2D Pre-production for Nerdgasm™

[Mrsubtle]

Wow... You blow my mind... Congrats. I wish I could be so skilled. One question. How fast can you work? The problem with 2d art is that can be very slow in developing... Sometimes for 5minutes of gametime, the artist must work for a month or more...

Daz or 3D that much quicker? I get that you need a beefy PC or at least Some adequate GPU power. Plus Ram for it. At least from what I have researched so far.
Finding and or Making 3D Assets is also quite Time consuming? and or cost money otherwise. Honestly not really familiar with the Licenses of Assets and what not. Well outside of what I have glanced over.

trythison

How long have you been busy prepping this stuff kinda same question as the Post above me.
And could you already draw yourself or did you take lessons or self taught?

Just bought a drawing Tablet and well haven't drawn in ages seeing I was okayish. Had friends who could draw with amazing Talent. Which probably did mess with my perception if I was any good to begin with one way or another.
Well to sum it up I just wanna know how long it takes to get at least this far.

Initially I wanted to go 3D, but I opted out of that for various reasons.
Did look on YT for Advise and tutorials and what not on how to Draw. But still have to work on my Desk environment to be comfortable productive.

 

[trythison]

You're making me want to pickup drawing. Your workflow, style, and finished product look so professional. Really impressive work, and I'm sure a lot of artist here appreciate your walkthrough.

Hheeeeeey, thanks for the kind words

Wow... You blow my mind... Congrats. I wish I could be so skilled. One question. How fast can you work? The problem with 2d art is that can be very slow in developing... Sometimes for 5minutes of gametime, the artist must work for a month or more...

Thanks for the kind words .

For the "How fast" question : It's pretty complicated to answer in a vacuum like this. Yeah 2D art is the most time consuming mode of production by far. That's why i insist on mileage, reusing assets, being smart with pre-production to avoid having to problem solve in the middle of production and things like that. After the BG production post i'll do a whole skit on time management, the 20/80% rule and diminishing returns.

Basically a 2D artist working on a project long term (like a game reusing the same characters or a comic) is gonna pick up muscle memory when drawing shit he is familiar with. The more you draw your characters, the quicker you can draw them. That's why someone doing 2D should probably focus on a smaller cast.

Right now i can block a good pose for my 4 main characters in about 1h, then it's variable for variations. It's another hour for a clean lineart (+5-15 minutes per asset like clothes etc ...) and another hour for color work (+5-15 minutes per asset too). Then i'll probably take another 1-2 hour for finishing touches.

Overall a good 6-8 hour of work to set up a good game-ready character sheet or a small set of scene images. Double that for bigger scenes or a more complete character sprite.

The cheerleader here took me about 5h of work and i skipped facial expressions (add another 2h for those).

Finding and or Making 3D Assets is also quite Time consuming?

Less than 2D (except if you go really uber simplified). The thing with Daz posing is that once your character is done you only have to worry about posing. It's just faster there is no way you can draw/paint that fast.

And could you already draw yourself or did you take lessons or self taught?

I m self taught. i have been taking it seriously since 2016 so about 4 years of learning.

 

[Basilicata]

sticking with 1 or maybe 2 line weight that are fixed : It's more consistent, all your assets share the same line thickness

About this... Is there a way to draw fixed but having the line edges pointy?

I'm trace-drawing fixed lines and then I erase the edges so the look pointy :-(
Still learning the ropes, so any help is welcome. Your thread 's great. You must do a tutorial video.

 

[Mrsubtle]

Hheeeeeey, thanks for the kind words



Thanks for the kind words .

For the "How fast" question : It's pretty complicated to answer in a vacuum like this. Yeah 2D art is the most time consuming mode of production by far. That's why i insist on mileage, reusing assets, being smart with pre-production to avoid having to problem solve in the middle of production and things like that. After the BG production post i'll do a whole skit on time management, the 20/80% rule and diminishing returns.

Basically a 2D artist working on a project long term (like a game reusing the same characters or a comic) is gonna pick up muscle memory when drawing shit he is familiar with. The more you draw your characters, the quicker you can draw them. That's why someone doing 2D should probably focus on a smaller cast.

