Backgrounds are sometimes overlooked when we play visual novels. I for one am guilty of this, so today I would like to, well, I guess you can say repent.
When you have multiple illustrators, there is always a chance your art styles will clash. The easiest solution, of course, would be to feature a single artist in your project. In reality, however, other concerns come into play. Schedules, motivation, workload—there are many factors to juggle.
In The Last Birdling, I have opted for a relatively safe route. That is, to feature different artists for the backgrounds and characters. Since these elements are quite separate, it makes clashes less likely.
Tooaya is The Last Birdling’s artist, while Juliestorybored is our background illustrator. As the assets trickled in, we first put together a test to make sure the elements fit:
Lighting changes based on the time of day, so we must have all our bases covered:
Once the test is complete, we can proceed with production:
I prefer not to use language like “my team” or “my artist”. Once someone joins the team, we are in this together. When it was time to design Tayo’s village, Julia took the lead and did a great job:
The Last Birdling has been in production for two years. During that time, I often study other visual novels for inspiration. The Starcraft VN caught my interest back when it first released. I was particularly awestruck by the city nightscape that animated into place:
My previous project, Cursed Sight, featured backgrounds painted by the talented Tooaya. However, none of them animated during the game:
As I learn from other creators, I apply those lessons into future projects. In The Last Birdling, I have coded CGs and backgrounds that contain parallax animations, which work especially well for long distance shots:
Sometimes I am tempted to say my ideas are my own. If I ever claim that in the future, you can call me out for being a liar. I am a fan as much as anyone, so I will always be a student first.
Thank you for reading :yoyo:!
The Last Birdling: Wallpapers and avatars
Hi everyone! I started Persona 5 quite a few weeks ago, and before I even installed the game, I picked up Futaba’s wallpaper from the PSN Store to put myself in that mode. The Persona Mode, I guess.
When both players and creators are in on the hype, that is when we have a great time. For instance, I can’t wait for Umaru season two, so I want to retweet messages from the official account, I want to support them with a bluray purchase, that sort of thing.
I hope to support The Last Birdling in any way I can, so today, I have put together some wallpapers and avatars for gamers to use:
If anyone decides to support me by using these assets, I am the one who is thankful, not the other way around. You are doing me a massive favor, and in the process, I hope it will help build excitement for that September 1st release.
Gamers want flexibility these days. Maybe you want the logo in a different position, or perhaps gone altogether. Depending on where your icons are positioned, you may also prefer the character(s) to shift left or right. To cater for this, I have included separate elements in each wallpaper for you to adjust as needed:
These wallpapers are available in the highest available res. Even if you extracted those assets from the game, they will not be available at this size. Hopefully at least one of them will suit your tastes.
The Last Birdling: How to handle perspective shifts
As we know, The Last Birdling alternates between Bimonia and Tayo’s perspectives. Today, I would like to explore some of the details behind this system.
The Last Birdling is written from a first person perspective, so the viewpoint character’s personality will come through in everything she observes. Her inner thoughts, reactions, they are all distinctly her own. On paper, or on screen in our case, this means different word choices as well as sentence structures.
That said, I despise making characters act a certain way just to showcase their uniqueness. If you study writing books, you will often be advised to make every character sound different, to a point where you can tell who is speaking even without dialogue tags.
Now, imagine a group of your friends. If you closed your eyes, and they all had the same voice, would you be able to tell them apart? I for one would have a hard time. For me, being truthful takes priority above all rules.
Since we are in a visual medium, we may as well take advantage of that when it comes to perspective shifts. Notice how the UI changes to green in the screenshot below:
This means we have switched to Tayo’s perspective in chapter two. The same concept applies to decision points:
In the world of traditional novels, shifting perspectives mid-scene is ill advised. To avoid disorienting readers, we want to jump into different heads during a scene or chapter break. The Last Birdling does not feature chapter titles, but there are end of scene cards to signal a perspective change:
This introduces several concerns in terms of programming. For instance, if players return to the previous scene, will the UI switch back as expected?
What about loading another saved game mid-session? I hope all the common scenarios have been addressed. We will see if players spot any edge cases after the game’s release.
So why would we alternate between perspectives? Once readers recognize the pattern, it is no longer something they need to worry about, which makes for an ideal reading experience. If the view changes went as follows:
And so on, gamers would stumble every time we reached a new scene. We want to set up roadblocks for our characters, not our players.
To round things off, The Last Birdling follows the journeys of Bimonia and Tayo from childhood to adolescence. By the time these two reach their teens, they have suffered through an awful lot. To reflect both their physical and mental shifts, the UI will also update accordingly:
The website contains a demo version, which illustrates how the perspective changes work. Please feel free to have a look.
Thank you for reading :yoyo:!
The Last Birdling - Artbook preview
Ever since Unhack 1, I have featured digital artbooks for my Steam releases, and The Last Birdling will be no different. I want to give you a preview today, and I also wish to detail some of the lessons I have learned through the past five years.
Above are several pages from Cursed Sight’s artbook. As you can see, the layout is similar to the artbook from Unhack. My websites also share the same template across projects. Unhack 2 and The Last Birdling feature a new template, while past projects use an older layout. I create both these websites and artbooks on my own, so I make use of templates to speed up development time.
My artbooks never feature story summaries. If you have taken the time to open these artbooks, I want to reward that effort with some new knowledge. Behind the scene processes, mistakes I have made, things along those lines.
I put Unhack 2’s artbook together during a trip, and I spent all of my hotel hours on those pages. Every time I read through the artbook, I would spot one new spelling mistake, or perhaps phrases that were awkward to read. Before you know it, a couple of days have already gone by. Even if all the assets are available, an artbook is not something we can cobble together a day before release.
And now, here are some preview shots of The Last Birdling’s artbook:
As usual, there will be character art, CGs and background illustrations available. Every finalized artwork will come with a piece of commentary.
On top of that, just like with Unhack 2, I will include all the sketches used throughout the project:
I never used to include roughs, because I wanted to show these artworks at their best. Then one day, I read a review for one of my artbooks, and it complained about the lack of sketches. That made me realize how foolish I had been. When I am a fan of other games, I always want to see the drafts, so why would it be different for anyone else? I had failed to think from the players’ perspective, but thanks to that review, I was able to make the switch.
As usual, I hope you may consider wishlisting and/or joining our Steam community:
Recently, I have started to follow upcoming games that I want to keep on my radar. If you are willing to do the same for The Last Birdling, I would be so grateful. The “follow” and “add to your wishlist” buttons are available on the Steam page. I will be active on the community board, so I hope to hang out with you there.
As the release date approaches, I plan to post a new article every week. These articles will be available on the Steam page as well as my Facebook, Tumblr and all the other usual suspects. My social media links can be found here:
I am thankful to those who messaged in to say they fell in love with Bimonia and Tayo after the demo. After hundreds of development hours, those two have grown lives of their own. Once the game is released, I hope their story can be shared with as many people as possible.
