I noticed I haven’t drawn ANYTHING in a while so…

I decided to draw a self insert of me (Uncle Mugen) with one of the strongest Touhou character out there… Cirno…

Not much to say but…

“POOF” (Disappears)

UNCLE MUGEN’S BACKGROUND STUDIES – The City/Town Commercial District… probably THE most difficult but often necessary background graphics to make

First… I’ll post an unrelated image of Uncle Mugen to attract your attention…

In a visual novel… there are two very important things that stand out… the NOVEL part and the VISUAL part… unfortunately I Uncle Mugen is not a very talented writer so we concentrate, refine and master what we are good at and that is Backgrounds… In a typical Visual Novel you got at least a set of WHAT HAVE’s like the protagonist room, school corridor, the classroom and so forth… it is very understandable why there are so few people who are even willing to do BG’s especially for Visual Novels… it’s not gratifying enough… in case of a character sprite or let’s say an event scene… all you need to do is to draw something decent… not good but decent in order for your work to sell (in case you’re into commercial VN) or get recognition, fame and bragging rights (if you’re doing it for free) but that’s not the case for people who do backgrounds for OELVN’s (Visual Novels)… Nope!… In order for you to be EVEN slightly recognized, you’ve got to be really good as in godly good like Makoto Shinkai or that other Guy who based his backgrounds on real photos and paint them post apocalyptic style or this other guy who draw very large, very detailed BG’s where you can see the tiniest minute detail but for the rest of us mere mortals… our works will be no different from the next guy… OK so there are still various shades of gray in between regarding detail and skill level but still…

Here is a typical example of Godlike background is… very detailed, very beautiful as if you wanted to get inside the game and simply stroll there…

…

Old Kitchen BG for Sepia Tears

So let’s see… I got a chance to skim back to the previous BG’s I’ve made before I’ve used those renderers and Jeepers!… they actually look uh… horrible…

New and Improved Kitchen BG for Sepia Tears

I now feel bad for making them… I shall now do corrective measures and remake them starting with this kitchen…

Finally! An updated tutorial on how to create beautiful background graphics for use in Visual Novels or OELVN using Google Sketchup and Photoshop

Finally! An updated tutorial on how to create beautiful background graphics for use in Visual Novels or OELVN using Sketchup and Photoshop! Perfect for people like me who are untalented in drawing backgrounds. I finally managed to streamline the process enough to create a tutorial so I can share my technique. With this, it is now one step closer to that quick, cheap and beautiful background graphics that are inaccessible for us mere mortals…

Or you can view the video tutorial [HERE] in fullscreen. I recommend viewing it in 720p for maximum clarity.

With this now all of our backgrounds will look the same… Lol!

Note:

• This tutorial is perfect for outdoor shots but not applicable for inside shots especially rooms with limited light. I’ll do a tutorial on that soon…
• While I used SU Podium Renderer on this tutorial… it is expensive and can be replaced by any other renderer ( there are several freeware renderers available) as long as it has the option to render in clay mode (textureless). One good example is Kerkythea [ www.kerkythea.net/joomla/ ] and IDX Renditioner Free Edition [ www.imsidesign.com/Products/Renditioner/RenditionerExpressv2/tabid/1904/Default.aspx ]
• Sketchup is a 32 bit application (Seriously why?) so even if you have monster memory you’ll still hit the ceiling sooner or later so be careful and not to put too much load on the scene.

Thanks to Sake-Chan (Sake Bento) for lending her beautiful voice and little_misere for the Lucy sprite…

“POOF” (Disappears)

Moral Lesson: Don’t judge a tool until you have tried it yourself… you might be in for a surprise… especially a CDR-King product

Now to get your attention. What you see below is the result of an unplanned one hour of sketching using a really REALLY cheap CDR-King Tablet.

Philippine Bureau of Customs – Fucking Blatant Corrupt Crooks!

Excuse me for a bit… I know this is not Visual Novel related but I’m gonna make an exception today. I need an outlet for this rage I’m currently have… It was Friday morning and I woke up to the nice scent of breakfast looking at the lovely sunshine. It was a perfect day and I am in a really good mood I even managed to improve and deliver an improved BG to darkspartan for our collaboration project (click here to view it)… that is until I opened my email and received something really… unpleasant…

PHILIPPINE BUREAU OF CUSTOMS… WHY ARE YOU GUYS SUCH A BUNCH OF FUCKING CORRUPT TO THE BONE CROOKS! GO TO HELL AND BURN! PLEASE DIE IN THE MOST EXCRUCIATING MANNER!!! I HOPE YOUR DEATHS ARE PROLONG AND PAINFUL!!!

