Solm Quest

This is a blog dedicated to my Solm Quest project where I'll be posting random wips and sketches. Main blog at yuumira.tumblr.com!

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It’s been awhile since I made some update here but since continuing with the VN project seems to be quite impossible at the moment, I went ahead and worked on chapter 1 for the webtoon instead! Here’s a bit of a preview. Hopefully I finish all the panels by the new year!

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Elendav sketch drawn by @imakureitto! Thank you so much for drawing her, I love it!! ♡

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NaNoReNo 2019!

In a few hours, NaNoReNo2019 is going to start!!! I’m not even sure if I have enough free time to participate, but I want to! I’m already busy as it is but I wouldn’t mind working on Solm Quest VN during this month!

Last time I updated, I experienced a bug in coding and couldn’t proceed with TyranoBuilder with the Live2D models...so this time, I’ll try using VN Maker and hopefully, everything will go well! I’ll be posting updates here once I get some progress on it!

By the way, I got this site up and in this link you’ll see some of the art like character sprites and backgrounds I already finished for this project!!

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I haven’t had the time to update this VN project lately I’m afraid I’ve been busy. But anyway, here is a short video of the first test runs of the VN so far! It’s the first 2 minutes or so of the game that I managed to finish with TyranoBuilder before I got stuck dealing with some bugs. I honestly kinda missed working on this. I still haven’t found a suitable program to replace TyranoBuilder and continue working on this with the Live2D. But I’m currently looking to try that Visual Novel Maker at the moment however I think learning how to use a new program would take quite a while. I’ll try to post here when I get some new updates.

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SOLM QUEST VN STORY

I just realized I haven’t posted this here......and that it’s been months since I last updated this. I am truly sorry for not being consistent in here. Surgeries and hospital visits got me busy this year. But anyway~ this was first posted on my deviantart account last 2017, but here’s the story behind how I came up with the idea for this project and some info on the world and the characters and the story! More under the cut~

For the past years since I started to be inactive here, I've been trying to work on my story called "Solm Quest". I've always wanted to make a visual novel but I haven't really gotten around to doing it until recently. I wanted to make a story that will have some impact and somehow share some of my realizations about life. It started when I was trying to come up for some ideas for my thesis. At first I just wanted to make a simple story about a person trying to figure out what is life and the purpose of living, because that's the exact feeling I was feeling back then. I know it sounds a bit depressing but the stress of thesis is to blame for it. By the time I'm done with my thesis, the story changed yet again to be about a person who wants to find out what makes up their worth or value as a person. I think I still retained those ideas but thanks to a lot of stress, problems and situations that I've went through, the story underwent a lot of changes, even the characters.

So in the end, it can be summarized by a simple sentence that goes like this: it is about a worthless boy who struggles to find his place in a judgmental world. And yes, I just described my character here worthless XD Let me explain a bit about the story: In this world, a person's value and worth is determined by a mark appearing on the body called "solms". Depending on how developed a solm is, a person's value can be that of a king or a slave. Usually a solm appears during adolescence, and by 18 most people have already developed a solm. But Eliukel is about to turn 18 in a few days and yet he still hasn't gained a solm. People started rumors about him being cursed and that he has no value as a person. On the day of his 18th birthday, he decided to leave their town and search for the origin of the solms. The world in my story is really vast. And I honestly spent months trying to conceptualize their world. So here's an early draft I made for the country where the first part of the story takes place:

Erimead here is just one of the five countries of this world where Eliukel and the others resides. As Eliukel journeys to find the origin of the solm, he'll be travelling to far places and other countries which I haven't really started mapping out yet. Each country focuses and specializes on one specific talent that makes each one of them unique and strong. Here's a quick introduction and description to the five countries:

Erimead - The Kingdom of the Elites. Most people that comes from here gains a perfect solm and becomes notable people that excels in various fields.

Lothari - The Kingdom of Information. People in this country are known to be intelligent and smart researchers and spies that can collect and gather various data and information.

Teravenn - The Kingdom of Inventions. This is where charms, machines, weapons and other items are made and exported. Their people are skilled with their hands and provide resources.

Mireavia - The Kingdom of Warriors. The country where the strongest knights and mercenaries come from.

Caedri - The Kingdom of Magic. The scattered islands are said to be connected to nature's power and that people here is believed to be able to harness this power to heal and cure.

I'm still working out on some details here and there but that mostly sums up the idea of the world. I got so caught up in creating their world that I lacked development with the characters XD So far, I have three fully developed characters which I could consider to be the main characters. I'm working on the side characters/other important characters that will help advance the story. Here's some sketches/images:

And this here are the early sketches of the characters. Honestly most of these are the scrapped character designs from my first thesis which I couldn't just delete and so I reused them for my story XD

A quick introduction and description of the characters shown above:

Eliukel Larwain - "The person with no value". He was raised in a family of scholars, where both parents are recognized by the king for their intellect and research. Being the eldest son of such a family, expectations were so high and the pressure pushed him to leave town in order to seek the origin of the solms where he also hopes to find his very own solm.

Ailelli Serale - A nobility from the Lothari Kingdom. She is an only child of the Serale Family which is known for their cunning ways in retrieving and obtaining information. A childhood friend of Eliukel and like him, she also hasn't gotten her solm yet although she still has a few months before turning 18. However, After Eliukel left town, she accidentally gained her solm.

