ingthing

Ingrid/Ing, cis, 26, she/her Artist, Designer, and VN Dev at @forsythiaproductions

[forsythiaproductions]

"M-Mr Charkham...?"

This slightly saucy drawing is in our new, public Backer Bulletin, but it's really just eye candy to sweeten the rest! 💖

It might tell you something about Hugo and Seamus, but it won't tell you much about how the game's been going, so you should read the update here.

Of Sense and Soul: A Queer Victorian Romance Game 💌 Wishlist on Steam

[beekeeperspicnic]

Mr Holmes loves playing his gramophone on sunny afternoons, a pleasant reminder of the excellent concerts he attended in his youth!

(A scene which does not in fact occur in my currently-in-development game The Beekeeper's Picnic, which features a retired Sherlock Holmes solving cosy mysteries in a seaside town. You can follow this blog for development updates!)

[arimiadev]

Visual Novel Dev Social Media After Twitter

okay that's a weird title. this is a survey for visual novel devs to see what social media they're using now that Twitter is dying and how t

I'm holding a short, anonymous survey for visual novel developers to see what social media sites they're currently using and how Twitter changes have affected them.

the results will be compiled onto my blog as well as another post here.

[ingthing]

Of Sense and Soul: A Kickstarter Post-Mortem ✨

In the four days since the successful-but-nail-biting funding of @forsythiaproductions' Of Sense and Soul campaign, I've written a little (okay, it's long) Post-Mortem about it!

OSAS has always been an ambitious brainchild, and some form of crowdfunding has been in our sights from the start… This is how we got to where we are now, and what I took away from the experience beyond the funding itself.

Read the post at ingthing.dev!

[antique-royals]

Horsewoman Selika Lazevski in 1891 by Nadar.

[ingthing]

Tomorrow (August 3rd) at 9:00AM UTC+1 I'll be over on Twitch with SailingOcelot to chat about Of Sense and Soul and all things VN Development!

Bring any questions you might have to twitch.tv/sailingocelot and hang out with us there! ✨🙌

[arimiadev]

Visual Novel Developer Interview – Scene Direction in Of Sense and Soul

Hi everyone! For this month's visual novel dev article I thought we’d try something different. I typically write articles based on my own experiences and research, but I want to include more commentary and experiences from other developers.

So today I’ll be interviewing another visual novel developer!

ingthing is a visual novel developer and friend of mine who is currently developing Of Sense and Soul, a queer Victorian romance visual novel following a pair of men after a misconstrued newspaper ad.

Of Sense and Soul (@ofsenseandsoul) is a highly detailed, lovingly crafted visual novel that showcases how we can elevate indie visual novels to new heights. Its attention to visuals is something that can be felt throughout every store page and screenshot for the game but is even more breathtaking once you actually play it.

Today I’ll be interviewing the lead developer, ingthing! You may have seen her previously talk on this at Visual;Conference, an annual online visual novel developer conference.

find the archived version of this interview on my blog.

Note: ingthing will be referred to as “Ing” and Of Sense and Soul will be shortened to “OSAS”.

Arimia: Hiya Ing! So to get us started, can you introduce yourself and tell people how you got into visual novel development?

Ing: I’m Ing, I’m an artist and designer who had a gay webcomic idea with her friend one day and then two years later we decided it should become a visual novel instead! Now I lead my own little studio and we’re making a Whole Thing out of OSAS. [Of Sense and Soul]

Arimia: Cinematography is such a large aspect of OSAS. What made you want to focus so much on cinematography for it?

Ing: In the beginning we actually didn’t consider cinematography so much—our original Demo was very static and was a simpler affair of putting sprites on a background. 

It was really when I was designing the user interface that I began to think about it, starting with a NVL style screen that displayed a letter that the main character was reading. I had the idea of placing the main character sprite on the left of the letter in order to display their emotions while reading the letter as a close-up—and that meant I started the framing of the scene, and how the “camera” could affect the player’s experience of the game.

LEFT: An earlier draft of the Letter Reading Screen in OSAS. RIGHT: A screenshot of the same scene as shown in the Extended Demo.

What really solidified my pursuit of cinematography in OSAS was the prologue sequence—I knew immediately I wanted to use the art for it with a camera pan down the long, vertical image. I watched Visual Novel Design (Vimilikesart’s) YouTube video Ren’Py Images and Action Editor Tutorial and decided to use Action Editor to achieve this, and once I learned how to use the tool the rest was history!

Once I knew what the possibilities of the Ren’Py in-game camera were, I quickly learned more about its Animation and Transformation Language (ATL) through manipulating it, and started adding cinematography to the entire Of Sense and Soul demo.

Arimia: Why do you think this is important in visual novels?

Ing: As an experience, visual novels are unique in that they are a time-based interactive medium. You’re asking your audience for their attention for a significant chunk of their time, the same way a movie or TV series would—and that’s a lot of hours spent in front of a screen if it stays fundamentally unmoving. 

Dialogue and narration are also commonly shown in a text box at the bottom of the screen, and the text content itself is what tells most of the story. In my opinion, having a static screen that only changes when images are being switched in or out discourages players from paying attention to the visuals, and more of their focus might turn to the text alone—which would not only make their playing experience more monotonous but also impact their enjoyment of your hard work.

