Update on art account

 It appears that my account has been unsuspended. I'll continue using it for the time being, although I'm still a little worried about trigger-happy mod bots.

Art Xitter Suspended

Because X is a useless piece of shit site and app that was raped to hell and back by El*n M*sk's incompetence, both my dedicated art account and main account have been suspended for "inauthentic behavior", which essentially mean the automated moderation system is convinced I'm a bot for whatever reason (even though actual bots continue to run rampant and have been spamming illegal material on the site for years now). Oh and apparently this has happened to tons of other people too, turns out they're all free users using the app normally and that blue checks have never had to deal with this. Funny how that works.

I don't know if I'll be making any new accounts any time soon (I sent in a few appeals, not too convinced they'll get through considering other people's experience with the appeals system and may have to send in several appeals if they're rejected to even have a slight chance of getting my accounts back), mostly because it'd be a pain in the ass to have to re-follow a bunch of people. This may mean that there will be no way to post mini-updates in the form of art WIPs. I might just post art dump WIPs on the blog once in a while to make up for this. 

 

EDIT: Figured I might as well include a WIP here. Not sure why I didn't think of that in the first place. 

Backgrounds Complete

This post is technically a few hours late since I finished the last BG right before I had to go to work.

There are 77 BGs total, including variations on base images for certain times of day and whatnot. Here are a few samples:

 

 

There are some I'm not entirely satisfied with, such as

 where the metal parts beneath the table don't seem to match up completely (they're going to be covered up by the text box anyway, which is why I didn't fix them), and

which I'm not sure if I really *need* since I could probably write certain scenes in similar areas.

Regardless, this leaves Chapter 1 at about 63% completion. Next on my agenda is CGs and "popup images", but I'd like to get started on finalizing the UI, too. As always, I'll be posting teasers and smaller art-related updates on my dedicated art Twitter, which I don't feel like linking here since I already have it in previous posts.

Backgrounds Over 50% Completed

 I somehow never noticed this until today, but I have about 54% backgrounds required for Chapter 1 done. Progress has been slower than I'd prefer, but BGs can be very time consuming and painful to draw (my hand hurts as I type this). I doubt I'll finish them by the end of the month, but I'll try to pick up the pace as much as I can. 

Once again, teasers for what I'm working on can be found on my dedicated art account on Twitter.

Sprites for Chapter 1 Complete

 

Every sprite set needed for Chapter 1 has been completed. There was a bit of a delay in finishing them because I was working on scripting-related things in Renpy (implementing audio, tweaking UI, and some textual fixes), mostly because I find working on sprites tedious and wanted to keep my enthusiasm up. These aren't all the sprites needed for the full game, I just decided it would be better to focus only on the items required for Chapter 1 right now, so more sprite sets will be completed for subsequent chapters (though there aren't a lot needed; most of the game depends on the sets I have now).

With that being said, the total assets needed for Chapter 1 are over 50% completed. My next focus will be on background art, but I will likely be working on other things as well to prevent boredom. CGs may be a part of this. In any case, I will continue posting occasional updates on my art Twitter, which was linked in the previous post.

Where to find my art WIPs

 Since I've mainly been focusing on producing art assets (which there are a lot of), I've been unable to share significant status updates in terms of progress. My next blog post will probably come out when I'm finished with all the sprite sets needed for Chapter 1, but until then, you can find teasers and WIPs of things I'm working on here. 

A Necessary Sacrifice

 

This odd-looking woman is one of many background characters ("NPCs", if you will) that will appear in BFD. She'll only be on screen for at most a couple lines and then disappear, though she may or may not show up in a CG or two, possibly with a more normal face. 

The role of NPCs like her is to establish that there are more people in the game's world beside the main cast. The concepts and conceits behind BFD's worldbuilding are of epic proportions and affect the entire human race, but BFD's story is focused on a tiny subset of humanity. I figured that including background characters would make the world feel more fleshed out and help players feel that there are a lot more stories going on in this game's world, stories that ultimately go untold but exist nonetheless. Also, some aspects of their designs are symbolic of certain aspects of the world's culture, but I'll leave that for players to discover. 

 These NPCs aren't necessary to include, and I've often wondered whether it's a good idea to include them in the first place. In other VNs, background characters usually aren't given sprites, instead appearing solely in the text, though sometimes you'll see them represented as generic silhouettes or faceless mannequins. They're almost never given full designs because there's no real reason to. There's no need to lengthen the development time by creating assets for them, and they're probably not worth the extra disk space. Even so, I feel that BFD's background characters add enough to the game experience to justify their existence.

Of course, I still recognize that these guys should be treated as minor set pieces in the grand scheme of things, so I haven't been putting a lot of time into drawing them. As a result, many of them look a little wonky, some more so than others. Most are unremarkable (but clearly messy in terms of anatomy and rendering), but a few are notable for being a little funny and uncanny. I think it really sells the idea that the world of BFD is not what it seems at a cursory glance.

At the very least, I hope players will be amused by their strange appearances. Besides not wanting to spend a lot of time on NPC art, one of the main reasons I haven't fixed the above woman's sprite is because her lopsidedness has grown on me. The audience will probably be spending a lot less time with her than I have, but maybe they'll feel something similar.

Some of you might be wondering why I've dedicated a whole post to some nobody that'll only be on screen for like 5 seconds while having nothing for the game's actual main cast. Rest assured, they're all fully-designed, and I'll write more about them someday, though it'll probably be sometime closer to Chapter 1's release (or at least when I have enough decent-looking art of them completed).