Elendav Larwain - Eliukel's little sister who was called a genius for being born with a solm. She's started helping their parents with their studies and research as early as four years old. She's the one who told Eliukel about the origin of solms in hopes to help her brother.

Encienté Gill - Eliukel and Ailelli's teacher and now a mentor of Elendav.

Keon Theolor - A knight/spy in service of the king.

And these are design variations of the different clothings of different characters based from their personality/background/culture etc. Here's an animation test which I plan to use for the character sprites for the visual novel. I'm still trying to learn Live2D so it will really take a while.

Honestly, at first I'm kind of debating whether I share this with you already or not since I'm still working on a lot of things in regards to this project and most, if not all, of the information/designs shown here might change as I work on it. But after I finished the animation test I linked above, I got really excited of the idea that this visual novel is finally going to happen! Although the progress is reaaaalllyyyyy slow as I'm doing all the illustrations, the script and the coding but I'm making progress, even if it's little. So I'm not really sure when I'll be able to actually finish this but I'm hoping to finish this!! I'll try to post updates as I progress with my project. I hope you guys will be interested and support me with this one! I'd love to hear your thoughts about the progresses and about this project.

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VN Progress Update!

So the past weeks I’ve been busy working on the Solm Quest VN on Tyranobuilder and have had some incredible progress with it until I encountered some major problems. I think it have something to do with the Live2D models I used but I’m not too sure. I’m no programmer and I don’t know a lot about codes and how they work. And because of that, as much as I want to continue working on it, I’m sad to say that I would be giving up working on Tyranobuilder for this one. I’ll try finding other VN engines that can support Live2D models as well as I was intending to use it for my VN project. I’m not too fond on reworking on my character sprites just so it could work on Tyranobuilder and I’ve spent too much time with Live2D just to discard all of them. So until then, most of my VN progress will be halted. I’m a bit disappointed I wouldn’t be able to join the game jam this year but hopefully next time, when the bugs have been fixed!

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Progress log

Learning and using live 2d was hard, but I’m glad I finally finished all the main character sprites! Yes, the sprites are created with Live2D so yay that’s an accomplishment~ So glad this VN is making progress. Also on a side note, I have also decided to create a mini web comic for this story! I’m hoping to publish it soon.

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Here’s an old illustration I drew of Eliukel last year! VN progress is rather slow but moving. Finished 23 backgrounds so far and also done with coding the title screen. I finally found the right music track that fits with the story. Beta testing of the live2d on Tyrano took quite a few days but now all 5 characters are working fluidly! Still have to work on at least 2 more characters... But after that I’ll be focused on writing the script and codes!

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Screenshot on my newest WIP! Trying to work on my story again after a month of break. So here's my characters, all grown up and having a stroll through town. Ailelli and Elendav managed to drag Eliukel out and come with them to who knows where. Here's a clue: it will involve a lot of walking XD Pls excuse the perspective and all D: I'm not that good at drawing backgrounds yet so I'll have to redraw/repaint a lot of parts and details. I'll just have to think of it as a good practice haha.

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I have decided to use Live2D to create simple animated gestures of my characters for the visual novel. So far, I only have the sprites for Ailelli completed and the rest are still a work in progress. So here’s a simple test animation of 14 year old Elendav! Better stay on her good side if you know what’s good for you~

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While I was doing some sketches, my friend introduced me to this great online app where it automatically colors your sketches. So I tried using a sketch of Ailelli for this and it turned out really great. I had to fix the colors cause it kept making her blonde but I wish I can color like this XD Here’s the link for those who want to try it!

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While they were playing inside the archives, the two siblings found an old map hidden in one of the pages of an old book. Elendav was so curious about it that she begged Eliukel to find the treasure with her. As they set out on the adventure, Ailelli saw the two and decided to join the party. Obviously, Eliukel would want nothing more than just to get home as soon as possible.

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The story takes place in the fictional world of Solmia, where solms are the main factor that determines a person’s worth and value. There are 5 main countries in Solmia, and so far most of my characters are all currently living in Erimead Kingdom. This kingdom is also known as the kingdom of elites.

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Here’s some character illustrations of Ailelli, Eliukel, Keon and Encienté! These are what they looked like 6 years ago in the story. Ailelli and Eliukel are still 12 yrs. old and are students of Encienté while Keon’s a knight-in-training. I actually forgot to draw Elendav on this batch but she doesn’t have much involvement in the story yet since she’s usually at home reading most of the time. She’s being homeschooled and as a genius, she’s also helping their parents with their research.

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So here's the trio once again: Eliukel, Elendav and Ailelli are spending a typcial day sitting leisurely under the tree by the Lake Clefintore. Elendav is happily sharing the things she read from her book to Eliukel and Ailelli. It will probably last for hours until she finish her lecture, but Eliukel and Ailelli have already been used to it by now.

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For the past years, I've been trying to work on my story called "Solm Quest". I've always wanted to make a visual novel but I haven't really gotten around to doing it until recently. So here I’ll be posting sketches and stuff to keep track on my progress ^^ I’ll be starting with some character sketches. This was the first designs I made for Eliukel, Elendav and Ailelli. And from here a lot of revisions were done, some were retained and some were altered but their color palettes remained the same!