20/12/14 -- Concept Ramblings, MG

I've been toying with the idea to change the setting/atmosphere for Maiden Gray from a dying world to more of a cyberpunk style world.

Originally, the plan was to have a lot of desert-like areas, dried, cracked patches of land, hardly any green outside of some forests. Everything was supposed to be a sort of "struggling to live economically" type of world, so there were lots of little villages that survived off the land, and everything was located sparely apart. Towns would be very far apart, and hardly anyone would live outside of these town patches. I wanted a lot of ancient ruin type things in the form of old gas stations and buildings, but I'm not entirely sure that will work.

Quick concept art of the White Capital, and the surrounding (barren) area.

Maiden Gray is set in a far future, and the technology in that future is revolutionary and advanced. There is economic downfall outside of the Capital City and the larger cities, so a gritty type of world might work.
I don't want to fall into the area of cyborgs and augmentations, because that's technically what a Parasite is -- an augmentation in biological form. I guess I'd say that the technology would be shown mostly for weapons and security, as well as hacking and the internet in the setting, as opposed to rogue robots going willy nilly.

I suppose what I'm trying to say here is, the vast uninhabited and dried up land concept is driving me a bit nutty and I wouldn't mind to change it a bit so that the cities were larger, had more highways connecting them, etc. It's a bit difficult to explain.

MAIDEN GRAY - Sketches

It gets boring without any substantial updates, so here's some concept sketches.

 

Fig. A:  The pacts made in Maiden Gray are parasitic; while you can only contract a pact through mutual consent, it still effectively acts as a parasite with it's own thought process. It takes a strong person to keep a pact under control. Pact makers who have gone insane due to these parasites are ordered to be put down since the person becomes bloodthirst and violent. Parasites can take over the body, too.

Fig. B: A mysterious character. More on this eventually.

Fig. C: Mila's left hand. Normally hidden by a glove, when it comes off she possesses a very disgusting appendage due to the pact with Johnny. His mark is on her skin. The skin is wrinkled back on the fingers, allowing bone to show through. The bone can be manipulated and it's strong enough to act as claws.

Fig. D: A new character, working with the Abolishants. Her backstory is a bit twisted. She's close to the Baron. Or so it seems.

Fig. E: The Baron himself. A mass murderer who founded the Abolishants, a cult of rogue pact makers, hellbent on tearing down society and destroying the pillars of the governmental system. He's an evil man.

Fig. F: Nil and Zen preparing for surgery on Mila. They have to use heavy-duty tools on her because of Johnny's defense mechanisms. Enough sedatives to kill an elephant and the tools to cut through diamonds.

BLU UI mockup

Like I mentioned the other day, I've been playing with mockups for the frame in BLU, just to see ideas put into action.

Since BLU started with /blog/, we always had the idea to use the Yotsuba B in game, and as such, it's blue themed; even the name sounds like 'blue'. This design plays with the idea of using a similar format to posts. It might be too plain, I might even want to lower the transparency of the box or add more shadows to the box.

I'm not set on it, and I've still yet to figure out a design for the title screen, but I was thinking the school emblem with NEW GAME, CONTINUE, etc. buttons along the bottom.

That reminds me, I need to put 'refining the emblem' on the bucketlist.

BLU - Marcus Concept Art

Two posts. One day. On a roll.

I've been sketching around and adjusting our bara megane protag a bit, and decided that since he's a pure NEET neckbeard, he needs to be kinda flabby but not ripped. It's kinda difficult.

I sketched up a quicky for his body type.

Probably too tall. Arms are babby-like. And I certainly hope none of you are foot fetishists.

But it's the general gist of it. Since, regrettably, I'm going to have to cut Dan (the soccer playing openly gay chub) out of the plan as far as I can tell, I wanted to fill that chub gap somehow.

I've still got a lot of practice to go as far as drawing males are concerned. It's pretty damn important. For girlier guys a la the standart otomege male, it's not that bad, but for more manly types, things get rocky because I step out of my comfort zone. But it's fine, because I need to do that to improve as an artist.

I can only get better, right? Final product will definitely be my best. I won't stop trying until I get it right.

Maiden Gray - UI, Frame, Textbox, Whathaveyou

Been fooling around with some mockup layouts real rough and dirty like. I'm not all that great at UI design, so I'm struggling a bit.

