February 2012
1 post
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Figuring things out again
A lot of talk has been going on recently in IRC about reforging the project. We are considering changes to the story that would lengthen both it and the timespan in which it happens, amongst other things. We’ve been thinking about this because of issues we feel are potential problems with the story, or that could detract from enjoyment of it.
This is one of the problems with creative...
January 2012
1 post
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Indie project management is for suckers.
So yeah, Painter Story. Hard to believe it’s been eight months since the last post, without anything really to show for it. Most indie game projects would have been dead by now, after such a period of time, but because I’m more stubborn than a mountain of goats, I’m forcing myself and my poor team to carry on.
Working on an indie project is an exercise in pain and frustration....
May 2011
1 post
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Fresh main character concept art, staff issues
Thanks again to gebyy-terar for another piece of concept art for Yoshinobu. This time, instead of being in a school uniform, he’s wearing something he can paint in.
Another in-development visual novel project released a one-scene recruitment demo over the weekend, in an effort to get people interested in helping out. I’ve been wondering whether or not to wait for the...
April 2011
1 post
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Interview with the Character
Last night, I got to be the little girl. What I mean by that is I tried an experiment last night, role-playing as Kourin, being interviewed by another writer from a different visual novel project. The results were… interesting.
One of the issues with Painter Story is that I’m not really that good of a writer (yet). And one of the reasons for that is it’s generally difficult for...
March 2011
1 post
6 tags
New character art, and some updates
Another piece of art, another KS dev (well, former). Thanks to gebyy-terar, we’ve now got a coloured sketch of Yoshinobu, the main character in Painter Story. We’ve also got an idea of what the male school uniform might look like!
In other news, writing is progressing very slowly lately, but it is actually progressing. There are a couple scenes we’re stuck on at the moment, but...
December 2010
2 posts
3 tags
Introducing the cast
Thanks to Raide, one of the character artists for Katawa Shoujo, we finally have some art to show off the Painter Story girls! Along with this commissioned concept piece, I’ve put up character profiles that give a little bit of detail about our hero and heroines! Check it out. The image above leads to a larger version on deviantArt, if you’d like to see the girls in more detail.
3 tags
Beating things out
With the detailed outline for “act 1” complete, we’re a step closer to actually writing the second draft for Painter Story. Our next step is “beating” the scenes — breaking them down into the particular actions and reactions of the characters.
This is something I picked up from a screenwriting book, Story, by Robert McKee. We’re not doing things exactly...
October 2010
1 post
6 tags
Plotting from the top down
One of the problems with the first attempt at writing Painter Story was the unstructured plot. We knew a bit about the main character and the various girls he could pursue, as well as some potential outcomes. But we never really worked out the route from A to B. And in the old pre-alphas I used to circulate on IRC, it showed, just as badly as the temporary art and audio.
Something that I’ve...
September 2010
1 post
5 tags
What's up with Painter Story?
I’d like to start off by welcoming miipasu to the PS dev team. While her position is somewhat nebulous at the moment, she’s been helping out with organizing the replanning of the story, and will likely take on some writing and editing duties in the future. We’ll likely have some additional team reshuffling in the near future as mii gets better integrated with the team.
As for...
July 2010
1 post
May 2010
1 post
Some VN writing resources
It’s been three weeks since the last blog post, and we are still hard at work, retooling things so that Painter Story will be a visual novel worthy of your love and adoration. Since we are busy with that, I’d just like to share a couple links which may or may not be helpful. Enjoy.
Visual Novel Structure
Visual Novel Structure - Option 2
They’re both by the same guy,...
April 2010
2 posts
6 tags
In which we retool how we develop things so our...
Let’s start off by welcoming simpleDvorak to the Painter Story development team. As zahlman has been promoted from interstitial writer to actually managing one of the story paths, I decided that we should have someone who isn’t doing any path writing to handle editing, especially including smoothing out the differences in writing style between zahl and myself.
With that out of the...
4 tags
Rewriting the prologue
So, thanks to expert advice from someone else developing their own OELVN (you know who you are), zahlman and I are pretty much completely rewriting the prologue. Well maybe not completely, but a lot of editing work is happening as well as an expansion that will double or triple the size of the thing. That coupled with a bunch of IRL crap is the reason there’s been no update in two weeks.
...
March 2010
3 posts
4 tags
Act structure
Progress is still progressing on the script. While there are a couple of troublesome scenes that need some serious work before they’re even badly written, a lot of what’s left to do for the first three days doesn’t look all that tough right now. Days 1 and 2 are practically done (apart from the aforementioned scenes), and I find myself writing the ending scenes of day 3 right...
4 tags
3 tags
Progress report
It’s been about three weeks since the initial blog post about Painter Story, and I’d like to share a couple things about our visual novel. Progress is going slower than I hoped for in terms of writing, but it’s still moving along well. I’m still working towards the goal of days one to three drafted by the end of March, although it’ll probably slip some. However, save...
February 2010
1 post
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Painter Story: A visual novel of art and romance
A shy high school artist. A girl who came out of a painting. And the story which they create together. Painter Story started off as an idea in the summer of 2009, a visual novel where a magic paintbrush brought to life the girl of the protagonist’s dreams while he struggled to get acquainted with his new school. Since playing Katawa Shoujo for the first time in December 2009, I’ve...