A comic dedicated to Arvale 2, an RPG that has been swallowed by The Oceans of Time.
If you wish to explore the story on your own, then you can.
Dive into the archived version of the old dev website and fish this gem from 2005 out!
Big thanks to @clownboybebop for allowing me to use the text from this banger post I came across on my dashboard one day, and even point out some errors!
Creation process and story explanations linked here! =)
Very inspiring text that infested my mind with a comic idea for quite some time now... Arvale 2 Ocean of Time and The Great DeMenchev, my beloved. <3
You need a plan. No matter how well your visual memory or imagination is, you will not be able to keep track of everything. Furthermore, once you lay it out on paper, you will be able to tell more easily what needs to be changed, or cut.
As you can see, I sketched this entire thing on paper first. I did this while listening to the song on repeat.
The line between storyboard and animatic is very blurred here. The storyboard is a collection of various sketches that tell a story, and doesn’t have to be in video form. And if it is in video form, the timing doesn’t have to be perfect. Storyboards aren’t even exclusive to animation! You can have a storyboard of a scene for a movie that is life action, to conceptualize a scene visually and not just through words.
Animatics however, are exclusive for animation. An animatic is like a storyboard where the timing is perfect, where key frames of poses are shown, where the motion of characters are detailed through arrows and notes, where camera movement is depicted. It serves as a reference for the animator. Since every frame/panel here is already sketched with the timing in mind and includes the things mentioned previously (except perfect timing sometimes...), all I had to do to turn it into an animatic was to turn it into a video.
Apologies for the low quality BTW, I had to compress it a lot so I could upload it here.
Here is the entire thing in better quality:
This storyboard/animatic also came with a lot of (post-it) notes =)
The fact I managed to create THE OUTSIDER꒦꒷ in only 10 months as ONE guy in my freetime is insane, you know? There is a reason why animation studios with tons of animators at their disposal still need many months, years, to create their episodes and films. And it’s not like I took the easy route! There’s a lot of complex animation and backgrounds, and I prefer to know how to cross a bridge before I get to it. That’s why there are so many notes. During the storyboarding, if I knew I would have issues animating one scene because I don’t know how to tackle said issue, I would figure out the answer during the storyboarding. Then I note it down, so my future self has the answer and can just stay in his workflow and doesn’t have to waste time figuring out how he’s gonna do this and that.
From a pacing standpoint, I should have cut a lot more.
I am aware THE OUTSIDER꒦꒷ is absurdly fast and there is a lot happening at once. This is the unfortunate result of me trying to tell the whole complex story in just under 5 minutes.
Personally, I do not see this as exactly… wrong?
I am not one for creating art that is easily consumed and forgettable anyway. Where it is so dumbed down and simple that you understand and catch everything on your first watch, and then move on… I think it’s good when it invites you to re-experience it multiple times, to interact with it, dissect it, think about the individual aspects, in order for you to experience it fully.
I know this isn’t profitable. But I am not doing this for profit.
And THE OUTSIDER꒦꒷ does this- I condensed a roughly 30 page story in under 5 minutes.
The animation is visually appealing. But you need to pause the video in certain sections and think about what you saw to piece it all together. Like a fun easter egg hunt, I am inviting you to dissect and read into what I made! And when you watch the animation again, it feels different. You, through your own efforts, now understand the meaning of it all.
That’s also one of the big differences between human made art and plagiarism program AI generated content. We can make art with context. When you point something out in the art I made, I can tell you exactly why it looks the way it does, why I made these choices. There is reason. The machine cannot, for it is not intelligent. It is a glorified form of autocomplete operating on statistical approximation. It generates an amalgamation of work from other artists, without their consent, devoid of context or reason. It can generate the most generic, bland things. But the moment you ask it for something specific, that actually requires a person to comprehend what you are telling them? Well.
Okay, rant aside, there were some things that needed to be cut for story reasons.
The major cut being Anna & Alex. While these characters are very important in DeMenchev’s life, they don’t make an appearance in the tale between DeMenchev & Beylord. And since DeMenchev & Beylord are the main characters, I want the focus to stay on them- There is already too much going on anyway… Because Anna & Alex are important. I can’t really just reduce them to simple background characters, like the people in the pub. They have their own distinct designs. And introducing a major character, who feels important, with a unique design ONCE super briefly and then them never reappearing again, like you think there would be more but then there isn’t, it’s quite jarring and- *remembers the Arvale 2 Ocean of Time Beylord encounter* errr…
Not to mention, I think their relationship could be really easily misinterpreted for the people not in the know, with the way I depicted them here…
Like, Anna Rosen is DM’s girlfriend. And Alex is his young assistant, who is really good at making all sorts of excellent tools for DM. DM considers Alex his » young friend. « But the way it is depicted in panel 7 and 8 on page 18… if you don’t know, this could look like they are traditional family with Alex as their adopted son who’s showing DM an arts&crafts project and that’s not- That’s not what they are! At all! Anna Rosen is not anyone’s mom and DM is not anyone’s dad, he’s that weird and eccentric teacher, with him and Alex having what I would describe as a mentor and mentee thing going on…
It also doesn’t mix well with the » On my own again « bit, ‘cause… DM is not depicted on his own here.
