Hello everyone~!
unfortunately Waji is sick, so this time let me wrap up our progress by myself <3
Loreen managed to finish a background that was still a wip two weeks ago - she did some marvelous work and contributed even more than planned! Thanks to that Waji will be able to squish in an extra scene in the second part of the game… but shhhh, it’s a spoiler!
Speaking for myself - I’m still stuck on sprites. Good news is that I’m done with the first sprite turn, just a few extra expressions left… and then we can move on to extra poses or hand positions. Once sprites are done we can focus on more fancy tasks like CG and start working on a trailer, but for now bringing characters to life is our priority!
I would like to say special thanks to Zelan(@lemma forum), who is extremely supportive for our project - you keep us going, friend!
Hello everyone, it’s Update Day~!
First of all, I would like to wish you a happy Easter, which will be there soon! If you’re not celebrating it, I hope that you at least get a day off at work/school, so you can have a nice rest ;>
Today we would like to update you on our progress with backgrounds.
With a few base backgrounds so far (the Bar, swimming pool, dormitory rooms and living room) we carefully work on the rest of them - for them to fit in the color palette and general “feel” of the story. Loreen bases her sketches on the descriptions I (waji :)) made, then we discuss them in the whole three-person team.
I even created a BEAUTIFUL map of the area, on which I marked the places for each background for Loreen to have some basic understanding how it works…. Not sharing the map though, I worry it may contain too many spoilers :)*
Loreen got a new software for drawing - Paint Clip Studio - and she decided to test it for one of the backgrounds we want to boast about today - the employee-only area at at Siren’s Ballad.
PCS seems to have a nice tools for doing the proper perspective, but for colors Loreen goes back to Photoshop.
The employee-only area still needs some work, but it’s final shape can be already seen on this pre-rendered piece :)
This is one of the most important places for our heroes - the employee-only area at Siren’s Ballad. This is where they wait just before the mermaid show, the doors on left side are for locker rooms while the stairs in the back of the scene lead to the ramp over the Ballad’s aquarium. And the ramp is from where they dive into the aquarium from, during the performance!
When having a break during their bartender duty, they come here to chat, eat dinner or simply relax. This messy room is also the main storage room for the bar, thus all the cardboxes and cupboards. In the most visible one - there are some spare mermaid costumes displayed.
And finally - behind the mysterious curtain ther
And finally - behind the mysterious curtain there is a glass see-through wall to the inside of the aquarium. It usually is closed, used mostly in the maintenance hours for safety measures.
Or for employees who chill out there after closing hours to look at fish :)
As we all know, Cassie Rider is our protagonist. But have you wondered about her range of emotions?
From neutral through happy or tired to scared - some of these emotions will obviously be used more frequently than the others.
Even though faces with different emotions weren’t that hard to design for kairek, there was a struggle with recurring thought of redrawing the body for each of the emotions.
Well, I saw only the final sprites, and different emotions with the same body look just fine, so she must be overreacting :P
Let us know what you think about Cassie’s expressions and the new background!
waji
* or it actually is not that beautiful and I worry you’ll start hating the whole project because of this crappy map :P No one said writer needs to be good at map-making…
Thank you for following our development.
If you have any remarks, comments or advice please don’t hesitate to share. Feedback is extremely appreciated.
Hi everyone! ~<3
We are once again back with some updates on our VN!
The main topic of this week’s work was - THE LEAFLET!
Some of our friends - Razuri, Ulvar and Amaltheren are attending Polymanga 2017 on 13-17 April in Switzerland and they agreed to distribute some Siren’s Ballad leaflets for us!
Thus, kairek designed a lovely flyer for us.
Hello everyone on yet another Update Friday!
This
time we make it short - the art department progress got slower since
kairek is off on her holiday. However she comes back tomorrow, so with
new energy and enthusiasm - she will go back to work!
Even
though Dorthy won the poll last week, there was one guy who got the same
amount of votes, last of which was unfortunately too late to consider,
so we called it his loss.
But, the honorable 2nd place definitely goes to:
Vito!
Vito, the happy-go-lucky member of the mermaid crew got black and white design, inspired by not so fishy mammal - an orca.
Welcome again, everyone! ~<3
As scheduled we are back with another weekly update.
First of all, thank you very much for all the votes we got in our mid-week pool!
The results are there and the winner is…
Dorothy!
You got bewitched by her girly charm, didn’t you? :)
Aand, it’s time for another update on the little VN of ours!
First
of all, I’d like to introduce myself. I am Mnyonywaji, writer for this
little project. As Abbie mentioned last week, I was on holiday so I
couldn’t properly help her with previous update (Last week update can be find here, on our lemma soft topic, since it was rather short we didn’t upload it here ! sorry ~Abbie)
This week we managed a few things.
We are currently working on the characters’ sprites and backgrounds.
Since
we have a cheerful mermaids theme twisted with horror story, our
characters have a wide variety of expressions planned. From smiles and
laughs to fear and terror… poor visual artists! (← says the one who
planned all the expressions in the first place ;> )
What would be of a story about professional mermaids if we didn’t show you….
…their swimming suits! I know, I know, you probably wanted the mermaid attire, didn’t you?
But professional mermaid shows are soo much about preparations,
trainings, creating routines and choreography. The swimming suit is a
vital part of daily life of a mermaid.
Only after lots of hard work the mermaid can finally wear her scales and create the magical atmosphere at the show.
Oh, and don’t be sad. I’ll talk someone into wearing their mermaid suit for the update next week
As
for the backgrounds, one of them is what we want to boast about today -
Loreen finished men’s bedroom this time. Obviously, since these are in
the same building, it looks awfully familiar with women’s, right? But the
little details are what make the difference! Can you try to guess who
are the two guys living there?
As for writing, I resumed working on the scenario after my break. I am
currently working on the not-so-horror part, where all the characters
meet, develop likes and dislikes for each other etc. And it is hard, I
tell you
I am probably too aware that it is the part which translates to
player’s attachment to characters in the next part of novel, when things
start going WRONG (whatever that means, I am not spoiling you now, not
yet at least )
Speaking of which, you probably wondered, how come we came up with this twisted idea of cute mermaids in horror story?
It started in June, last year, when Loreen and Abbie stayed at my place for a few days.
Lots of chatting, laughing, playing board games.
One
of the talks ended up in pondering about mermaids as real life
performing professionals (hmm, no, I don’t really remember HOW we did
reach that theme, we totally jumped from topic to topic in some wickedly
brainstorming).
We agreed it sounds like a nice background for VN idea, which we have thought of making for a long time already.
But
as we considered obviously heartwarming idea of people performing as
mermaids, we strongly declared it sounds too positive to realize it
simply as it is.
And so the dark theme appeared, introducing hopefully interesting twist to the mermaiding idea.
We keep our fingers crossed that you like the final outcome!
See you next week!
- Waji
Thank you for following our development.
If you have any remarks, comments or advice please don’t hesitate to share. Feedback is extremely appreciated.
