All Red Poses Finished and an Endless Supply of Bullshit

Good news: all the red poses for the character sprites are finished! These sketches are essentially prototypes for the final bases of each sprite, which will be used as templates for all expressions and outfits. In spite of my tablet problems, I managed to get it to work! Bad news: my drawing skills are still terrible.

Even though I'm still in the early stages of development, I've had many thoughts of hiring an artist. Considering my current skills and workload from irl stuff, having someone else do some of the work will make the development process go by faster. Even so, I don't plan on bringing anyone else into the team. I suppose I should explain why I'm sticking to being a solo dev.

BFD is based around a lot of artistic and stylistic concepts that are difficult to describe accurately to others. I have everything in my head, but I can't get it out without oversimplifying it. Trying to get an artist to give me exactly what I'm looking for while being bad at explaining would cause a lot of frustration on both sides. Furthermore, BFD has a lot of uncomfortable content that few people might be willing to commit to. Considering these two factors, the chance of me finding an artist that is able an willing to meet the standards I set is incredibly low. Because of this, I'm better of working by myself. I guess I just need to learn how to draw :P

Drawing on Shit that Does Not Work

Hai hai, TEOL Dev here with an update post. Progress has been pretty slow, but it's still being made. Most of it comes down to real life conflicts, but with summer coming up in a few months, a lot more is expected to be done. For now, here's a list of what's been worked on:

• The summary of chapter 2, which is about 25% completed
• First UTAU recordings done, editing and voice casting not complete
• The first draft of the opening of chapter 1 has been started
• Probably the biggest achievement, as well as the subject of today's post: all of the sprite poses are completed and are ready for being transformed into digitally-stored sprite bases

I'm not that comfortable with digital art yet, so I designed the poses in my sketchbook in terms of what the base would look like.

I don't have a scanner, so I took a picture of the sketch with my phone and uploaded it to my computer. From there, I start the process of making a rough outline in an art program (usually Fire Alpaca). This is where the trouble comes in.

My drawing tablet, which has worked in the past (although I admit to not using it much), just stops working for absolutely no fucking reason whatsoever. I think the issue has something to do with the USB cable, but since the problem hasn't been solved (it might never be), I'm stuck with using my mouse and my touchpad. Basically, my rough outlines look shittier than normal. I'm definitely not going to be working on the actual sprites until this gets resolved. I guess I'll just be working on other stuff.

Breakfast for Dragons Introductory Post

  DEV NOTE: This summary is fucking garbage and no longer representative of the project. I don't know when the next one will be done.

Imagine a strange new feeling bubbling up inside you. It's incomprehensible and somewhat feral, but you try your best to ignore it. It gets stronger. It bleeds into everything you do. Slowly, it seizes control over your entire body. Next thing you know, you're eating people.

A long time ago, when human civilizations were starting to take shape, a race of powerful and intelligent aliens known as dragons discovered Earth. They initially planned to use humans as food, but they realized the potential for something more useful. After a period of terrorism and bloodshed, they made a pact with mankind: in exchange for their planet and continued existence, humans would have "sacrifices" that were subjects in the dragons' reproductive process. Such a process involves a spore implanting itself into a host's body and taking control over it until it matured, when it would "hatch" the human into a new dragon. Humans were also expected to create an environment where these sacrifices could develop without disturbance, with dragon ambassadors coming down to Earth to keep a watchful eye over their new servants.

This system has existed for many years, and it still remains intact. Humans have learned to accept and even worship their alien overlords as they mold their societies into dragon nurseries. Filamena Pyke, a young woman from a seaside town called Laplace, despises this system. There is nothing that disgusts her more than dragons, leaving her feeling isolated from the rest of society. One day, her life takes a turn for the worst when she notices a pair of horns protruding from her head. As she's caught up in fear and denial, strange occurrences begin swallowing up the world around her...

BFD is a visual novel divided into 5 chapters. Each chapter features its own protagonist and storyline that reveals information about the overarching plot. These chapters include:

The Sea Lulling Chapter: This is the first chapter. The protagonist is Filamena Pyke. It tells the story of her transformation into a dragon, how she chooses to deal with her unfortunate situation, and introduces mysterious events that occur around her.

The Sky Dancing Chapter: This is the second chapter. The protagonist is Alaire Harte. This chapter focuses on past events and details Alaire's struggle within human society, as well as giving a new perspective on the mystery.

