene, it's nice being able to help people out for something I'm really good at.

[Akitsuki]

Basically, because I love drawing and I love VNs! Not to mention I like writing too, but that's a different story. My first VN was an OELVN I guess, and I was super excited to find out that I too can make my own VN. I'm interested in how VN works, since it's a novel which has visual features in the same portion as the writing. And sometimes when I imagine a story in my head, I'm eager to draw a certain scene which can be shown as a CG in VN.

In short, because it's fun! And other good OELVNs I found motivate me more to work harder ;D

[Nan]

I like the choose-your-adventure aspect of visual novels because you get to explore as many story threads as you want. This is something that would be tough to pull in a webcomic.

[SinSisters]

My friend and I got inspired by Katawa Shoujo! We loved it so much that we decided that we wanted to make our own I guess we had always wanted to collaborate on something together(her writing the script, etc; and I would do the art) So this was a perfect opportunity to do so!

-Celeste