The Golden Glow

Quick Look - The Makings of a Shot

The Golden Glow »Devlog

52 days ago byAiloYeena

Share this post:

Share on Bluesky Share on Twitter Share on Facebook

Hello again, how are you?

It's been a couple of weeks since my last post, and I wanted to talk a little bit about my process for producing a 'shot', seeing as there's quite a few on the pipeline.

~~Wouldn't it be great if I had a topic to talk about every couple of weeks? Oh well...~~

So, what is a 'shot'?

There's quite a few definitions for the term 'shot' depending on who you ask. For the purposes of The Orange Glow and future VNs, I'll use the anime version of 'shot', which states that any sequence/scene that requires a new background to be drawn, is a new 'shot'.

This terminology isn't a hard rule, since I'm sure each animator will have their own definition for the word, but still, that's the meaning I'm using for my projects.

Alright, now let's take a look at the shot list for the first file of the novel, A0:

Ah, yes, who doesn't want to see the corner of the staircase?

Jokes aside, that's quite the list, so let's talk about The Process™.

The Process™

To no-one's surprise, The Process™ begins with what you would expect: writing.

Well, it actually starts with an idea, or just a 'scene' I'd like to portray, which for the purposes of my work, a 'scene' is a combination of writing + one or many different 'shots'.

For example, 'The attic scene' as I call internally has a multitude of shots, and runs through the entire process of the characters unlocking the attic's hatch, exploring it, finding things, having a disagreement, etc etc. So, a 'scene' can contain multiple 'shots'.

Anyway, after writing a scene, or working out a specific 'moment' I'd like to portray, I will either sketch itvery roughly and do an early test of the shots with the narrative in the VN Engine I use (Naninovel and Unity) to get a sense of the length and timing of the scene itself, and adjust the writing or the shots to make it tidier. If it feels wonky, then it gets scrapped. Pretty simple.

Once I've settled on the list of shots I wanna use, it's time to work on polishing it up and working on the 'framing' of the characters in it. Most of the time it's pretty straight forward. Usually I use a movie, tv series, show, my own photos, or even a video game's photo mode, as a base/reference to tighten my own framing of the characters/environment.

If it's something too specific, or has a complex background with a lot of perspective lines, etc, I make my own using Unity.

Making it 3D

Sometimes it's easier to just place a bunch of simple geometric shapes in a 3D space, then run around with a digital camera than it is to dig through references, fiddle with perspective, eyeballing things, or using distort transforms, etc. I'm aware that many drawing programs have their own tools to help with the process, but I'm faster with just... doing things in 3D.
I'm sure at some point I'm going to download Blender and 3D model the things I need, but I'd like to avoid adding that step into my process until absolutely necessary. Until then, primitives and free to use models will remain my best friends.

But alright, what does that look like behind the scenes?

A bit silly, but it works pretty well for me.

I move and adjust the FOV of the camera at will, and place a simple reference of Alex so I have an 'idea' of the space that the character (or multiple characters) will take on the frame, as well as for object/environment scale, etc.

Once all of those things are in place, I export the Camera view using an Unity Editor script. Pretty simple!

Now, let's quickly go over the rest of the drawing process, since there's nothing fancy here that you haven't seen 100s of times.

Quick Step by Step

Throw the Camera render/reference into Photoshop

Add the Character Sketches/Expressions

Do the background and character lines

Add in the extra characters, their colors, standalone objects, and sneak in the other pose of this shot into your Devlog.

Shade the rest of the Owl by adding blur, layer effects, and spot the mistakes you've made that you'll fix after writing this Devlog.

And that's it!

The shot is complete and ready to go into the code! That wasn't so bad! We've made a (1) shot, with a (1) expression!

Even if the number of drawings is a bit daunting, the process is actually pretty chill, so it goes by pretty fast.

I mean, it's not like there are other files, and a bunch of shots with multiple characters to frame with an overabundance of expressions that you want to make, so you have to be really stingy with the frames you'll end up working on. Oh...

This is the trimmed version, I swear!

In closing...

There's quite a lot of art being worked on, but there's also quite a few 'cheat shots' as I call them, with a static background/environment or camera angles that linger for long periods of time while there's long stretches of chatter and narration. The A0 file is also a bit of an anomaly with its very lengthy conversation scene, but over time I'm sure there's going to be a really nice 'rhythm' between the 'cheat shots' and the character/expression focused shots.

So yeah, that's it for this Devlog.

Not as chunky as the other one, but hey, I like when people talk about the quirks in their processes, so, why not talk about the quirk in my own?

I hope you enjoyed it, and keep an eye out on my socials for some random artworks and WIPs from the project.

Bsky,Twitter.

See you around!