Hey Night Mirror.
I've been thinking a lot lately about your game and after playing through it a bunch, different routes and what not, I stumbled across your behind the scenes work in making the game. And jeez the models were hella broken up, putting them back piece by piece is insane, honestly I'm jealous of your dedication. That's gotten me thinking, seriously you have given this so much work already, I understand if you don't want to, but I genuinely think you would be able to create some of your own art too - from scratch. (I'm aware you already have made some)
You've got a few sprites at hand, facial expressions, some poses and drawing some fresh scenes - while is still difficult and requires a skill that time can't necessarily give - seems like a viable option to at least consider. I'm not expecting as good art, I'm happy even if it's just acceptable because that's how much I love playing this game. If you tried, given your dedication and patience I think you could actually come up with some new content that's purely yours. I'm not an artist either but I think I personally could come up something half decent with all the existing material and you could make something even better. Just think about it xD
TLDR: I'm not good with character proportions, perspective, poses, or style. I want to add more new scenes, but don't think I can without an artist's help.
(sorry, as with all my replies this got long and wordy, and trying to edit it down just made it longer.)
This has been a passion project with no small amount of effort to get it put back together (literally
). But overall I'm happy with how it turned out. It's not perfect, but people don't seem to hate it (well, most people, I'm sure some people hate it, this is the internet), so that's a win.
Reassembling the sprites (while time consuming) wasn't too bad, like a small puzzle to figure out. And I'd usually use a scaled screen shot from the game to find where the parts go~ish. I did draw in new outfits too, like summer's pajamas, the Dipper/Mabel costumes, lots of underwear for characters, and a bunch more. But, that's still just really editing, not creating new sprites.
The parts for the Live2D were way harder to put back together (so I've done very few of them). A few expanded sequences use them for "new" art, since it was easier than editing a screen cap of the animation. The Live2D animations are spread across 3-6 files depending on complexity and are called things like "texture_00 #30957".
Which if you are wondering looks like this (1 of 4 files, can you guess the animation?):
I spent a lot of time (and still do) searching and re-searching through these 470~ish files, trying to spot little details such as does that part of a foot match this scene? Honestly, it's still kinda fun. Like putting together a puzzle that has it pieces mixed in with other puzzles, but it's also very slow.
The parts files do help me pull together some of the edited art (mostly when building Morty into a scene, or his dick... this project has made me draw way more dicks than I though I ever would). They also help as a general guide if I do have to draw in something not in an original scene (again, usually dicks, and also arms/hands).
But, it's a big jump from editing existing art to making it from scratch. When I can find poses that work, I re-used them (with varying degrees of success). You can see an example of this with the Morty/Morticia scene during the pumpkin dance event, which is an edited image from the Morty/Morticia towel sex scene.
The right image looks a little funky because the parts are in separate layered files and posed in renpy. I draw things in, but the base poses are the same.
So, why not make my own art? (holy shit, I finally got around to answering the question!)
I want to, I really do, there are LOTS of scenes I want to add in, but I'm also aware of my own limitation and ability (or lack there of). There are just somethings I simply suck at.
First up is proportions. Even when scaling things with a resize tool, I still get sizes and proportions wrong with existing art! Once I start drawing, hands are too small, heads are too big, eyes are a funky shape, you name it, I can screw it up, or down. (because scaling, get it?)
Not getting the the scale right leads into the second issue, perspective. I just don't have a great handle on drawing in perspective. Some of the edits I put in I know are wrong, but it's the best I can do, and I hope they don't distract too much.
Then there are poses. I'm not good with coming up with interesting positions for characters, I can barely manage to draw them in profile without messing that up, let alone an interesting sex position. Yeah, there is a lot of material out there to inspire me, but then I'm just back to editing/tracing people's art, and that hasn't really helped me improve.
Lastly there is style. I think Ferdafs has done an amazing job duplicating and adapting the show style to this game (even if there are some design choices I personal would change). Even if I could do the first 3, I have no hope of drawing characters to match the existing game. I think it would be a detrimental player experience to have a jarring shift in style. I personally cringe whenever I'm playing and I see one of my attempts at matching the style pop up. Morticia's hug/kiss image on vampire night still haunts my nightmares and it's one I want to redo as soon as I think I can do better.
So, is that a never for new scenes? As I've said before, at least for now, new sex scenes are going to be very limited (hey, there is one in the next update! It's not complex and uses a lot of edited art, but it's a short original scene!). But I still think new art for scenes in general is beyond my reach without the help of an actual artist.
I'll keep trying to improve, but I've literally been trying all my life and I'm still not very good.