Lemma Soft Forums

Hey guys,

Another sitting on the fence question

I'm trying to decide on the creative direction for the sprites that I have, and have experimented a few of my sprites with Live2D (which looks awesome), as well as static PNGs.

In your opinion, will the extra layers of animation from Live2D make a huge visual impact and overall appearance of the VN?

Would having a persistently animated (e.g. idle breathing all the time, and change animation as needed) character make the VN more engaging?

Considering the added complexity and time needed to manage the conversion to Live2D, I'm trying to weigh if this is something that people actually cares about.

Any advice would be great!

Thanks!

I'd say it depends on the use and sprite. Something like the breathing animation I've seen in RPG makers that's pretty much just the sprite getting a bit higher and lower the entire time adds a bit of dynamic, but I can easily see that exact same thing looking awful with the wrong style of art. And an animation like flipping hair or readjusting glasses can be interesting, but when overused or just added for the sake of adding it the addition can backfire.

So: Yes, I do think that the extra effort of animation will be appreciated by the reader and give a better first impression. However, be sure that it's adding something rather than just being added for the sake of it and that the artstyle works with the animation. You say that your Live2D sprites look awesome, then I think you've got your answer what the audience will think too.

Hey Mammon,

Thanks for the reply. Another consideration is that Ren'py doesn't natively support Live2D, which will push me down the path of Tyrano (not sure how stable that is for a full game), as well as the coming soon VN Maker.

I have yet to see a properly made, full-length VN utilizing a big number of animated Live2D characters in Tyrano, and having talked to a few people, it seems that it is quite difficult for them to make it work properly.

If I decide to use just static images however, it opens up much more possibility in terms of gameplay (e.g. minigames) due to the number of talents available working with Ren'py.

As much as I love the looks of my sprites in Live2D, practicality with it at the moment in Tyrano is limited (e.g you can't flip the Live2D character around, I have to create two models facing each side and import them as character.right and character.left).

Happy to hear everyone's thoughts!

Put the live2D sprites up~ would like to see 8D
and for your question, yes I think it does

I'd like to see your live2D sprites. As for using animated sprites in renpy, maybe you could export live2D animation to .webm and use it as renpy's sprites?

Hey King-sama and indoneko!

Thanks for the answers and suggestion.

You can have a look at some samples in my WIP thread viewtopic.php?f=43&t=42720

I will post a few comparisons here when I get the chance too.

Thanks!