Nothing is ever so hopeless that you cannot succeed.

This week’s Illustration Friday word was Separated and this is the first thing that came to mind.

Bleach is one of my favorite anime/manga’s and there are some truly beautiful and heart wrenching lines in the story. Whether or not you like Bleach you have to admit that risking everything to save a friend is not something everyone is strong enough to do.

Artwork by me
characters © Tite Kubo

Due to various delays the production time of the Daemon in the Mist visual novel is taking a bit longer than expected.

Books bring worlds to life through word but translating that world into a visual medium is a whole different thing entirely. When I wrote Daemons in the Mist I never imagined that I would then have to visually create the world of The Marked Ones. It’s no easy task but I hope in the end that you will be able to enjoy a game that is just as carefully crafted as everything else you have come to expect from KatGirl Studio.

Defining a Style

Nualla

Here is an early concept design for Nualla. I captured her other-earthly quality but she looked a bit too soft. Also the production team decided this anime style looked a little outdated. So I went back to the drawing board for a second go.

This was the next concept design for Nualla which got the green light.

But after a few more meetings we decided to go with this more refined design. It’s a bit more work but we only want the best for this visual novel.

Patrick

With Patrick it was all about the eyes, let me tell you black brown eyes are really hard to translate into anime form.

Coming up next time

A look at defining a world, the backgrounds for the visual novel

This week’s Illustration Friday word was Midsummer Night and this is the first thing that came to mind. Inuyasha has got to be one of my all time favorite animanga’s and so it’s only fitting that my first anime fan art piece should be from the series. Also because it’s awesome… and you should watch it =^.^=

Choosing to do fan art was two-fold. One I need to get back into drawing anime style art because of the game production art I will be doing for the visual novel translation of Daemons in the Mist. Also to help decide what style I want for my graphic novel The Color of Snow. Second because I really love fan art and have never really created any. Well except for the pieces we were required to do in art school.

Artwork by me
characters © Rumiko Takahashi

Hi everyone it’s been two months since I first mentioned the visual novel for Daemons in the Mist. This is because due to an overwhelmingly booked schedule, we pushed production back on this project by about two months. But this is what did happened in the last two months:

• The Kindle and Nook editions of Daemons in the Mist were released.
• The print edition of Daemons in the Mist will be coming out later this month.
• The Visual Novel department of CWS Software (NovelEXP) now has a shiny new website.

We also decided a few things about this project:

• After much consideration I will not be the one coding the visual novel for DITM, I will however still be the lead artist on the project and will be translating the novel text to script form.
• We have decided to bundle the 55 chapters into 5 chapter blocks similar to how manga chapters are bundled into books.

The other cool news is that I will be chronicling the whole process of making this visual novel here in my blog. So if you want to see how a book gets made into a visual novel stay tuned.

Visual Novel Development Week 2

Most of this week was spend translating the DITM text into script form, Generating a art list of visual assets needed for the project, and deciding just how exactly, to present certain parts of the book in visual form. Since I will not be the one coding the visual novel I have to translate the text into a script to then pass along on to the coding team.

Here’s an example of what the script for a visual novel looks like.

This week’s Illustration Friday word was Bottled and this is the first thing that came to mind.

The original image is from this piece I painted on Monday for my upcoming picture book The Koi Who Cried Wolf, the second picture book by author Katina Lawdis I am illustrating for Viscus Vir Publishing. I repainted parts of the image to fit with this new concept and the bottle template is from here.

We started production on the Daemons in the Mist Visual Novel this past week. The novel engine was designed by the fantastic team at CWS Software and with their help I will be creating the vast majority of the Visual Novel myself.

Yes you heard that right, I will be the writer, artist and coder for the visual novel version of Daemons in the Mist. This means I had to learn the game engine that CWS uses for their games. So I spent the better part of two days reading the manual and working with one of the lead programers. I was able to walk away with a least an understanding of how to code the visual novel. I’m not saying I’m an expert or anything, and I’m sure that once I actually start coding the VN I may run into some problems. But that’s true of learning any new computer language or engine (trust me I know four already).

