20 August 2024

• Concept Art: I created some concept art for MC, using piccrew (link to original artist components). This is a working prototype and was passed on to main character artist. Small details like rose in hair were added to test out small ways that the MC could express and experience even a sliver of happiness, beauty & strength within a sterile environment. MC would be in a plain white OR blue hospital gown.

• Character Artist Contacted & drafts drawn: Skye produced some rough sketches based on her art style, and we are currently refining it before moving on to full-body sketches:

• Trello Board: Trello board made for managing tasks, and collaborators invited and joined. Completely necessary pixel art & aesthetic theming was added.

• Hospital Reflections: Visited the hospital serving as the inspiration for this game, spent some time in the hallways again, taking photos, and then reflective journalling on the way home (i romanticize train rides so much). A little heavy so I won't share here, but helped to get the thought process churning away. Also: bonus therapy for myself :D.

• Story Outline: A rough proposed draft of some key events I'd like in the story was created, already looking to be a lot longer than anticipated so definitely will need to cut it all down. Next, I plan to take this to a large sheet of paper and map it out (branching paths and all) as well as map out the intensity of the VN across the story's course.

Luna and I are also playing a bunch of Visual Novels (see list below) for inspo as well as to get some casual exposure into how they tackle pacing and length, too. We had an extensive playtesting session last Sunday :3.

• Some testing of sketch-i-fying locations: Wow, Microsoft Word is an absolute godsend with this tool. Could not find anything like it, even in Photoshop (without it taking a bajillion steps and it being unnecessarily complex)