Sprites!

Thanks to Princess from Chasing The Frill, I finally have some sprites to show! She made some templates and a design based off of my concept art (seen in this post here) to be used as the player's avatar. Let me know which you like the most! There will likely be different eye style options, so pay more attention to the rest of the body.

100% view.

Click for larger view.

If you have your own designs to submit, please e-mail them to me.

  

Springtime is Tea Time [Drink Tea Everyday]

More concept art! The setting depicted may or may not be in the game, so you may want to disregard it. The focus here is the girl, of course. I've been practicing drawing more often lately. Sometimes things go well and sometimes things go horribly, but the practice helps me develop a style to use. I feel comfortable enough to try making sprites next, so hopefully I'll have some decent sprites to share soon.

As with the previous picture posted, this one was made with Colors! 3D on my 3DS, so the results aren't really ideal for most computer screens (due to size and resolution differences). 3DS owners may be interested in knowing that this one includes a 3D effect, so if you have a 3DS, be sure to check it out with the 3DS Internet Browser (jpmilktea.blogpost.com/?m=1 for the mobile version).

In addition to working on sprites, I'd also like to post map concept art soon. Though I won't mention details about all of the locations, I'll go more in depth about most. I want to make sure that even those that follow this blog will be surprised while enjoying the results of this project.

Thanks for reading this post. I've put quite a bit of thought into gameplay and the locations that you will have access to. I'm eager to share the details. Expect the next post soon!

Drawing Update

Here is a simple drawing that I've come up with while practicing. It's not great, but I'd like to have drawing to use as reference for sprites (and possibly for in-game art). Sorry for not being better at this. I can manage to do a bit better, I think, but I just wanted to get this done quickly. I want to keep doing quick drawings for the sake of practice before I get too into cleaning up the lines and small details. Anyway, expect more soon. I made this with Colors! 3D on my 3DS, by the way, so maybe some will even be in 3D.

I actually feel embarrassed about posting this...

Weather

I came up with some ideas for abnormal types of weather that you may experience randomly. I came up with the ideas a few months ago, but completely forgot to post about them! The names aren't official, but hopefully you'll understand the general idea.

Tea Rain
Tea will rain from the sky, as the name suggests, and people will engage in various activities to enjoy the weather. Some will set out tea cups to consume the tea, while others will set out clothing or some other accessory so that it will be tea-stained.

For those of you that aren't familiar with the idea, tea staining is used to color fabric sometimes. Since some types of tea have such nice colors (as far as my colorblindness allows me to perceive anyway), it makes sense that people would use tea as a type of dye.

Whenever there is tea rain, the traditional thing to do in town will be to exchange tea-stained items with others. So how that will work is you will be able to choose someone to exchange gifts with. That's pretty much all there is to it.

Bubblefall
Clouds that consist of bubbles will float across the sky and bubbles will fall downward, towards the ground. Most bubbles will simply have air inside, but some will have cats in them. If you're lucky, you'll find a bubble with a nice item in it. This idea is similar to (and was inspired by) the balloons with presents that float by in Animal Crossing: Wild World, though I hope the implementation turns out much less frustrating.


In addition to these weather patterns, I'll include normal weather patterns. Perhaps I'll post about the sort of things that go on when those occur, but not right now. I'll save that for later. In addition to weather-related events, I came up with another type of event.

Flower Turtle Migration
Turtles (that happen to be plant/animal hybrids) will roam through town and shoot out petals as they migrate to a new location. Petals may blow in the wind and you'll be able to run through piles of petals for some light-hearted fun. Perhaps I'll come up with a special game to play with other characters too, like a competition to collect the most petals within an allotted time.

Botany And Other Things

I've started to grow some plants recently and it has been an interesting experience. As previously suggested, there will be ways to plant and grow plants in the game. My experience with plants will help influence the ideas. Hopefully I'll be able to really make it fun.

In other news, I've been trying to come up with some of the underlying logic for the social system. I'd like to try making it so there is quite a bit of varied dialogue in the game to keep things from getting dull. I've also purchased Colors! 3D, which is pretty much an art program for the 3DS. This way I'll have an easy method for uploading concept art that I've made with it. I hope to post some very soon. Perhaps today or tomorrow. Also, ads may appear on this blog soon since I'd like to use Google Adsense. I'm not asking anyone to click the ads, but I'm hoping that it will encourage me to post more often and be more productive in general. Hopefully you won't mind the ads.

As always, suggestions are welcome. Please share your thoughts.

Not Dead!

Sorry about the lack of posts. I've mostly just been practicing drawing lately. I have much more practice to do too. The style will be even more simplistic than the style seen in the last post. I'll post some samples soon. I've been practicing drawing with my 3DS, so if you'd like to see how things are going, befriend me and you'll see some of my drawings in Swapnote/Letter Box (if you haven't already). Here is my 3DS friend code: 2019-9663-6370 . I'll post scans of drawings from my sketchbook when I finally use it.

Potential Art Style

http://i.imgur.com/LjgJe.png

I saw this while browsing /jp/ and thought that perhaps I could try to use a similar style for the game. I think it's pretty cute. Hopefully I'll find more pictures with this style for reference. I've practiced drawing a bit, so I believe I can manage something like this with time and effort. Once I've some more drawings, I'll try to convert the style into sprite form.

Edit: The style has since been confirmed. See later updates for details.