Banality Man [VN][Comedy][Hero][Animated][NaNo16]

[YossarianIII]

BONK! SOCK! BOOM! KA-BLAM! Squeak. Also I don't think it's onomatopoeias but like K.O. and other written stuff from fighting games would be kinda fun too haha.

Ooh, BONK! is a good one -- that'll definitely have to be one of them. I'll have to think about some of the fighting games I've played too...

LOL CRYING
I had to click on this when I saw the title and I am not disappointed. That GIF accompanied with that quote though- so much LOVE <3

Thanks, Elze! This was the first time I ever tried a punching GIF, but I was happy with how it turned out.

[MimirollCookie]

Um...
It seems like you mix and matched your signature. ^_^;
Beretta Mondatta to Banality Man
Banality Man to Beretta Mondatta.

[YossarianIII]

Um...
It seems like you mix and matched your signature. ^_^;
Beretta Mondatta to Banality Man
Banality Man to Beretta Mondatta.

Haha, whoops! It should be fixed now. Thanks for catching that!

[YossarianIII]

Just did a major update to the first post! Sample sprites for 5 of the main characters have been added, along with brief bios. There are a few more characters in the game that I've finished sprites for... but I thought it would be better to keep them a surprise.

I've completed a first draft of the script and am working on revising it, in addition to working on the sprite animations now.

[Ghost of Crux]

These brief bios are probably some of the best I've read. I particularly love the company name. Such good, much wow.

[YossarianIII]

These brief bios are probably some of the best I've read. I particularly love the company name. Such good, much wow.

Thanks! Yeah, as you can probably tell, I like keeping things minimal whenever possible.

I kind of enjoy making character bios, particularly when the hard work of actually writing the character is done. (Or near done, anyway.)

[ebi-hime]

For onomatopoeia, you should use POMF!
Uh, because of this, haha XD;;;
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/23 ... 99aa47.jpg
I'm easily amused...

Anyways, I played Beretta a while ago (not all endings, I think I got 3 different ends) and I remember liking it a lot and thinking the story was very funny. And the soundtrack, I remember, was pretty weird and... plastic-y sounding? It was an interesting experience.
I'll look forward to this, too o'3'o

Ooh, and I just remembered: from the first time I played Beretta, I thought Jessica's design was really cute, and I wanted to draw her...
So here you go, I made something for you XD; I hope you like it! u_u
And, I'm sorry, but I don't know how to draw hands (or legs... haha)
https://40.media.tumblr.com/4909e19297f ... o1_540.jpg

[infel]

Now this is something I quiet enjoy =D. I love comedy visual novels and the story and characters for this look very good. As for the art I do like it. Cartoon style fits with what you're going here. I wish you the best of luck =D.

[YossarianIII]

Ooh, and I just remembered: from the first time I played Beretta, I thought Jessica's design was really cute, and I wanted to draw her...
So here you go, I made something for you XD; I hope you like it! u_u
And, I'm sorry, but I don't know how to draw hands (or legs... haha)

This is awesome! I've actually never seen fan art for anything I've done before, so you're the first, ebi-hime. Thanks!

(Don't worry about the lack of hands or legs -- her original design didn't have them either. )

Now this is something I quiet enjoy =D. I love comedy visual novels and the story and characters for this look very good. As for the art I do like it. Cartoon style fits with what you're going here. I wish you the best of luck =D.

Thanks, infel! Cartoons have always been a big influence for me, so I'm glad the style looks right. There can never be enough comedy visual novels... which is why I make them!

[YossarianIII]

Guys, forget literally everything I wrote about the soundtrack in the first post. I'm releasing this game for free under a CC-BY-NC-SA license and it looks like that opens up a whole universe of soundtrack opportunities.

Unless I'm misinterpreting the Creative Commons licenses, Banality Man will feature at least two of the very best punk bands making music today -- bands that I was a fan of way before this project began. It might also feature two (!) of the most influential hip-hop groups of the late 80s/early 90s.

And that's not even including the lesser-known bands! I've found some super-duper awesome songs by bands mining similar territory to Neutral Milk Hotel, Spoon, and the War on Drugs. And they're all thematically relevant to the story!

Honestly, my goal at this point is to assemble the greatest visual novel soundtrack of all time. Maybe I'll fail, but whatever the soundtrack is, it'll be pretty darn good.

The plan is to use all these awesome songs over the end credits (since most of them have vocals and would be distracting during reading), so that finding different songs can be a fun reward for players who seek multiple endings. (Players will likely have to put up with the stuff I compose for the reading parts of the game, which will be less awesome than the Creative Commons songs.)

I'm reading more into the Creative Commons licenses, since all of this seems honestly too good to be true. But if all the terms of the licenses check out, the music in Banality Man is going to be phenomenal!

[YossarianIII]

Finished up a few more animations!

Here's Breda in her "gimme a break" pose:

And here's Sal in his "smiling while scratching his bum" pose:

Also, sorry to disappoint anyone, but no, it will not be possible to date Sal in Banality Man.

[Lesleigh63]

Very cute.

the 'scratching the bum' made me laugh. Thanks.

[paradigmshifty]

Yeah I'm totally going to play this. Your project from last years nano was great, I really liked the dialogue.

I'm super excited about the soundtrack - I have no idea what's going to happen. (I look forward to reading while music with lyrics plays in the background! (I'm always up for a challenge!! actually it can work well and I know you put a lot of work into the audio side of things which is always a huge plus for me.))

[YossarianIII]

Very cute.

the 'scratching the bum' made me laugh. Thanks.

Thanks, Lesleigh! I'm always trying to think of new poses for the characters, and for some reason, Sal just seemed like the type of guy who would scratch his bum while talking to you.

Yeah I'm totally going to play this. Your project from last years nano was great, I really liked the dialogue.

I'm super excited about the soundtrack - I have no idea what's going to happen. (I look forward to reading while music with lyrics plays in the background! (I'm always up for a challenge!! actually it can work well and I know you put a lot of work into the audio side of things which is always a huge plus for me.))

Thanks! I will say with the soundtrack that for the main reading sections, it will probably still be mostly instrumental music (I'm hoping stuff I compose, although possibly Creative Commons, depending on time.) My current plan for the songs with vocals is to use a different one for each version of the end credits (there will be about 10 endings), so getting a new song is like a reward that comes with each ending. Lyrically, each song is thematically linked to the ending it goes with.

Still a rough plan, though, since my head is more in visual than audio mode this week. Once I have enough sprites and backgrounds to get the skeleton of the game together, I'll start looking more seriously at how to use all the awesome audio assets available.

[YossarianIII]

Spent a lot of time experimenting with different background styles, and I think I've finally got one I like. It involves combining two photo filters and doing a bunch of manual changes in between.

My issue was that I wanted the background colors to be from the same palette as the characters without the characters disappearing into the background. The solution I found was to go with sort of abstract, bold images that are inspired by Pop Art silkscreens.

Here's a background of a lobby:

And here's one of a cemetery:

I'm working on the GUI, and will hopefully soon have an example of how the characters look against the backgrounds. But the early tests looked pretty good, I think!