Hi! So I was planning on talking about my color scheme process this month, but I actually had some real updates to my process, so I can talk about those instead.

So I got a significant amount of Christmas money from my grandparents and decided to splurge on a nice thing for myself, so I bought a tablet so I could draw while not at my desk. Much of my free time is spent on the couch with my wife, watching something on TV while we work or play on our respective laptops, which is great for writing, but awful for drawing. My Cintiq setup is pretty large and clunky and not really portable, so it lives at my desk, and I’ve really wanted to have the ability to draw digitally while not at my desk for a while now. There’s a bit of a learning curve, but I have really enjoyed having the freedom!

This has led to another change: I’m using Clip Studio Paint now!

In my first log, I mentioned that I was using Photoshop even though it’s probably better to use something else. My reasoning for this was that my wife is a video editor, and so I was holding on to a Creative Cloud license because it includes Premiere, which is what she uses. However, her Premiere license is currently covered through her work, so I talked to her about it, canceled my Creative Cloud license, and officially switched over to Clip Studio. It feels kind of cliche to immediately fawn over how good Clip Studio is… but, Clip Studio is really good! I’ve really enjoyed the brushes they have and I feel like I’ve barely scratched the surface of what it can offer. I was a little worried about the transition over being really obvious, and frankly, I think it probably will be, but hopefully the difference won’t be too jarring.

… BECAUSE I’M PROBABLY GOING TO HAVE TO REDO THE SPRITES ANYWAYS.

So I watched this video on sprites in Ren’py, which is really really well designed, explained, etc. And I was joking to one of my friends about how all this advice is helpful, but I probably won’t use any of it, because I am committed to doing my art in the stupidest possible way.

And then SHE pointed out: hey, isn’t that going to make your game super unwieldy, and the demo is actually already a fifth of a gigabyte, shouldn’t you do something about that?

YEAH. PERHAPS.

Like here’s the thing: when your previous visual novel experience is a 15 minute mystery with like, six (?) characters who each have about 7 expressions each, you can kind of afford to just redraw every sprite. Like, whatever, it’s fine. But when you have a ton of characters who are on screen at the same time so you downloaded an auto-highlight extension which has been a gift from God in terms of making your story legible but also is designed for the layeredimage geniuses out there so you have to INDIVIDUALLY TYPE OUT EVERY SPRITE NAME SO IT WILL HIGHLIGHT, you should maybe think about changing your ways!

So after I mourned all of the time I could’ve saved by just, doing it right in the first place, I decided to put “converting the sprites to layered images” on the task list. I’m sorry these dev logs have become my cringefail diaries, but unfortunately, I am both cringe and fail, and that’s okay.

CURRENT PROGRESS: Goal was to write 5,000 words this month. I tried to set the goal low on purpose so I could get a sense of what IS a reasonable goal for me, since last month I spent half the month traveling cross country to get married. I hit 5,000 at a pretty good rate, even including doing some sprite work and backgrounds. Current completely finished with the second act and making good progress into the third, and then all that’s left is the final act of the game! Current word count is 42,182. I think I’ll stick to 5,000 words a month since it’s the kind of goal where the progress still feels substantial but I don’t feel overwhelmed.

That’s all for now! If there’s anything you want me to talk about in these logs, let me know, and I’ll see you next month!