My University's Clubs Are Boring So I Decided To Make One Myself

Background

This is a final project for a visual storytelling course ( 313: Narrative and New Media) at SFU. This project asks us to make a branching story where the narration changes as the viewer/ reader makes different choices.

Process

At the start of this project, my work was to get used to the software we were using, figure out what tools we need and can use for our project, and brief my teammates on those functions as they were figuring out that narration. We were using TyranoBuilder for this project, and part of my familiarization with the software is to see how easy it is to manipulate character sprites and how much animation we can add to it. I am also responsible for making the introduction scene and Hori’s route.

My main work in this project was to create artwork for the visual novel. We are going for an anime theme, so for the character sprites I used a lot of anime trope poses for some of the characters to drive in the anime style.

First Draft

Some of the characters we were using are based on the SFU anime club’s original characters, so for those characters I just need to follow the general appearance of those characters from the club's artwork when creating a reference of all characters for myself.

the image above is the first draft of the character design. When I was creating this, I only got descriptions of the characters and what their personality is like. The reason for creating this is to get everyone on the same page with the visuals and to see if it is easy to tell different characters apart. Here are the descriptions I got:

• Ren is a genki girl who is the main protagonist of the story. She is a very outgoing person and the game’s story revolves around how she gets to know people from SFU and how she creates the Anime Club.
• Ayumi is a cross-dressing cosplayer who is pretty secretive about it. In this draft, I thought he is the type of person that doesn’t really talk about themselves, and people around him don’t really find out until they run into him in anime events.
• Natsuko is an Oneesan-type character who doesn’t really understand otaku culture and is trying to learn more about it so that she can understand the youngsters.
• Hori is an original character in this visual novel and I got to design this character. As we are making an over-the-top visual novel filled with popular anime tropes, I decided to make her into a character-type trope. I designed her to have a bit of chuunibyou trait and be a bit of an outcast among her peers. A special thing about her is that she can communicate with raccoons, which are the unofficial mascots of SFU.

Character References Drafts

These next 2 images are character design references for the game. I drew this after seeing some drawings of the SFU Anime Club mascots and got some feedback from other teammates and their feedback on a more lore-accurate design. During this phase, Ayumi had the most changes. He now looks a bit younger and a bit more feminine, this is because according to the lore, although he is a male character, he always switches between outfits and sometimes is portrayed as a girl in some event artwork. Also, the team decided to make him a more shy and reserved character so that Ren can accidentally know his cosplaying side in his storyline.

For the art style, due to limited time, I decided to just use cell shading on the characters as it takes less time to render and is easier to match the colors between each sprite.

Character Sprites

Here are the character sprites used in the game. I tried to create expressions that can be used for multiple scenarios, especially for Ren as she is in all scenes. Some of them are really specific to a scene, such as the ones where Ayumi is reading a book about cosplaying, although we cannot really reuse it, I think those are nice to have to portray what is happening visually.

I also drew some sprites for supporting characters such as the raccoon, and other students. Most only have a few lines and they make some scenes a bit more fun as some of them are here for memes.

We also created a mini-game in Ayumi’s route where Ren needs to help Ayumi assemble Venti’s lyre for his next cosplay.

Ending Screens

I proposed to have an ending screen for each ending as a type of reward for players as a thank you for experiencing the story and to conclude the story. We have 3 endings: screening, icebreaker, and fall festival. For the icebreaker and fall festival endings, I put some supporting characters in the background as a little joke and how they are enjoying the anime club events. Here are the 3 endings:

Final Thoughts and Reflection

For this visual novel, I was researching and learning from some of the well-known visual novels and had a look at how they create artwork for their game. The game I learned from the most for this project is Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney because the sprites they are using are relatively simple compared with newer games, yet the way characters present themselves tells a lot about their personality and they are memorable. I want and try to achieve this when creating artwork for this project.

Also, as it is hard to do animations in TyranoBuilder, I need to try expressing their personality in one pose. For example, Ren, the main character, is a more outgoing character, and I can play with her posing in some of the sprites to represent her more expressive side. And hopefully, by doing so, it adds to the experience as the viewer can guess the characters’ personalities by matching the visuals to the dialogues.

A Bit More About This Project

Check out our itch.io page of this game to learn more about this project