The Doomed Diner 2020 [Horror][Halloween]
Posted: Sat Oct 03, 2020 1:15 pm
Hello! So, The Doomed Diner (take 3) is a visual novel about a trio of girls who inherit a diner at Dadrice Cove. Bad stuff ensues as they take part in the local tradition of a Haunted Halloween Hike.
It offers 3 wildly different main routes that deal with either a zombie apocalypse, possession by an evil witch or a masked maniac slasher. Although the tone is comedic, it will offer graphic horror stuff (decapitations, bodies melted by acid, impalements, you know : the usual) but no sparkling vampires!
It's different in that this visual novel doesn't work with the usual sprites against a background but each page has its own illustration. I feel this way I can better tell the story (especially when showing actions). Horror aficionados might find a reference or two but this is not important to the story.
Some might recognize the title "The Doomed Diner" and this is indeed the same thing but with a reworked story and characters. We have the same 3 girls (Sue, Tina and Mary) and the same idea (a mysterious inheritance). I'm confident this time it will be finished because over 80 of the 100 drawings/pages have been done. Given that I've made about 2 drawings each day, it should be finished well before Halloween and well within 2 months.
Since this subforum is a WIP I might as well show how the illustrations were made. This is one I made today.
About half of the illustrations are on 300 grams Arches Satine, the other half on Schut Terschelling Glad ("glad" is Dutch for smooth). Although the Arches is the better water color paper, the Schut takes more punishment and the pens (Sakura Microns) glide easier over it. I use the Microns instead of a nib pen or a brush because it works way faster. This illustration contains references so I used references (there are 4) but my ability to get a likeness is so abysmal that people might get the idea I created unique characters. I will shamelessly take credit
And now the water color. It's all Winsor and Newton. I always make heavy use of the Perylene Green, Dioxazine Violet and Benzimidazolone Orange. These 3 are great mixing colors. The skin tones are almost exclusively Orange and Violet in different proportions with some Cobalt Violet thrown in for very white skin. For the night sky I use Indanthrene Blue. Unlike the other blues I use for skies, this one leaves very obvious marks. Can't get a smooth wash with it but this is what I want to get a creepy sky. Of course, all colors are transparent to show the ink lines underneath.
And now I touch up things with Copic markers and restate some ink lines. Put it in Gimp to up the contrast and brightness (typically between 3 and 10 and brightness half of that) and that's it. I use Manga Studio (nowadays called Clip Studio I believe) to cut it out and soften the edges with the eraser with it's opaqueness set low so it will integrate neatly with the page (which is just a scanned in empty piece of paper).
I'm not yet decided whether I will use text in the usual way or hand write the story on the pages themselves. I tend to opt for the latter (it's hand drawn, I guess it should be hand written too). Of course, that means I can't get running text. All of the text will be revealed immediately (there are ways around that but that will take far too much time).
I don't know if this kind of "illustrated visual novel" has been done before. I wonder if it can still be called a visual novel without sprites?
It offers 3 wildly different main routes that deal with either a zombie apocalypse, possession by an evil witch or a masked maniac slasher. Although the tone is comedic, it will offer graphic horror stuff (decapitations, bodies melted by acid, impalements, you know : the usual) but no sparkling vampires!
It's different in that this visual novel doesn't work with the usual sprites against a background but each page has its own illustration. I feel this way I can better tell the story (especially when showing actions). Horror aficionados might find a reference or two but this is not important to the story.
Some might recognize the title "The Doomed Diner" and this is indeed the same thing but with a reworked story and characters. We have the same 3 girls (Sue, Tina and Mary) and the same idea (a mysterious inheritance). I'm confident this time it will be finished because over 80 of the 100 drawings/pages have been done. Given that I've made about 2 drawings each day, it should be finished well before Halloween and well within 2 months.
Since this subforum is a WIP I might as well show how the illustrations were made. This is one I made today.
About half of the illustrations are on 300 grams Arches Satine, the other half on Schut Terschelling Glad ("glad" is Dutch for smooth). Although the Arches is the better water color paper, the Schut takes more punishment and the pens (Sakura Microns) glide easier over it. I use the Microns instead of a nib pen or a brush because it works way faster. This illustration contains references so I used references (there are 4) but my ability to get a likeness is so abysmal that people might get the idea I created unique characters. I will shamelessly take credit
And now the water color. It's all Winsor and Newton. I always make heavy use of the Perylene Green, Dioxazine Violet and Benzimidazolone Orange. These 3 are great mixing colors. The skin tones are almost exclusively Orange and Violet in different proportions with some Cobalt Violet thrown in for very white skin. For the night sky I use Indanthrene Blue. Unlike the other blues I use for skies, this one leaves very obvious marks. Can't get a smooth wash with it but this is what I want to get a creepy sky. Of course, all colors are transparent to show the ink lines underneath.
And now I touch up things with Copic markers and restate some ink lines. Put it in Gimp to up the contrast and brightness (typically between 3 and 10 and brightness half of that) and that's it. I use Manga Studio (nowadays called Clip Studio I believe) to cut it out and soften the edges with the eraser with it's opaqueness set low so it will integrate neatly with the page (which is just a scanned in empty piece of paper).
I'm not yet decided whether I will use text in the usual way or hand write the story on the pages themselves. I tend to opt for the latter (it's hand drawn, I guess it should be hand written too). Of course, that means I can't get running text. All of the text will be revealed immediately (there are ways around that but that will take far too much time).
I don't know if this kind of "illustrated visual novel" has been done before. I wonder if it can still be called a visual novel without sprites?