Right now i can block a good pose for my 4 main characters in about 1h, then it's variable for variations. It's another hour for a clean lineart (+5-15 minutes per asset like clothes etc ...) and another hour for color work (+5-15 minutes per asset too). Then i'll probably take another 1-2 hour for finishing touches.

Overall a good 6-8 hour of work to set up a good game-ready character sheet or a small set of scene images. Double that for bigger scenes or a more complete character sprite.

The cheerleader here took me about 5h of work and i skipped facial expressions (add another 2h for those).



Less than 2D (except if you go really uber simplified). The thing with Daz posing is that once your character is done you only have to worry about posing. It's just faster there is no way you can draw/paint that fast.



I m self taught. i have been taking it seriously since 2016 so about 4 years of learning.

Thx, good to know I'm currently looking at the moment mostly for reference materials. Certain type of expressions are actually hard to find to my surprise especially of the Horny/seductive manner. Can find some stuff but not as easy with other mixed intentions. Ofc also other type of expressions.
Hands and Feet/Shoes are also my biggest worry so far, did find some examples and what not.

Current goal is to get Desk in Order and start with practice and Story/Premise concepts. Already have those Ideas, and probably start with Generic Tropes and what not. And go from there, hopeful at the end of Year maybe. Something to at least tease with. And after a Demo of sorts.

I also see some story board like sketches, is there software for that or just your own drawings set in a certain order?

 

[trythison]

Time for background production
You are now entering my area of expertise.

We are gonna try to find a good balance between appealing backgrounds and production time. Background by sheer virtue of being more expansive visuals than character (they take most of the screen and usually involve more construction, more different colors, more textures and so on) can be a literal black hole of a time sink.

We are gonna try and avoid that.

So first i took another bedroom and proceeded to outline (putting some construction lines) some more elements. I m using that perspective rotation i showed you earlier to place some elements to spice up the room.



Sorry at this point i totally forgot to save progress, i m gonna try and explain all i can using only the result shot. I'll redo some progress shots for the next background i do.

At this point you are gonna start to populate your perspective sketch with stuff. We did that a while back for the nerd bedroom. But i can give some further advices, first of which is : USE REFERENCE.


I know the character likes to take care of houseplants, is a rock music fan and performer, likes colors. I use what i already know to construct a reference sheet of what i think would be cool to have in the scene. This is 5 minutes of googling and can potentially save you hours.

You'll see that almost nothing in the final background comes from imagination. I m just fitting in (sometimes even photobashing) all these elements in.

Textures and patterns
They can be a very nice addition to your piece. The danger is using too much textures and especially too much textures/patterns sourced from totally different places. Your games can quickly have that magazine cut-out feel where nothing fit with anything and you are left with photo-realistic textures sharing the screen with cartoon stuff.

You can do your textures yourself, it's not that hard and it offers 2 big advantages : You have total control over the artistic intent/feel AND all the textures share the same resolution. The later one means you won't have a blurry mess right next to your pristine wood texture because you couldn't find that one crisp floor texture.

• Choose a resolution :
  • not too big (you'll have trouble manipulating the texture)
  • or too small (muddy, blurry, grainy ... etc). I feel confortable with 512*512px.
• Craft your texture (here the grid for the guitar amplifier)
• To check and correct the texture for proper tiling, you can use filter/other/offset in photoshop and type in half the dimension of your texture (256px here). This will push the edges of the frame in the exact middle and let you see all the potential flaws. Offset again when you are done correcting.

"But dude, i don't have the time to do every single textures myself."

Obviously, which means you are gonna have to choose what matters (and what doesn't). Wood ? Pavement ? Walls (that's a big one) ? Grass ? (careful with that one). Make up your mind and just use good flat colors and soft gradient for everything else. Again, keep in mind the more you do them, the more stuff you can insert in your other backgrounds later.

Case and point :



1 minutes of work to implement the textures in another background, allowing me to get way faster on subsequent pieces every time i finish one.

Also, the time you take to make the texture isn't that much longer that the time would take to find that perfect one on the internet, believe me, i tried.

Same reasoning for the sky : one good set of clouds can save you hours of work later down the line.

