devlog: 06Jan24

The most recent two weeks has been working on backgrounds and getting characters into their outfits and have that up and running inside Unity. Backgrounds take me about a day's worth of time. I want to do a deeper dive into explaining how I build them in Blender and convert it into vectors to paint on in Clip Studio. But I'm concerned that these devlogs become further and further away from the kind of information might be looking for.

I spent the bulk of time attaching the outfits onto the characters to make sure they bend properly--which unfortunately meant I was essentially retopologizing the Live2D models.

A chunk was also simplifying their outfits. Not that Live2D would care about the complexity. It was probably more for my own sanity. Redrawing them for CGs, and avoid feeling awkward about when I mirror their sprites. I did also kind of concern myself about how coordinated their clothing should be. And sometimes a person can't afford threads that's perfectly matched, or even is the same color scheme. If the character even really cares. 

... I screencapped it right as Rawle was getting into the part of his animation where he blinks...

I'm going to definitely need to expand the duration of their poses, because the smaller the loop, the more noticeable they are, and it admittedly can look a little too overly animated. I considered having the only animation be when they transition between poses, but it only seemed to make any animation jarring. I'm aiming for subtle, but I recognize that it shouldn't be grabbing too much focus away from the text.

Lastly, I'm going to try to make a devlog twice a month, mostly to track my progress. It definitely felt bad to look at last year and give myself the impression that I didn't do anything, even though I know I... I'm pretty sure... I'm maybe certain... that... I ... did?

PS, I started a BlueSky account for the VN: @kindlingvn.bsky.social