 

Above: Said quick'n'dirty mockup complete with concept sketches in place of sprite art and a shitty background I made in two minutes. I'm not set on anything here, though I kind of liked the file-folder design; but it looks a bit weird. I'll probably end up ditching it. The NEXT icon needs to be cleaned up but I plan to keep it.

 Here's the title screen mockup with a quickly painted idea of what I'm aiming for. Shred of cloth will be moving in the wind in the final product. Logo needs to be cleaned up a bit.  I think the terms are fine.

I'm also focusing on BLU UI as well, but that's a bit of a challenge, too. I'll post those mock-ups when I get a good feel of what I want.

(Very) Early MG Concept Pieces, BLU update

A lot of the first images I created when designing characters are done on paper. Most of those images, I'd rather save for the art book that I plan to release if the game goes big. But there are a few pieces done on my computer that I'm able to give you a glimpse at.

A very early piece of Mila. It contains most of her core design, however, the art style and her hair have since changed.

Slightly more recent. Mila with her sword (which has been revamped as of now).  The style is closer to the one I plan on sticking with, but it looks more rounded and short? Also comes with color palette, which is still in use.

Anyway, I'm currently working on the actual sprites. I plan to get Mila and Nathaniel's done first, and then move on.

I'm still considering the Kickstarter. I'm borrowing someone's tablet right now, but I don't have it 24/7, so my art windows are small. A nice larger tablet would definitely be nice and right up my alley, but I don't really have thousands of dollars to shed.

Regardless.

As well, a small BLU update for those who follow this blog -- I'll be waiting around for about another week/ as of today, five days, for correspondence from my team. That'll be two weeks-ish for them to have seen my Skype update, the pastebin and the doc. If by that time I don't get any word from them (Skype shows me they haven't been online for months, the latest being two months ago), I'll start to take the project over on my own shoulders and get my ass in gear.

The things that I'll aim to do if I end up being the one-man team:

•  reinstate full bara modo
• bring back bara megane protag
• cut down the main love interests to two (b-but muh illusion of choice)
• jiggle with the plot a teensy bit to make it a bit fluffier
• slap the R18 warning back on it

Amongst other things. I think I've got more wiggle room in some areas being alone, but not so much in other areas, for example, the cut-back on routes. It's pretty daunting making a full 4 routes on my own, and I'll be the first to admit that BL games aren't really my bag, but I still want to attempt something. And I don't think one of the routes was working out too well/ it was getting too Tumblrish. We all know we don't want that.

More updates to follow in the coming days/weeks/months/years. That good stuff. 

BLU Talks

I've been reconsidering taking up the /blog/ VN project, BLU, again, but I'm not entirely commited to it.

It's difficult to explain. I want to, but I don't want to, is what I'm saying.

Regardless of what happens with it, I'm still practicing male anatomy and how to draw men. Here's a few images I sketched up last night/this morning.

  

In the original plans, we'd wanted the entire cast to be comprised of bara men. This was quickly thrown out the window due to how the team (including myself) couldn't really draw bara too well. So we made the characters a bit more twink-y.

I always wanted the characters to be bara, and it disappointed me greatly when we decided against it. But that didn't stop me from practicing regardless. And look how far I've come. It's not perfect, but it does it's job. I always thought of MC as being more chubby than we normally drew him, to go with the lazy neckbeard who stays inside playing Japanese games all day persona. I also want to make Azuma sensei look a bit more Japanese himself (seeing as he's of Japanese descent) and to make him look older and more weary. 

 

HOOD stuff, etc.

While I know I'm supposed to be on hiatus, I still want to update with things that I have in my archives that I've already sketched out, and talk about ideas and stuff, despite not being able to draw fresh content.
I'd love to show you all most of my concepts , too, but those are on paper and I'm not in any posistion to scan them right away.

Anywho, today I'll be discussing a bit about HOOD.

As I stated before, the story has been heavily influenced by a lot of media, and a plot device is actually based on fairy tales - namely, the Dolls. Dolls are the weapons the Dollmasters use to fight. Dollmasters use a Dollset - a number of Dolls at their disposal to fight with. A Dollset can be made up of any amount of Dolls, be it 6 dolls, or even just one. Ribbon herself has four Dolls, for example. However, that doesn't guarantee that all Dolls are powerful, or can even fight. There are some Dolls that exist purely for defense, some meant to distract the opponent, etc. However, every Dollmaster has one Doll that is more powerful than their other Dolls, known as the "Persona Doll" (working name, might change it). There is only one Dollmaster who is an exception to this, as she has not one, but three Persona Dolls. However, there's a reason for that, that you will discover later on.