• The time you take doing the background can be potentially infinite, i'll talk about time and motivation management further down the line. But right now : once the background has filled it's purpose (presenting the character), think about transitioning to the next one.
• Try to keep the value range (darkest to lightest) a bit more constrained, leave some dark values totally out of your background so the linework highlighting the important (interactive) objects can pop out. (Here the door and guitar, followed by the character sprite when it's done).
• I would start merging every layers (except the ones meant to be displayed above the characters) toward the end of the process and start painting small details (here the various buttons, plants, tools, cables, bedsheets etc ...). This will keep your image from being a bit too sanitized, you add a bit of chaos.

 

[Mrsubtle]

trythison

Any updates or Blog we can Follow?

 

[Karamazovich]

Just wanted to say that this thread is an absolute beast. Thank you so much for your work and the effort you put in making this! I highly appreciate it. Thank you so much.

 

[gromril]

Excellent.
I really appreciate that you show us the way you work and some of the tips you use to make your job easier. I hope you will continue to post in order to share your work with us.
I can't wait to read more.

 

[Mrsubtle]

Excellent.
I really appreciate that you show us the way you work and some of the tips you use to make your job easier. I hope you will continue to post in order to share your work with us.
I can't wait to read more.

Sadly he's been quiet since Feb this year.

 

[gromril]

Sadly he's been quiet since Feb this year.

Pity !

Hopefully trythison will come back to post !

 

[trythison]

Sadly he's been quiet since Feb this year.

Yeah i have been supah busy with a CCNA/CCNP network formation (since with a regular graphic boy CV it's very hard to secure an actual salary job). I really want to get back to this but i m a bit overwhelmed with the house + formation + doing regular SFW commissions to pay the bills.

I'll see if i can fit some more work on the week-ends. I m lurking in F95 pretty regularly tho.

EDIT :

Pity !

Hopefully trythison will come back to post !

OMEGALUL

 

[Mrsubtle]

Yeah i have been supah busy with a CCNA/CCNP network formation (since with a regular graphic boy CV it's very hard to secure an actual salary job). I really want to get back to this but i m a bit overwhelmed with the house + formation + doing regular SFW commissions to pay the bills.

I'll see if i can fit some more work on the week-ends. I m lurking in F95 pretty regularly tho.

EDIT :


OMEGALUL

Tough Call but when this might be on the way Patreon and such would also help with the income. Though I do feel you need a bit of luck getting known with games like these to get going. But once there its a rather stable income if your consistent.

Ofc Easier said than done

 

[Lusterwolf]

Woah, that was great! Thank you for sharing your process. I know there are studios that don't put this much work in. I actually picked up some great tips from this. Please keep sharing, I'm going to keep tabs on this and good luck on the game!

 

[trythison]

Ok here's some more production

I got a good 2-3 days of work between Cisco courses, pretty much sprinted without even glancing back. I still have a ton of stuff left unfinished (mainly expressions/arm poses) and one full character still in pre-prod (the main lady working in the bakery).





I have a few things that could be useful to share on the stuff i m working on right now :

So, still, always useful to map your colors before working on them, don't forget this is STILL useful has you progress on the game (as you'll get on some side content like alt costumes and such) :



On this one i really liked the Velma colors, but it's gonna be way too on the nose if i color the character like this. I'm reserving it for an easter egg or an alt. I went for color that share the same "homey" nerd feel with yellows and reds.

Another things when you work your assets, don't be afraid to overlap and hide/rework stuff that is underneath your current clothing, IE:



And that's it, sorry it's a bit short but i'll try and whip out some more little tidbits when I'm finished with all these dialog sprites. Maybe do a bit of scene production next time.

I don't know if you want some info on how to set up these type of assets in a working layered image in RenPy. I can explain that too.

 

[Mrsubtle]

I'm actually grateful for this topic to exist, really shows how to work up the Details for a VN game. This would actually help me progress allot quicker think it will. Currently I'm very close to finish my work desk so that I can at least be more comfortable in learning to draw.

Learning Ren'py still worries me though. Seeing am rather slow learner when it comes to scripting for stuff like that. Also its been more than 10 years since I did stuff like that.

