Character Artist Wanted for Otherwise Completed Game

[absinthe]

Hi!

This is completely out of the blue, but I just finished creating a game in Ren'py. I have no character art (can't draw worth beans) but other than that, it's ready to be released (music, shopped backgrounds, tested, etc.). So, I was wondering if anyone might like to do the character art?

There are three characters, a female bit part (two poses) and two male leads (five poses each, two and a half changes of costume each). If you're interested, please let me know and I'll send you a zipped copy. It's about 27mb with music.

The game is fairly short (I've clocked about ten to fifteen minutes per play) with seven ending tracks and a positive or negative ending for each track. I mostly wrote it by ear as I was figuring out the system, so I can't say the plot or the mechanics are spectacular, but I had fun writing it.

Um.... that's all from me!

[PyTom]

I just want to commend Absinthe on basically completing a game before calling for artists to participate. This is a good way to ensure that artists's contributions don't go unused.

Please ensure that you've upgraded to the latest version of Ren'Py before a public release. The new one fixes a really major and subtle bug that's been in Ren'Py forever and a day, and is just waiting to strike when we least suspect it.

Likewise, be sure to run lint on your game. As a bonus, it gives you some statistics as to how long the game is.

Finally, if you want to leak some details of the project, I'm sure we'd all like to know. If not, well, that's also okay. (Although an artist may want to know if it's a BxG or BxB game... but maybe they won't.)

[absinthe]

I *love* lint -- there's something so satisfying about seeing how much is done... sort of like wordcount on a short story (I put the latest lint run in my sig ). Also, I downloaded the newest Ren'Py today. I will have to go over it in the morning when my brain is working again, though, to make sure I didn't blow anything up. If I do it now, I might accidentally delete my working copy or something. (faint)

And, given my, ahem, rather poor track record (16... thousand... directories with half completed projects of all sorts in them), I felt it was only fair to finish the thing before I announced it in any way. That way, if it never got done, I could just hide it in a closet and pretend it didn't exist.

Plus, this way, if I can't find an artist with the time right now, I can always release a text-only version or something. Although it would be a shame, since I can practically see the characters.

Finally, if you want to leak some details of the project, I'm sure we'd all like to know. If not, well, that's also okay. (Although an artist may want to know if it's a BxG or BxB game... but maybe they won't.)

Hehehe, I'm glad you asked!

The protagonist is female, and the potential love interests are male (so BxG, I think?). It's more of a short story than a game, although the player's choices matter quite a bit in determining the direction of the story. Which love interest is the hero is determined by your choices throughout the game, as is what's really going on to a large extent.

One of the heroes is a brooding, world-weary vampire; the other is an angry, reckless vampire hunter. The heroine is torn between them, in two different centuries. There are two dance scenes; one is a nightclub, the other a masquerade ball. It's tentatively titled "Danse Macabre" but I'm not sure if that's the final title. The "pre-character-art beta" zip squeaks in at just under 24mb.

It's definitely not H, which is new for me -- until I found renai.us (via Ren'Py, which I found via pygame) I didn't even realize there were English non-hentai games of this type. I'm really glad there are.

Okay, I think I've rattled on long enough for one post.

[PyTom]

It's GxB then, and if I was more awake when I posted last night, I would have made that one of the choices.

Hm... 27mb without character graphics. I'm curious what's taking up the space. Is it the audio files or the backgrounds. It may be possible, by tweaking compression settings, to shave a substantial amount off of that.

[monele]

Sounds really interesting ! I admit I'm rather tempted to help out with the graphics but I have a bad record of being very lazy with my own art, and even lazier when it's done for others . Since it seems to be around 10 pictures overall, it doesn't sound too overwhelming but I don't want to give false hopes ^^;.
You can check out http://monele.clearlyseen.net to get a feel of my style and see if it'll fit your idea but I insist I'd rather be a last choice since I'm sure there are people with much more motivation than me ^^;

[ShiraiJunichi]

Why not try using ALICE? Although... I guess that means an artist would have to create a male doll first... O_o

[mikey]

I just want to commend Absinthe on basically completing a game before calling for artists to participate. This is a good way to ensure that artists's contributions don't go unused.

I can only agree. It's a great approach. Good luck with the finishing phase, I'm really looking forward to playing!