I think every visual novel developer or player is familiar with the imagery that makes up a scene—namely, sprites and backgrounds—and these are very important to get right, as they offer a visual to connect with stories and characters. Most backgrounds and sprites offer variation for appropriate times of day or facial expressions, or even props, poses, and outfits if they’re fancy—but I would say their possibilities as image assets alone are finite. You can match a scene to a narrative and match a character to their description, but their effectiveness in conveying a scene is entirely dependent on when, where, how, and why you display them, which is one major element you have control over when scripting a VN. 

With Of Sense and Soul‘s demo, I’ve had the joy of watching in real time as streamers and players respond to my cinematography—and the level of investment in the story they develop when given engaging visuals cannot be overstated! It was clear the action happening on screen through the main character’s eyes was connecting with them. Sudden angled zooms on shocked characters’ expressions earned a gasp or laugh, while thudding heartbeat effects and pans across a character’s face with their eyes concealed drew concerned looks or “Oh no”s from players without fail, every time the scene was intended to elicit those reactions. It’s one thing to show a character’s emotions on their face or describe how they’re feeling—it’s another entirely to tell it through the audience’s visual instincts.

…the level of investment in the story [streamers and players] develop when given engaging visuals cannot be overstated!

(As an aside, I’ve been told that when they arrive at the voiced segments of OSAS, some players begin to feel like they’re watching a movie instead of reading a visual novel—which in my eyes means the cinematography was successful!)

Utilizing cinematography in your visual novels can not only help you keep your audience’s attention by creating a better visual narrative and keeping them eager to see what comes next, but also allows you to maximize the image assets you do have—which, for many visual novel developers, is limited. I think that’s pretty important, and a win for everyone all around!

Arimia: I think using what limited assets you have is definitely key. What are some ways you think other devs can make better use of their limited assets, from what you’ve seen in other games?

Ing: I think prime examples of devs making creative use of their assets can be seen in a lot of games made for the O2A2 game jam in which each game can only have one of any asset. Some ways devs have used their backgrounds, for example, with added motion or repetition, like in lastrain by usarin in which a background is looped to give the appearance of a moving train, or in Fleeting Confession by xxmissarichanxx where the foreground confession booth screen is used both in front of the sprite and in the back, but blurred and semi-transparent for the latter.

A more simple and commonly used way to better utilise image assets is just by changing the parts shown of them—many visual novels will zoom into a background or sprite to show off specific details, especially if events described in the story itself are taking place in, say, a table in the corner of the room.

I think what most devs who do play with camerawork and presentation have set up, though, is they’ve already planned their assets ahead for those uses—devs who do full-body sprites will have more flexibility than half-body sprites, and backgrounds that are larger than the final game window offer better quality when zoomed into.

Some devs also play around with “comic book” style cut-ins, like the prologue for Tomorrow Will be Dying by Team Robo and actually, your game, Lost Lune! Even in the screenshots you can see some fun silhouetting of sprites and comic frames being used to bring drama to scenes.

Arimia: These are all great ideas for VN devs! Personally I love playing around with camera stuff and trying new things to make scenes more dynamic—there’s so many ways you can frame scenes. Is there any technique or method you’d like to add to OSAS that you haven’t been able to yet or plan on?

Ing: I do actually want to do some cut-in style frames and potentially use a vignette effect for flashbacks. I tend not to plan a ton for scene direction, but I see what other devs are doing and go “this looks so cool” and hoard it in my brain like a squirrel preparing for hibernation.

Arimia: Yeah, definitely. I was playing Mahoyo recently and it took me forever to finish it because I’d get so inspired by the scene direction!

How do you mix the visual scene direction with other aspects, like audio? I’ve never delved into voice acting for my games but I know voice acting is a large part of the charm for OSAS.

Ing: Definitely relate to just staring at sequences for ages and rolling back and forth to examine how cinematics work!

Honestly the weirdest part with voice acting for OSAS is we never originally thought it would be part of the game. Because the game has a very “paper-like” feel and was intended to be more grounded in words, VA wasn’t something we felt would be necessary.

What really changed that was the addition of scene direction. Once cinematics were in and we knew what the sprites and settings could do to tell the story, voicing was a natural next step because the game was suddenly so lively!

The audio absolutely plays a big part in how scenes are directed and sequenced—to an extent we follow the emotionality of the soundtracks playing in the background to reflect the emotions of the scene. A more melancholic track might be accompanied with more sluggish-feeling pans across the scene, where a lively track might have quicker pans between sprites to reflect the dynamic of the conversation!

One of my favorite audio-led camera effects is the heartbeat effect used in Seamus’ demo segments; when the heartbeat is pounding in Seamus’ (and the player’s) ears, the camera zooms in/out and blurs along with the sound effect, creating a much more impactful effect than if we were to just add the audio.

Arimia: Yeah, the heartbeat effect is something that just sticks with you—I’ve never seen anything like it in other VNs. Parts like that really draw you in (literally and figuratively).

