Heh, and back to "normal" after a few early posts. So what's up?
Doing something for update 19. I'm happy where it is, mostly doing "redo renders" at the moment and compiling the initial release version of the character screen. And yes, it has been sent to be proofread and tested.
There are a lot of characters. These are the ones I can guarantee having an entry at this point. However, some details might be missing or wrong at the moment. They will get fixed once I go through the notebooks. They aren't as organized as one might think, and of course, you guys and gals point out the errors or something I missed. I know there are missing characters, but I need to go through the images to see them to remember who is who, as few were created on the spot. Note: That is just a collection of the character portraits I've done, there are few others not shown there.
As for writing, I'll move to update 23 by Monday as scheduled, so there is not much to say about that, I'm afraid, outside of "things are going nicely, awesome!"
Yeah, I haven't shown a render from update 19, and I'm afraid I won't show one until it's released because I ran out of screens that don't spoil things too much. Thus you get to see additional rambling, in a way ;) Note: Most of these are concept renders just to prove the point to myself that something can be done like I want.
One of the issues when making fantasy is the lack of environmental assets. Now you may wonder how that can be? There are dozens of fantasy VNs out there! You are right about that, but that isn't the problem. It's the variety. If you look closely enough, most of them (and assets) are, in fact, the medieval European style, nothing wrong with that, but it creates a problem, what if you would want to do in different style? There are some that can be used, but, then the conflict becomes interior and exterior mismatch. I know I'm nitpicking a bit. And the problem extends to elves and dwarfs as well, namely lack of the environmental assets.
This is where creativity, imagination, and a dash of madness come into play. Dwarfs, in a sense, are easy. If we go with the traditional sense, they live underground, and a lot of their things resemble humans. You can easily use the same castle interior kit and change some furniture pieces (depends) and scale them if you want. It doesn't take that much for them, they don't necessarily need windows that shows cities or lush forests, so you can create underground cities fairly easily. Elves, on the other hand, are a bit more difficult. We expect certain elegance, if you will, from them. Of course, there is this.
Would I use that? Yes and no. I'd turn the set into a nomadic Wood Elf camp instead of a village.
Not the greatest of renders I've done but wasn't the point of it. And then, if need be, I'd scatter those monoliths in strategic places and play into the magical nature of the elves and transport people straight to some interior or other.
As such, yes, I know, no furniture, but that wasn't the point in this case. ;) And yes, I have an idea of how to give more variety to things. Granted, for something like high elves, I probably would have to settle for interior scenes (in cities) simply because the exterior assets I would like don't exist yet. Or simply take a completely different spin from the usual tropes and clichés on many things to a point.