I'll suspect you have also different Sprites in mind for body language/poses? Or would that stack to much on the workload.
As for the Velma color scheme Easter egg. Halloween or Costume party Event? If so I had something Similar in mind

Good luck with the Cisco Courses I don't envy you there, unless you already did them hopefully you had good scores.
My IT knowledge has Faded into oblivion. The only thing I recall its either very Tedious or utterly boring or even both.

 

[Basilicata]

I'm actually grateful for this topic to exist, really shows how to work up the Details for a VN game. This would actually help me progress allot quicker think it will. Currently I'm very close to finish my work desk so that I can at least be more comfortable in learning to draw.

Learning Ren'py still worries me though. Seeing am rather slow learner when it comes to scripting for stuff like that. Also its been more than 10 years since I did stuff like that.

I'll suspect you have also different Sprites in mind for body language/poses? Or would that stack to much on the workload.
As for the Velma color scheme Easter egg. Halloween or Costume party Event? If so I had something Similar in mind

Good luck with the Cisco Courses I don't envy you there, unless you already did them hopefully you had good scores.
My IT knowledge has Faded into oblivion. The only thing I recall its either very Tedious or utterly boring or even both.

Hi, I won't bore you with advise about game development. Here in F95zone you can find lots of great stuff for beginners. My only two cents advice is don't rush to publish your first release, especially if you do it in 2dcg. Be sure to have enough to have ready the second or maybe the third update. Publish your first chapter while you work your fourth. Why? 2dcg graphics take time. And between coding, scripting, dialogues, proof reading, debugging, sound etc graphics won't leave you much time on your hands. As for Ren'py, two years ago I hadn't programmed anything in my life. Ren'py is easy if you keep it simple. So start simple. With a small simple game and wrap it up quickly. See where it gets you from there. Good luck.

 

[Mrsubtle]

Hi, I won't bore you with advise about game development. Here in F95zone you can find lots of great stuff for beginners. My only two cents advice is don't rush to publish your first release, especially if you do it in 2dcg. Be sure to have enough to have ready the second or maybe the third update. Publish your first chapter while you work your fourth. Why? 2dcg graphics take time. And between coding, scripting, dialogues, proof reading, debugging, sound etc graphics won't leave you much time on your hands. As for Ren'py, two years ago I hadn't programmed anything in my life. Ren'py is easy if you keep it simple. So start simple. With a small simple game and wrap it up quickly. See where it gets you from there. Good luck.

That I kinda already planned for that to some degree, at best release some stuff to feel the water for it. Outside the stuff I still need to Learn, I still wanna know the best way to promote games like these. Which from my perception is still very Vague.

I'll Admit in advance that Story (Start/Intro premise) wise I won't be that original Sadly, As much as I want to I'm still new at this. But do have the ambition to Evolve the story more complex over time. I'll stick to what I know for that at least.

 

[trythison]

Hi, I won't bore you with advise about game development. Here in F95zone you can find lots of great stuff for beginners. My only two cents advice is don't rush to publish your first release, especially if you do it in 2dcg. Be sure to have enough to have ready the second or maybe the third update. Publish your first chapter while you work your fourth. Why? 2dcg graphics take time.

I second that sentiment.

I wouldn't publish a 0.1 without at least a 0.2 / 0.3 well into production and a 0.4 and further into pre-prod. A month time as a buffer is an ungodly short amount of time to get a produced / written / play-tested chunk of game out, especially alone. From the few SFW projects i have worked on, the shortest realistic dev cycle was something like 6 months (and we were between 4 and 5 people working on these projects). The Patreon porn game grind is ruthless tbh, no wonder a ton of these games are wonky if you try to really break them.

I'll suspect you have also different Sprites in mind for body language/poses? Or would that stack to much on the workload.

Yeah, i went with clothes first since it's the most brain heavy task but I am gonna give these characters a bunch of poses / arm poses / expressions on top of it. The arms are easy to translate from one characters to the next, and you can get away with a lot of deformation on clothes before it gets weird (for poses).

I'll get more in depth once i m finished with them.

 

[somebodynobody]

Hope this is still coming along.

 

[Mrsubtle]

Update would be nice indeed, but he always claims he's busy. So he probably has to force himself to work on this.