Work in Progress 16 (with words! :o )
Hello, my friend. I have made progress.
It's hard to find anything to comment on, since the process of making the visual novel isn't all that interesting beyond the internal aspect of it, but I'll try regardless.
For this scene, I figured out how to color shadows in Blender. I can't show what it looked like before because the itch.io blog post editor simply doesn't function properly. lol.
I noticed the visual novel looked really orange and yellow, which is nice. It's intended. Most of life looks orange and yellow. But some variety is good too, so I made some blues.
I've recently read Clarice Lispector's Passion According to G.H. I believe that shows in the writing. These ideas were there already, but I wonder if I'd have written them differently.
Besides that, I haven't really, like, sat down to read or watch anything. Or play. It's not like I don't have the time, I just lack planning. My thoughts are consumed mostly by my own writing (which takes a looong time. It's harder than any other aspect of creating this game) and non-artistic duties.
This moment is one of my favorites, mostly due to the song used. No spoilers (:
I don't have anything else to say.
Comments
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re: colors - have you ever watched The Virgin Suicides by Sofia Coppola before? It's a fantastic film on its own, but more importantly it shares some similar themes and aesthetics with what you're making as well. The majority of the film uses this warm and hazy yellow/orange color palette, with some exceptions here and there. Only during certain scenes towards the end does the color palette completely change to heavily use blues and greens instead. I know you clearly know what you're doing, but considering how deliberate a lot of your choices seem to have been so far maybe it would be worth thinking about something similar?
I'll watch that one soon :)
As I worked on the VN, Dolls from 2002 kept coming to mind. There's just something about the scenery in that movie, you know? Like, overwhelming. The characters are so small, surrounded by these beautiful, uncaring environments. I wanted to capture the same feeling. I wouldn't say I was directly inspired by anything. This story is just something I've had in my head for a long time. No, actually, I was inspired by the game's soundtrack. I wanted to capture the same feeling I had while listening to artists like saliclaire. It's like, the music is so dense and it *sounds* profound, it just seems to hint at a deeper context, at a little story, at a setting. I dunno where I'm going with this! Visually, there's something there comparable to In The Mood for Love. A sense of peeking into two characters' worlds, you know? Their little secret, and we're just watching. It makes it feel more intimate and romantic.
Anyway, thank you for the movie recommendation. :)
I don't believe I've ever heard of Dolls before, but I will definitely have to look into that one. I've never actually seen In The Mood for Love, but I do know of it - mainly because I found it while searching for similar films to Lost in Translation (which was directed by Coppola, who coincidentally was inspired by In The Mood for Love!). ITMFL is one that's been on my watchlist for a long time but I suppose now I'll bump it up a few places :)
Lost in Translation (also recommended if you've never seen it) very much focuses on the two main characters' emotional and intellectual connection more than anything, which is something that I was thinking of while playing through Set Yourself on Fire too - this combined with the whole peeking into the characters' private worlds like you say makes it much more intimate than it'd be otherwise. Honestly I wish more stories/media could be like that, though I suppose if everything was like that maybe it wouldn't feel as meaningful?
And yeah, I can totally understand being inspired by music more than anything else. Like, if music can evoke a certain feeling or mood or sense of place then surely it can be put into words, right? Like it's something you have to translate, but it's difficult to really capture the same idea that the music is giving off. I dunno, maybe I'm missing your point. Sometimes things make sense in my head and then once it's on paper it doesn't haha. Either way I'll have to go watch both of those movies now!