The Space Drifting Chapter: This is the third chapter. The protagonist is Irmie Harte. This story simultaneously explains and twists information from the previous chapters as it describes Irmie's attempts to summon a dragon spore within her.

The Rain Catching Chapter: This is the fourth chapter. The protagonist is Carla Neave. This chapter focuses on explaining many background events that occur in the previous chapters as the mystery comes closer to being closed.

The World Ending Chapter: This is the fifth and final chapter. The protagonist is Tirza Deverille. Told from the perspective of a dragon ambassador, readers are introduced to a unique take on the events of the previous chapters while also detailing the fate of the rest of the world.

The project is a bit expansive for a one man team, but I hope to create an OELVN that gives people faith in the medium and impacts them in a meaningful way. It's still a long ways away from being finished, but until then, I plan on pouring my heart and soul into making something truly special.

The Pain of Creating

As I've been plowing through the summary for Chapter 2, I've noticed that I'm falling into a depression relapse. They say that depression is beneficial to the arts, but it's also making me ruminate on all the work putting towards making a VN.

A few hours ago, I completed another VN called The Answer. It's essentially a parody that gives advice on how to create a VN that is, at the very least, not complete shit. It's advice that I've heard before, but after reading it, I felt like I had some sort of revelation. An epiphany on my creative ability, perhaps? Even after getting back to work, that advice has been sitting at the back of my head, prying its way into my thoughts.

A lot of the slow progress on BFD comes from my lack of confidence in my skills. To be fair, I've never seriously engaged in a project of this scale before, and I'm the only person in the development team. Even so, BFD still has to be made. I don't make BFD because I want to; I make it because I must. I feel empty when I don't progress. I can only satisfy that emptiness if I keep working, even if I don't think the results are good. That feeds into my insecurity. The insecurity takes my attention away from working to brooding on what I can still do. That leads to a lack of progress, which brings in more emptiness. It's a cycle I can't seem to break yet.

Even so, I continue to work. I designed some sprite poses that look like trash, but I know I can fix them if I pull up some references. Then I wonder what else I can work on. Definitely the summary for Chapter 2, but I don't have a strong enough grasp of the protagonist. Better wait until I come up with something. Well fuck, now the entire development's pace has slowed to a crawl. Thanks, depression.

I'm not sure how long it will take for me to make more substantial progress, but until then, the next post will probably be an explanation for BFD's story.

BIG NEWS!!!!!!!

THE PLOT SUMMARY FOR ALL OF CHAPTER 1 IS FINISHED!

...I suppose this doesn't mean much without context. To clarify, the plot structure of of Breakfast for Dragons consists of a series of 5 chapters. While many people equate visual novel stories with individual character routes with their own endings, BFD restricts readers to the chapter they are on until they achieve the True End of that chapter, which unlocks the next chapter. Of course, the existence of True Ends implies Alternate Ends. When I say the summary of all of Chapter 1 is finished, I mean that all routes and endings have detailed descriptions of the plot. This might not seem like much, but a completed plot summary allows many more tasks to be worked on. Such tasks include:

• The actual script for each route
• Finalized character designs/sprites/poses
• Background art
• CGs
• Music
• The remaining chapters

 Being a visual novel, BFD is a heavily story-focused work. Its design hinges on the writing, and without enough details, the entire project could suffer and turn into an amorphous mess. The actual summary is 34 pages in Google Docs and has been worked on since December 8, 2018. For 2 months, I've been devoting my time to carefully planning the plot of Chapter 1, fixing errors and plot holes, designing an developing characters, and setting the stage for the remaining chapters. It feels like I've spent too much time, but I'm glad I gave Chapter 1 the attention it needs.

So now that that's out of the way, what next? The summary for Chapter 2 has been started recently. Hopefully, it doesn't take as long as Chapter 1 since the basic framework now exists. Other than that, I'll be writing some of the earlier parts of Chapter 1's script. It's been a while, but as of now, everything's headed in a promising direction!

Welcome

This is the development blog for Breakfast for Dragons, a (potentially) commercial visual novel by TEOL Official. The primary purpose of this blog is to keep track of BFD's development and share said development with the world. More details about BFD and the nature of the project will be expanded upon later.