The text bar still covers, but you can click the mouse wheel to hide the bar (not sure what the hot-key is).
I am making some original artwork, but it's slow since I'm not an artist. I can TOTALLY trace an outline from something else and alter it to look like AvalOnx's style, so mostly doing that. And he had a lot of artwork that never made it into the game anyway, so a fair amount to draw from, just needs cleanup and coloring.
No animation at present. Renpy doesn't support gifs, and I've got enough to do with the rewrite without adding an animation effect learning curve for now.