Long story short… They expect me to pay about Php40,000 (US$925.50) for a shipment that is itself just worth Php6521.50 (US$150). For fucks sake guys!… it’s just slabs of rocks… LITERALLY SLABS OF ROCKS!!!…

Fine here’s the breakup…

Benchmark / Tariff / Duties & Taxes – Php 18,700.00
Storage Fee – Php   8,000.00
Entry Form – Php   1,500.00
Locator – Php       300.00
Document Processing – Php   4,870.00
Broker’s Fee  - Php   5,200.00
Miscellaneous – Php #%@&$!!! (at this point, I’m already foaming in the mouth)

And you know what… this is the second time I received the same shipment and the previous one I paid for far FAR less… this breakup not only doesn’t make any sense… it’s pure BULLSHIT!!! And even more rage inducing is the fact that if I didn’t pay and claim it today (September 16)… it will be declared abandoned… YOU FUCKING MOTHER FUCKERS!!! FINE!!! GO AHEAD AND SHOVE THOSE SLABS UP YOUR ASSES!!!

So there you have it… I finally got to experience Philippine Corruption via Bureau of Customs first hand. I’m truly ashamed to be a Filipino right now. This is corruption. Really BLATANT corruption…

I… I need to get out for a bit and… forget about everything… I don’t know if my heart can take this stress… must breath in and breath out… relax… relax…

I’m… I’m going back to sleep… and when I wake up…

“POOF” (#%^&@%$!!!)

Nakakahiya kayo mga putang ina nyong taga Bureau of Customs! Ang kakapal at sobrang garapal ang kasakiman nyo! Masahol pa kayo sa kriminal!!! Mahiya naman kayo… nung ni re-compute ko yung mga dapat kong bayaran hindi naman dapat umabot ng ganyan kalaki! Mga sindikato kayo ng magnanakaw!

Koe de Oshigoto! OVA – Forget the anime… I’m looking at the Backgrounds…

First, the final result of this endeavor…

All of that resulted in this… thing…

OK so it all started when I was really REALLY bored and decided to surf the internet for my weekly dose of porn from my favorite streaming site when I stumbled upon this rather lame looking Hentai thumbnail accompanied by a very VERY low rating. Curious, I clicked on it and realized why it got so many thumbs / vote down… it’s actually softcore… even more softcore than the other anime where you got these white haired twins doing the macarena but that’s another story…

Just one post… just this one post…

I’ve been really tight lipped on what I’ve been up to recently to the point that I’ve stopped going to 4chan lately… and the move has paid off so far by making me concentrate more on… whatever it is I’m doing… but I can’t take it anymore… I just had to post at least once…  who knows… maybe some of my fans are getting worried about my inactivity… oh well… I’ll just leave a few graphics here (Sorry for the watermarks but this is still a WIP collaboration with Spartan Works and Gang)

“POOF’ (Disappears)

…and DONE!

After submitting to Sake-Chan the final BG graphic for Hanami X2… I now have some breathing room for a little bit of… creativity (LOL! Parody tiem!… yes it was intentionally misspelled)… seriously, it’s been a long ride… can’t wait for the final release…

So uh… I’ve been very very busy behind the scenes… most of the work I did were either polishing my GUI (again) or trying to steal err… I mean learn from other people’s Ren’py code and figure out how it works  and a few collaborations here and there (Dammit Greeny… even with a guide, I still end up being stuck most of the time… Lol!)

Godly character sprites by Misteen

Well… gotta go for now… BTW! Unrelated… Beavis and Butthead will be back! YES!!!… CORNHOLIO!!!

“POOF” (Disappears)

Adding simple animations for (Multi Layered) Sprites to be used in Renpy to make your project look… alive…… The Lazy way… again…

OK… Using suggestions by Ren doing multi-layered using Photoshop puppet pin tool since Motion Portrait system is nowhere available for more mortals like me… I redid the whole thing and I was (somewhat)  able to (somehow) imitate the effect I was after… and that is do a Motion Portrait like micro movements to make a static image more lifelike simulating breathing… Now there were several limitations in this method mainly I cannot tilt sideways or diagonally sideways more than 5 degrees since there really is no material to be shown beyond that (remember, this is not true 3D)

(You were right DaFool… too bad Motion Portrait doesn’t seem to be available anywhere other than being on user end products for… “BARF!” Apple… don’t get me wrong… I was coerced on owning an IPhone… only to be disappointed by it… I’m just waiting for the 2 year subscription contract to expire)

Anyway, where was I?…. Ah!… I’m planning on using this and apply it to individual sprites and animate them in Renpy for my upcoming OELVN projects (Aka English Visual Novels) Now to solve the problem of finding a decent frame-rate that can play on all systems high and low spec. Right now, I’m aiming at 12FPS….

OK I go for now…

“POOF” (Disappears)

Edit: I just realized, the breathing animation makes it look like Lucy the Second had some chest material which is not the case… she’s supposed to be as flat as a board and………..