Stylus Cat Studios VN Blog

For this background, it's supposed to be a realistic style sky but I've decided to paint my own because I would like to practice on my art skills so here is the results down on Photoshop. (All painted using a brush and actual photo reference.) Honestly pretty proud of this one since it is my own work. And slap on the filters and change the brightness and here we have the final results!

Finally done with this one! So as described previously for how the process of making the realistic backgrounds work. I captured several pictures first. Then I edit them to make sure that they match up, add people and stuff and voila! (without bus) (with bus)

On Tuesday, I managed to finish the sky background within 6-7 hours. Since this was a nature background with little to no detailed objects aside from the clouds, it was easy to paint over and finish this. Here's the completed sky background without filter: With filter and some hue/lighting changes: And I have been revamping the food art and here are the Watermelon food art improvements! (Forgot to post this a while back) Before (left) and After (right) Placed the stick in and added a bit of drop shadow.

Another week of updates for week 12! The second classroom scene was readjusted so I've removed the table in front as so:   Edit after Presentation: As expected, I need to figure out a way to streamline the process of how I make my background, especially seeing how inefficient it is as . The current backgrounds I need to finish are: - Food Club - School Outside - Hallway - Student's Room - Exam room? I would need to also finish up revamping the Oyakodon and probably the Watermelon in addition to some props for future chapters. And then our Instagram social media promotion for December. Would get started on working that.

Had gotten some feedback from my groups mates regarding the classroom background and so I've decided to adjust the hue for the background colours. Now the colours for the classroom (which was more or less done) were changed to be more prominent from pink to blue: Here's the original colour from before: After: In addition to that, I've completed the hue adjustments to this second classroom scene right here: I would eventually have to remove the books on the front like so: Then the whole table during the weekends as Don realised that the characters looked like they're standing on top of the table at this angle. Will be doing that next week in addition to preparing the presentation slides :') p.s. Got a picture of the hallway so I would be editing that next.

Staring on the next scene and been taking different draft pictures for the Food Club but the process of converting it to is not very efficient and I found myself taking quite a lot of time over recoloring it. Here's what was done so far: Some photos taken: Due to how crowded Food Club was and some timing issues I have while working on some other stuff - mainly recolouring the classrooms and food art, I had to take a few days to find the right picture. Eventually this one that was selected: Edits made - colouring over the people: And that's all I could do for the week? Something is still bugging me about how realistic the backgrounds are as a literal picture but it will take a long time for me to paint over everything and it's  tougher than I expected so I'll leave it as it is at the moment. 

Been working on some other backgrounds so we would need a "heavenly" background scenes for the food so I tried looking through some similar images and using them to create mine. Here's what it is like. Moodboard/References:   My take and end results:   Gonna start reworking the food as well while I'm at it so here's a pratha:

So I had found this YouTube tutorial and also another website with a tutorial on how to photoshop and make a semi-realistic background by editing a photo. While the program that was used is Clip Studio Paint (which even though I do have the software, I'm not as familiar with how to use it yet), so I've experimented and edited my classroom background from a photo I took.   YouTube Video:  https://youtu.be/DPttTrby_D8  Here's the end result! The classroom scene with table: Without table: An example of how a character would look like with the background scene and sample UI elements (also bonus Oyakodon at the back but not using that I think) : The original Photo if anyone's curious: Had to readjust since the photo is not the right size/length and cut out a lot of unnecessary mess/stuff from the photo like the items on the table and the floor tiles.

So the progress for this week isn't as much since we were mainly working on the slides and I was reviewing the script stuff. I did attempt to do a very simple logo for Imaginative Minds on Monday/Tuesday just in time for the Mini-Viva on Friday but they turn out to be... Eh. That's why in the end, Donovan picked up the idea from there to have more of a curvy-cursive font because it's fun so we ended up with this as our current logo: FRIDAY - So anyways the Mini-Viva Presentation went alright, the main comments/feedback that we really needed to note were mainly: 1. Stretch Placeholder images if we have to use the placeholders (Will certainly help do that but with the new backgrounds, probably not as necessary?) 2. Define Artistic Style for characters (Kinda worried about this but not really my job though I would keep an eye out and lend a helping hand) 3. Better backgrounds with shading (Oof but that's definitely something I really need to work on. It...

Here is why I'm not sure about this: Working on these stuff is much more troublesome than expected. This certainly isn't the quality I would have liked to show off so I'm considering another method to do the backgrounds that wouldn't be so tedious? The quality of the backgrounds keep looking so plain and horrid and that's not including the details I have yet to finish up... It's terrible, no good. I mean the perspective is not too shabby compared to the classroom one with how I had to adjust the picture to fit the screen for the visual novel (which is 1920x1080 btw, it has be set by Don after he mentioned that it was best to set the art assets - especially the backgrounds to a fixed setting since like week 4/5). On the bright side, I did completed a okay-ish chicken chop! Way better than what was before which was a slab of suspicious looking meat. Though it might be due to the sauce and additional stuff, honestly I did reuse the asset and adjust...

The colour scheme is not permanent of course, th colours right now is based off the original photo and it turned out kind of gross-looking? Honestly I have no direction on how I would want the colour scheme to be yet. I do want it to be much brighter though just so the scene. Though I'm just wondering if I would want to use this because just how much time is spent to outline this... Not to mention things like Next up is the food art! I'm somewhat cheating with this since the artwork was taken from a previous work so this is how the roti prata look like as a first draft. However, I'm likely going to modify or make a completely different version for the visual novel to make it look more like the actual roti prata/canai with egg like this: Also starting to work on the chicken chop? It's harder than I thought it would be. It's ugly. I think I'll start on the Oyakodon first like next week. Re-Edit: Here's a brighter and colourful version fo...

For week 4, we're still doing a lot of the initial concept stuff. I've gotten started on some initial UI elements such as the colour palette (done the week before) and the Title Screen. Don had came to me to test what he had for the and I gave my suggestions and own thoughts on the script especially on the parts that seemed iify - just some minor plot tweaks that would help the characters' personalities shine through and for the story to flow better. Overall, I think he did quite well with the script so far, capturing the personalities of the characters so far. The next item I had done was researching references for the food items I would be making that are used in Chapter 1. There is going to be a cafeteria scene and the 4 items I would have to make are: - Watermelon Slices - Oyakodon - Grilled Chicken - Roti Pratha with egg Currently at the end of Week 4, I am able to finish up a simple watermelon slice sample with different variations (kinda). Would definitely...