Okay, my final question is- share a cool trick in Ren’Py!

Ing: I’ll share two!

The first is boring, but…

You can actually define your color hex codes in your files and apply them wherever you need them (like your GUI styles)! And then when you need to change the color itself you won’t have to find all instances of that hex code and change them individually, you can just do it from your main definition.

If you’re in the Ren’Py developer console (Shift+O) you can change your save file name using $ save_name = "filename" for your personal testing needs and it won’t affect your save_name for the game itself.

And that way you can keep your save files for testing named and also make yourself laugh with them!

----------------

And there you have it! I hope this interview with ing on scene direction was helpful, inspiring or at least interesting. Cinematography in VNs has been something I’ve been really interested in this year and I hope to see more visually unique VNs in the future.

You can find Of Sense and Soul’s demo on itch.io and Steam via their website. There’s so many super inspired segments, I really recommend you to check it out! The game is also currently on Kickstarter—if you’re planning to host your own, I fully recommend checking out the page for it. The attention to detail on the Kickstarter page is a league of its own.

You can also follow them on Tumblr @ofsenseandsoul!

[ingthing]

It's me! Give the article a read if you're interested in all the fun camera stuff in OSAS 💖

[ingthing]

this was a while ago but I used your font to make my graduation cap! thank u!

This is incredible! ✨😆 I'm glad you got use out of it, you're very welcome!

[forsythiaproductions]

Having unintelligible handwriting doesn't make you any less of a writer, Hugo!

It may, however, lead to a mortifying misunderstanding or two. 🫣

(OSAS is really just a PSA for proper handwriting lessons in Victorian schools.) 🖋️

Of Sense and Soul: A Queer Victorian Romance Game Back our Kickstarter! | Get our newsletter | Send us an ask 💌

[ingthing]

OBJECTIONABLE (V1.0)

A font pack by @ingthing​!

Never hand-draw your own “objection” bubbles again! Inspired by that one lawyer game.

Free for non-commercial use. 

Do not redistribute/repost!

A pack of 68 high-resolution PNG letters and punctuation marks PLUS a bonus Kura’inese SATORHA! and a big, blank speech bubble to fill!

I also plan on introducing a Telegram sticker set (free for use, of course)

If you use this font in your work, it would be nice if you sent me a nice message! It took me a long time to make this, and I’d love to expand it but I like to be encouraged!

DOWNLOAD FROM MY WEBSITE!

[ingthing]

Updated the link on this because I keep getting asked where to find the letter pack now that the Dropbox link is broken!

You can now find it on my website, ingthing.dev

Enjoy!

[forsythiaproductions]

My, we're embarking on Week 3 of our campaign already!

It's high time we did a fanart feature.💖

(Plus, a little romp into our "writer's room" in brainstorming for Hugo Chapter 6 and Everett's Attic Study!) 📯✨

Read our Week 2 Update here! 💌

Of Sense and Soul: A Queer Victorian Romance Game Play our demo | Get our newsletter | Send us an ask 💌

[forsythiaproductions]

Our Kickstarter is now live! 😱💖

All your support means the world, thank you for being here with us! Of Sense and Soul is our Queer Victorian Romance visual novel and it has...

Two lives, one love story 🎩👓

Victorian setting 🕰️

Soft queer romance 🌈

Slow burn pining 🔥

Happily ever after 💖

Help us make Of Sense and Soul a reality and back our campaign here! 💪

(Backing is just one way to support the game; you can reblog & like this post to help us with our community challenges, too!)

Play our demo | Get our newsletter | Send us an ask 💌

[forsythiaproductions]

A moment of weakness can be a reminder of the people who lend you strength when your heart is hurting. 💔

Or, in the case of this scene, a reminder of that particular person who does!

Of Sense and Soul: A Queer Victorian Romance Game 💌 Follow our Kickstarter | Play our demo | Get our newsletter

[forsythiaproductions]

I don't think Hugo's very sure of that.

Of Sense and Soul: A Queer Victorian Romance Game 💌

Follow our Pre-Launch | Play our demo | Get our newsletter

[forsythiaproductions]

Is it vegetarianism!?*

Always is, always has been.

I beg your pardon?

Voting ended onJun 19, 2023

*Disclaimer: We do not endorse the views expressed by Mr. Walter Coulston or The Daily Creed regarding the protection and appreciation of all bird-kind. There is not, to our understanding, any vegetarian conspiracy behind liking geese or fowl of any kind. 🦆

Of Sense and Soul: A Queer Victorian Romance Game 💌 Follow our Pre-Launch | Play the demo | Get the OSAS newsletter

[forsythiaproductions]

It's Soft 💖

It's Gay 🌈

And it's Victorian! 🎩✨

It's Of Sense and Soul, our Slice of Life Queer Victorian Romance Visual Novel! 🥰 (We're super proud of it.)

Follow our Kickstarter Pre-Launch here! 💌 ofsenseandsoul.com/ks

[forsythiaproductions]

Got bored midway through drawing this CG last year, did this, forgot about it, and found it again just now 💀💀

Follow our Pre-Launch | Play our demo