Aside from learning the needed coding I also started breaking down the book similarly to how one would break down a book that is being translated into an animated film. Because other than movement visual novels and animated Features are pretty much the same. Good thing I have all those “art of” books right? The text all has to be broken down into script form since the text will be similar to close captioned shows and movies. And just like an animated show or movie I have to figure out how many backgrounds will be needed, how many expressions for each character is needed and how many outfits they all wear during the course of the story.

On a side note, because Daemons in the Mist is a long YA novel (over 90k words) we have decided to release the visual novel in serialized sections. We are still discussing whether to release the 55 chapters individually or in chapter bundles.

This week’s Illustration Friday word was Stir and this is the first thing that came to mind.

This is Nualla Galathea one of the main characters from my debut novel Daemons in the Mist which is now available. She’s missing her horns because this shot is from Patrick’s point of view and humans can’t see them.

You can watch the evolution of the artwork below

Art Eating Bindings

Don’t forget you illustration’s end result will be a bound book and thus some of the image in the center of the spread where the binding is is going to get lost. If an item goes into the binding it should also come out the other side. It’s more than a little unnerving to readers when the page seems to swallow things. So it’s a good idea not place anything important (ie. characters, text or objects important to the story) in the center inches of the spread. This makes for better compositions and makes sure your reader doesn’t miss anything important.

If the pages for the book are going to be full bleedFull bleed is a printing term that refers to printing that goes beyond the edge of the sheet after trimming. The bleed is the part of your illustration that extends out from the image cut line and allows the printer that small amount of space to move around paper so no white appears by accident. adding 1/2 an inch bleed all the way around image is a good idea. Don’t put anything important there since it’s going to be cut off but also don’t leave it highly unfinished or blank either.

Breaking Perspective

Sometimes you have to break the rules to show all that’s needed in a scene. Like this dual two-point panoramic shot

or this dramatic warped perspective shot.

When making a story with true to life environments its a good idea to stick to the rules of linear perspective and only break them when it will further the story in some way. Good examples for breaking the rules of perspective are:

• To express heightened emotions like fear, anxiety or wonderment.
• To show multiple locations or angles not normally scene in true linear perspective.
• To add interest to an otherwise uninteresting scene or location.

This concludes the fourth segment of The Making of a Picture Book. Thank you for joining me on this journey and I hope you will join me again for further installments.

More The Making of a Picture Book Posts

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This weeks Illustration Friday word was Sweater and this is the first thing that came to mind.

These are Nualla Galathea and Patrick Connolly the main characters from my debut novel Daemons in the Mist which is now available.

You can watch the evolution of the artwork below

Don’t Forget the Text

Though I can’t show you the text I can show you were it is going to go. One of the tricks in illustrating a picture book is the leave space for the text without leaving a gaping whole in your illustration.

When I plan out an story illustration I always have a layer with the text on it in the size the publisher has said it will be. This way I don’t have to guess and hope it will fit in the end. This also goes for book covers. Where the text is going to appear you also want the colors to be low contrastThis means that the value of the colors in a particular area are relatively the same value so either dark with light text or vice versa.

Zooming in for Effect

When illustrating a picture book you don’t always have to have crazy angles for every shot. Take a queue from the film industry and go in for some close ups. If your working on a computer you don’t even have to re-sketch your scene just use a free-transform tool to expand your image. I wouldn’t advise doing this with a painted image in most cases because of pixelationPixelation is when you blow up or expand an image and the pixels, the bits of color information that make up your image, become jagged and much more visible..

This concludes the fourth segment of The Making of a Picture Book. Thank you for joining me on this journey and I hope you will join me again for further installments.

More The Making of a Picture Book Posts

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Post 2
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