And that’s why panel 7 and 8 on page 18 got changed. As well as panel 15 on page 10, which would have briefly showcased DM researching a cure for Beylord’s vampirism at home in Queous. It also felt a little random, to just jam it in there for one split second between two scenes. Especially since Queous has such a different colour palette compared to the scene that comes before and after. Sometimes things being discordant is good, if it’s done on purpose with a good reason. This is not the case here, so it had to go.
Panel 6 on page 15 also got changed. Originally it was supposed to be young DM and young/human Beylord sitting, with DM leaning against Beylord has he’s writing in his journal. And you would see snippets of their duo adventures in the background. There are… many reasons I cut this. At least from this storyboard. I’m not a big fan of » kill your darlings « as my Narration & Storytelling professor often said, I prefer to… store my darlings in a box, and hope I get to use them in a different project, if they don’t work or cannot be executed well in the current project.
I… would like to… depict their adventures and the continents they explore, but better than this. + I planned to showcase the continents 🤖Jaybot7 teased, but never got to show himself. Denizum, Lanthys, Spicule. This would require a lot of interpretation and adding onto the scraps of information we do have of these places. I would like to… but I do not know if I should do that.
In the end, I settled for DM & Bey posing epically in front of a shield. DM’s pose is the same one he takes in Arvale 2 Ocean of Time when he level ups, minus the crossbow. He doesn’t have it yet, in Arvale 2 Ocean of Time the shopkeeper in Queous mentions how it is new, after all. So he got it some time after Beylord left.
Every Arvale game is represented with a unique shield, with the exception of Melonchi Minecarts and Treasure of Memories (which I find really odd. Melonchi Minecarts I understand, it’s a small puzzle game. But why does Treasure of Memories not have one?)
The shield depicted here is a mixture of the Arvale 2 Ocean of Time and Arvale Short Tales shields! And the A is now referencing DeMenchev’s hat ribbon, instead of Duncan’s hair (protagonist from the first and last game).
The last panel, on page 20, was a cut idea for the outro. Young DM snoozing while young/human Beylord is playing his melody on his lyre. The one you hear at the lake in Arvale Short Tales. Text would appear on the empty space to their left.
The melody makes use of exactly 16 notes.
And if you look closely at the lyre in human Beylord’s reference sheet, you see how the lyre has exactly 16 strings…
…
There is this gag about how instruments are never animated correctly. How if you were to copy the movements of a 2D animated piano player, you would get a dissonant mess and not the piano music you hear in the animation. That’s because it’s supposed to only look/feel like the instrument is played correctly, and if it actually does or not is irrelevant. Plus it would be insane for an animator to go through the giant extra amount of effort to make it accurate. Especially because most people, unless you are a musician, wouldn’t even notice it is inaccurate.
But the thing is.
🤖Jaybot7 is a musician.
🤖Jaybot7 is also the same guy who composed the melody in the first place.
🤖Jaybot7 would notice.
(I can’t believe I actually planned to do this)
In the end though, I opted for something that would more closely pay homage to the Arvale games.
THE OUTSIDER꒦꒷ starts with footage from one of the games, so it would be fitting if it ends with art that also resembles footage from the games. Not to mention the original idea only included Beylord playing, but not DeMenchev joining in with his barrel (very important!!!) with the music now changing to play DeMenchev’s leitmotif as well.
The audio for the outro was originally a lot longer, way too long, as well.
[Anna Rosen] "John? What is it? You act like you haven't seen me in months... "
Download Arvale 2 : Ocean of Time for free here.
I saw this post and had a vision haha.
Phew! This painting took a while. So... let me indulge you in some details about this.
I didn't choose to bathe it in very warm, sunset colours just because they are pretty. Those are the colours of Arvel's 2 title screen. In fact, you can bathe my entire blog in those colours by clicking the option to switch to light mode =] (on desktop at least)
The dark night colours are based on Arvel 1's title screen. And the entire switching between day and night is a refrence itself to Arvale Short Tales, where night and day play a huge role! Heh ehe heh.
The room itself is based on... well, Anna's room!
The kid in the foreground is Alex, another character who has a close relationship with DeMenchev. He even appears in the good ending screen so of course I had to put him in here as well. =)
I compiled it all into one little image here:
Arvale 2 is a really lovely RPG from 2005 (I think) please check it out!
