VN is a special medium. It’s right there in between comics, novels, games, and film. I’d even argue it’s a marriage of all four. It takes the prose in a novel, the art in a comic, and the sounds in a film. It’s all compiled neatly within a set of codes that lends it to being interactive even when the novel is kinetic.

With that stated, this is going to be the subject of this log: the relationship between VN and film as I see it, and how I approach Meteor Shower with this in mind. (Comparisons to VN script and screenplay not included, as well as mentions of audio choices because those are Jinn and Pyr's domains respectively.)

PRE-PRODUCTION

Everything begins with a vibe. Everything.

If you work best with a structured approach, then the most important thing you have to consider is for your artwork to be cohesive.

An element out of place can take your reader out of the experience and in my opinion, no medium has as much potential for deep immersion as film and VN. Breaking that immersion even just for a moment may become a make or break condition for your reader to stop consuming your media.

As a creator, you’re going to have to ask yourself, “What is it that I like?” and “What is it that I want to see?” It’s your responsibility to be able to compile that into a list of elements that you think best define your work.

Yes, it’s overwhelming and tedious but the results speak for themselves.

Just like how bad audio can break a phenomenal screenplay for a movie, things like bad UI may deter a reader from even trying out a VN.

PRODUCTION DESIGN

With Meteor Shower, we wanted our vibe to be nostalgic. Jinn, Pyr, and I thought long and hard about our old experiences in the early 2010s. We talked about it at length, and joked around a lot to deliver the demo we have today. We poured through music, fashion, and trends– hell, even Lori’s colorful phone case was a thing that stood out to Pyr as just “a thing” back then.

And since we were getting nostalgic, it reminded me of the days I would daydream about running a film production, long in the past. In this first stage, we were discussing things similar to production. Just in a different medium.

I made the connection between costume design and designing the sprites, set design and location scouting when making the backgrounds, and I consider the latter to extend even towards the UI of the game.

Here's the mood board I sent to our friend, Peter, before he could make the logo and the textbox for the team. (And yes I got these all from pinterest, I sink hours and hours looking at clothes on that site.)

And it's worth mentioning too that within the Meteor Shower demo, if you've read it (and if you haven't, what are you doing here? Go read it  xD),  you've only really seen Lori and Reese in their casual outfits. Even then, they were cut off because they were side images.

I can actually show where these final designs came from in the form of their initial sketch sheets that I made for otome jam 2022.

With Reese's casual outfit, I really wanted to evoke the feeling of just some guy who woke up one day and he needs to go out for some reason. He would throw on the first thing he finds in his closet and goes on his way. I can attest to having the exact same jeans that he wears on his casual outfit (because that was me in high school).

I can talk at length about the reasoning behind the cast's fashion choices, but I'll save that for another day.

CINEMATOGRAPHY

When it comes to visual novels, I don't think that we should be limited to only thinking about composition when it comes to CGs. A good example of the use of dynamic sprites is Nightshade. The fight scenes are always moving so the screen never, ever gets boring to look at.

Now, I'm not a very good programmer but I try my best. And since I also do all the art, edit the script, and write songs it's difficult for me to really focus on learning how to best manipulate images on Ren'py. It can get overwhelming too, to think about how many sprites variations I have to draw: whether for clothing, for poses, etc.

Luckily for me, I came across a twitter post made by a friend a while back, and it helped me streamline the process of creating sprites based on need.  Go check Degenerita out on twitch by the way. She does streams.

Here are Rita's tweets from the thread.

So yeah! If you're one of the people who really liked the dynamic poses on the sprites, you have Rita to thank for that.

Beyond this, I don't have really much to say about cinematography when it comes to drawing the CGs. It all honestly just comes down to an artist's knowledge on composition.

There are several resources for it online, especially film bros making cinematography videos on youtube. I know that's where I learned it. I guess the only word of advice I can say without this getting too lengthy is that if you're an artist having a hard time with composition, there is an abundance of resources all over the web. It takes practice and dedication but I believe you can do it.

Just make sure that the key elements of your CG are above your textbox and not being covered by it.

Though speaking of text, that's important too.

Where you place it and the fonts that you choose, they all add up and are part of the composition on the scene of the visual novel. I don't do it on Meteor Shower but I know I've done this on my old project, Ignis. 

Here are unreleased new versions of a scenes where I'm using text outside the box.

((I have a love-hate relationship with this project, though, so don't ask me when I'll finish it. Just know I'm still working on it when I feel like it.))