As the gloom of May gives way to the oppressive heat of June here in Cali, it's time for this month's update.
Work has progressed well on the writing side. Not only did we do a pass through the entire Cathedral story line, but we also went back and polished up a Day 1 a bit more. Much of the work consisted on flow improvements for the dialogue and improving animations. However, we did another look at the scenes and reconsidered them based on feedback.
Unfortunately, as with VNs, changing early scenes can have drastic changes to later scenes. The alterations we thought would be both, costly to do and had greater impacts on the later story line after Cathedral.
From there we continued with Day 2 production. Besides continuing with our animation overhauls, Day 2 saw quite a few edits. Much of which were relics of the original script that needed to be changed to improve the flow of the script around it.
Moving on from Day 2, Day 3 has seen some big improvements. The script is set to grow by about 2000 words as we added more routing. While Day 3 already had some of the most routing, we decided we wanted a bit more exposition to explore some of the backstory happening with the heroines from previous days. To really improve on some of the scenes which then follow up in Day 3.
Our progress on this added routing is nearing completion as we refine the later script to address the changes.
On the art side we're elated about the progress Conn has been making with the scene he's been working on. It's just one part of the scene but, it is officially our first background outside of Cathedral!
Apologies it isn't the full color version. But we have to save some things for the final game!
Conn just completed the color version of this and frankly, it had some of us speechless. You can get some idea of the level of shading he does even in the sketch above. Which is actually not his first attempt at the scene.
Much of Conn's concept art for Dust and Air has been done with simple pencil and paper. Not that unlike Faith who you may have seen drawing some of our characters on her stream. However, more of the concept images we have from Conn have much more shading done.
He's quite meticulous in his craft. While he'd probably be dissatisfied about this Calle image on the right because it's one of his earlier pieces, it certainly stood out in the early days of this project's development.
It is no surprised that when he colors his images, we often times have outright changed a character to match his interpretation. It just becomes iconic.
Not that he is the only one to accomplish that feat. Both Faith and Georgy have brought characters to life in such ways that we either have to go back and rework the script, or we build out sections of the story just with them in mind.
Speaking of those who have great impacts on the story. We're happy to announce that the first new songs are being tested in the game right now.
Gimmen Gong has been bringing out some themes which have been really making a deep impact on the mood in some of the scenes. We're looking forward to upcoming demo releases which will have more of his work. The royalty free temp music is officially gone!
Coming up in June we'll be meeting to discuss our summer schedule, along with our continued music meetings. Summer has traditionally been our most busy time of the year and this year looks no different. Each day brings us closer.
So, till next month, see you in the skies!
