Preparations for Episode 1 Are Complete!
You wa shock?
It took an entire month, but the final preparations for Episode 1 are complete! This means that the script, stage directions, sound effects, BGM, and sprites (plus placeholders) are good to go! I could even package everything up and send it to fat Gabe to approve, right now!
I am most happy with the progress, and having myself audibily go "what the fuck Madi-san" multiple times during the readings and rereadings and rerereadings of Episode 1, I think the audience who "gets" /Conspiracy/ Girls will laugh along too.
I thought I would put down some lessons learnt along the way, so that I may remember them in the future.
Work On One Thing At A Time
This is probably the most important lesson. /Conspiracy/ Girls is mostly a solo project, editor-san only reviews the script and finished product but doesn't give input on the individual process, so anything non-script related is left to myself.
At the start of this month, I was really overwhelmed by the amount of things I had to do and fix up. Sure, the placeholders and the stage directions were there, but in order for the VN to come alive, I NEEDED the sound effects done, and I had to have the BGM done too. Oh, and I also wanted the VFX done too.
This really slowed progress down to morasses. Partly because I was stopping and starting a lot, so I would use up lots of energy in the morning but feel like I had nothing done in the afternoon, or so little done progress looked minuscule.
In the middle of the month, I realized that "hey, this is not working", so I changed tack, screw the visual effects, and screw trying to perfect the scenes one by one, let's work on SFX first. The reason being that good BGM is hard to find, I have to scour the net, listen and decide, and that takes up valuable brainpower already, brainpower that was being allocated to fixing up the scenes in /Conspiracy/ Girls.
So I made a rule: One thing at a time.
This works, but at the same time it didn't. A VN is really much more than just one part of the effects, so there is always an urge to do other stuff at the same time. In order to keep myself from going off track, I made sure to note down any loose thoughts "i.e this sort of BGM would fit this scene" inside my notebook, so I could refer to it later on.
This month was rather fortuitous because while searching for music online, I discovered Kevin Macleod's collection of music, and I really like the old-timey silent film collection, which fits the comedic tone of what I am going for in /Conspiracy/ Girls, so the VN will feature a lot of that!
As I worked on the SFX, and I ruminated on the BGM and VFX, I realized that VFX can really come later. They are just addons, transparent pictures or additional backgrounds, I make a note of where they should go, and can add them in at my leisure. This freed my mindpower to work on the more important stuff.
In the end, everything really came together! While working on the SFX, I was very motivated to make the VN even better, so the notes for VFX and BGM really piled up, to the point I could make consistent note of what I wanted. I guess that what was going on with all the doubt and hesistation was that I wasn't really sure what I wanted for special effects, but writing them down and dealing with them seperately really made a difference!
Artwork Is Starting to Come Together
This month marked the start of me ordering artwork, my artist is really busy, so there were a couple of delays, but nothing too excessive. I think a deadline extension of a day or two is pretty okay, after all, when you are that popular, you are literally DJ Khalid suffering from success.
In all, I really think I picked out the right artist this time. When the artwork for Oracion came out, my initial reaction was: this isn't exactly the color scheme or style I had intended. But at the same time, it works...! Initially /Conspiracy/ Girls was going to be a comedy with dark undertones, so I needed the characters to have a small slant of realism to them. Instead, Oracion came out looking pretty cute!
Oddly enough, I am really happy with the result, because the art set the direction that I wanted for the novel. With the first piece of art done, it really put /Conspiracy/ Girls on the comedy track. So now, I have erased my doubt about whether I should keep the really zetsubou parts of the story, it can really all be fixed with good effects and BGM, since I wrote /Conspiracy/ Girls in a way that you can see it as both a tragedy and comedy at the same time. Sasuga author-kun! (saving your own bacon at the last minute)
One other note is that seeing Oracion drawn so well, I found a small desire to be able to draw cute stuff in the future as well. But I'll stick to writing, one thing at a time first. Maybe in the very distasnt future I'll be a drawfag for funsies.
Can I Make It On Time?
Once again, we come to the part of the monthly recap where I wonder aloud to myself whether I can make it on time. Judging by the amount of art to be done. The answer is... no. Hey wait, before you start throwing stuff at the interacial couple in Columbia, it really is an art thing!
I plan for an AUG release, somewhere in the middle. Which means everything has to be packaged and sent out by JUL, somewhere in the middle. Given two months, that's about four pieces of art that can be done in that time. We... don't have the time. Even if I outsource Morganna and Avalon and L.P to other people, it will still be a difficult sell. There's still Sachiko and her alter ego too.
But I have to, don't I? There's also the issue of commissioning CGs. For the first set of Cgs, Sachiko is in them, so I need to get the designs of Sachiko, Madison and Ayano out. The timing is REALLY tight. Let's say I get one sprite for Madi-san, Ayano done, this will give me an idea of what to work off of. Ideally, I want Sachiko to be done by the original artist too, so there's that.
Artwork will be a major consideration going forward. I shall consider this next week.
Last Scene
While there has been a lot of success on the book, I still need to go even faster going forward, without compromising the quality, I'll have to put in a lot of cost on my end (i.e work hard you FOOL -editor-san), 1/6 is not much, but it is a major step forward.
Now, this has been a most fruitful introspection, time to play Master Duel!
(You never learn do you? -editor-san)
Written 220514