[Guest]

Hm... 27mb without character graphics. I'm curious what's taking up the space. Is it the audio files or the backgrounds. It may be possible, by tweaking compression settings, to shave a substantial amount off of that.

I'm pretty sure it's the music; I squished the non-vocal ogg files down to quality 1 using Audacity, so I'm not sure what else to do for those? My "tweaking" just consisted of moving the quality preferences slider. <g>

It sort of has character art -- I made approximately sized white blocks with black labels of what each picture was supposed to be. Extremely hideous, but if you squint... okay, no, extremely hideous. Also, sadly, pushing the limits of my drawing skill.

I just resaved the backgrounds at a much lower quality, and the rpa is now 793 kb, as opposed to 5000 or so. So the archive is down to 19.6mb now.

You can check out http://monele.clearlyseen.net to get a feel of my style and see if it'll fit your idea but I insist I'd rather be a last choice since I'm sure there are people with much more motivation than me ^^;

Thank you very much for the offer, monele! Your site and the gallery are absolutely adorable. Are the two images, (page images 126 - 150, bottom row, second and third from the left) part of a game, by any chance? I would love to get my hands on it.

And I would be honored to have you do the artwork, but I can totally relate to a certain lack of motivation to complete stuff. So I'll keep a zipped copy for you just in case.

[absinthe]

D'oh, that was me.

I wondered why it wanted me to enter a confirmation code... I don't post much on forums, can you tell?

[PyTom]

I'm pretty sure it's the music; I squished the non-vocal ogg files down to quality 1 using Audacity, so I'm not sure what else to do for those? My "tweaking" just consisted of moving the quality preferences slider.

Hm... IIRC, the music for Gakuen Redux was compressed with aoTuV, a compressor for ogg vorbis that supposedly keeps reasonable sound even at low bit-rates. You can download the latest version from:

http://www.geocities.jp/aoyoume/aotuv/

The results should be playable in an unmodified Ren'Py, and the sound seems reasonable even at qualities of 0 and below. (DISCLAIMER: I am tone deaf.)

When you say "non-vocal ogg", does that mean that you're considering vocal oggs? If so, you may want to compress them with speex instead of vorbis. It's a codec optimized for compressing voice, as opposed to music.

Then again, it's not really worth bumming out every last byte, if it compromises the quality of the finished product.

[Ren]

XD I predict there will be quite some drawers interested in this:3*has sent a pm as well*

[monele]

Are the two images, (page images 126 - 150, bottom row, second and third from the left) part of a game, by any chance? I would love to get my hands on it.

Anya~... They're concept art for a project that is on hold for now (Asylium Parallel). If my current project (Kittease) does get finished, I'll resume it.
I'm glad to know they're incentive to play ^.^

[Iaman]

Well... I could try my hand at this... I don't have many great examples of my art, because my style has completely changed lately... The best example would be to look at my webcomic... My style's pretty... cutesie now though... I can still do the anime style though, and if you want me too, I can try working for you... It shouldn't be too bad...

Just tell me what it is exactly you need(like, describe the boys and the girl and the poses/outfits you want them in) and I can try to make it happen. I'm a pretty dependable guy... usually.

[absinthe]

The results should be playable in an unmodified Ren'Py, and the sound seems reasonable even at qualities of 0 and below. (DISCLAIMER: I am tone deaf.)

When you say "non-vocal ogg", does that mean that you're considering vocal oggs? If so, you may want to compress them with speex instead of vorbis. It's a codec optimized for compressing voice, as opposed to music.

Then again, it's not really worth bumming out every last byte, if it compromises the quality of the finished product.

I can never tell the differences between qualities, maybe between 10 and 1, but 5 and 0? Nah. I end up spending a ton of time just playing a bit of one file, then the next, over and over, trying to hear which one is better. Maybe I should do a "high-fi" and a "low-fi" version?

I've downloaded both those programs, and I will see if I can squish the songs down a little more. And yep to the vocal oggs! For the modern dance scene, I used a great song from Magnatune -- it's Creative Commons licensed -- and a remix of it from CC Mixter.

Oh... and the project officially has an artist now! Thanks to everyone who offered, there's a lot of amazing talent in this community.

[VocaloidsRCool]

Oooh~ I can't wait to play this game! It sounds so great!