The Persona Doll is usually based off the main character that the Dollmaster's Dollset is based off of. For example, Ribbon's Dollset is based on the story of Red Riding Hood. Therefore, her Persona Doll is based on Riding Hood herself, and aptly named as such. The Persona Doll reflects the Dollmaster in appearance, abilities, desires or personality - there's always a link to the true self.

As it stands, some of the Dollsets that I've planned out include:

• Little Red Riding Hood
• Thumbelina
• Beauty and the Beast
• Baba Yaga

And many more. It would be bad to spoil it all.

The designs are still in process. A lot of the Persona Dolls, however, have been designed. I'll leave you with concept art I made quite some time ago of Ribbon's Persona Doll. The design remains virtually the same, even now.

09/05 - Maiden Gray Concept Art, Sword Update

I decided to redo Mila's sword, since it seemed a little bit clunky, and because I'm not entirely sure she could wield it properly.

The new sword retains a similar handle scheme, but the blade itself is a lot more refined. It's not as "buster sword" styled as the old one.

I made a quick mock-up in Blender as a proper reference, since weapon sketching isn't my strong point:

 

Sword on it's side, not refined; the blade bit is really rough and blocky.

Visual of the handle/grip/whathaveyou. There's a latch of sorts that isn't displayed too well here because I'm not great with Blender's render function.

 
The sword as it is now has a lot more depth and thought to it. I might UV texture it later on, but I'm terrible with UV maps.

Mila is meant to carry a larger-than-normal sword with her, it's her "thing", you might say, but she's still a woman and she does have her limits. She's not overly muscular, so we're stretching it right now, but I like to think that her Pact gives her extra strength as well. I might add something to her design so that she has a sheathe on her back, or something to that extent.

05/05 - Maiden Gray Concept Art

Another bit of art of another dateable boy and part of your squad, Xodus.

  

Like I mentioned in another post, Xodus has breathing problems and skin problems so he wears the mask pretty much 24/7. I do adore Xodus's design a lot so far, but my only issue with him is that people might look at him and think that he's a rip off of Clear from DMMD because of the mask. Certainly, the mask might play a part, but I can honestly guarantee that he's genuinely fucked up under that mask.

29/04 - Maiden Gray Concept Art

A bit of Nathaniel art today. It's the quick'n'dirty sketch'n'color version. To be refined.

As well, I wanted to talk a bit about game music, particularly OP/ED themes. I'd love to have a personalized OP/ED for the game, but I'm not a jack of all trades in that regard. I'm tone deaf and can't read music. Therefore I'd have to get someone else to compose for me. I was thinking that eventually I'd shell out the money to get someone to write and record a song in maybe Italian. That will come eventually, I guess. No need to worry about it now, but it's nice to think about.

22/04 - Maiden Gray Concept Art

Two posts today, oh wow.

Today's concept art is a pair of doctors in the Capital (the largest city in the country), Dr. Zen and Dr. Nil.

They're minor characters who work closely with the government, and as far as anyone knows, the only people who know how to reverse the Pact making process.

21/04 - Maiden Gray Concept, Info

Today I started to properly line out the sword, but then I figured out that drawing swords is difficult work.

Therefore, I`m thinking I might render it in Blender instead as it appears to be the easiest way I can flesh out my weapon ideas. Might need to do a bit more sword research as well, I wanted one edge to be serrated so that you could catch other blades on it and the other one to be smooth and sharp, to, well, slice with.

As well, a bit of insider info on Maiden Gray. There are currently five routes planned. Four routes will get two ends, as far as I can see. And no end will be good. There are no good endings. Only suffering and subtle suffering, in many delicious flavors. Do you want some crushed peanuts on that suffering?

20/04 - HOOD Concept Upload

A rough SD doodle of Ribbon, MC of HOOD. You can see that she's kind of influenced by Red Riding Hood, as is intentional. She's also Dollmaster #8, the youngest.

20/04 - Maiden Gray Concept Upload

Concept art of the MC, Mila Jonas. The sword isn't drawn well, but I plan to draw it out in detail in a different sketch. It's only a placeholder for now. 

Character fact: Mila is the captain/leader of the G.O, and the only female on the squad. She doesn't like guns, so she fights with a large sword instead. How does she lift it? Extensive training/pact magic bullshit.