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Tag: Blue Rose

Blue Rose Characters – Lena

Posted on July 24, 2011 by LTB

Guess I can (very) slowly start to introduce the characters in Blue Rose.

The obvious choice for the first one is:

Lena – the protagonist.

The last visual novel I wrote (which spanned more than 5 minutes) was Angelic Orbs. The protagonist in that story was Kevin, a boy from the country who… well, was kinda helpless. Kevin was not the bravest of men, and certainly no warrior, often resulting in him having to improvise during the more dangerous situations in the story.

Lena is something different – apart from being a girl, she is also a Templar of the Blue Rose, a high order of elite knights in the kingdom of Tanves. She believes in being able to hold one’s own and in fighting for what is right. Which means she can kick some serious butt if it comes down to it.

She is also the only important character in the story without any in-game sprites. That doesn’t mean you won’t get to see her in cg’s though.

Although Lena believes in being strong, she soon realises that in reality she has hardly ever made an independent choice in her life. She also comes to the realisation that these choices will end up having great consequences for everything around her.

One of the key points I had in mind when starting out on Blue Rose, was that I wanted a protagonist with a clear, strong personality. She would have a name, a face and an important role in what happens. She is not just the protagonist, but the centre of the story – and the reader will go through the events together with her, aiding her in her choices.

Hopefully you will enjoy this journey when it’s finally done – and that you’ll be able to care for Lena, even in spite of her faults.

Erin’s transformation sequence(?)

Posted on February 12, 2011 by LTB

Usually I would never show off crappy art like this publicly before I fix it, but I thought I’d tell a little about how I work on the art for Blue Rose (and most other things, really).

Some days a w.i.p drawing just looks awesome while you’re working on it, but then when it’s done, you look at it and think ’OMG what was I doing!?’

Ewww (especially when mirrored).

At times I get lucky and I only need to clean up the lineart a bit and make sure the head has the right shape (one of my sloppy areas). And then there are times when proportions are thrown out the window and they look like that example up there…

Poor Erin.

Actually I could redraw the whole thing and that might be easier, but I’m too lazy. So instead I try to patch up the lineart I have, although the amount of work ends up pretty much the same!

Hours later…

Yay, much better!

After this, I can finally go on to drawing her different expressions and send her off to my colourist… until next time I open the file and realise ‘aww I should have fixed this and that too!!’ <_<;;

Usually I would never show off crappy art like this publicly before I fix it, but I thought I’d tell a little about how I work on the art for Blue Rose (and most other things, really).

Some days a w.i.p drawing just looks awesome while you’re working on it, but then when it’s done, you look at it and think ’OMG what was I doing!?’

(Erin pose2, before fixes)

Ewww (especially when mirrored).

At times I get lucky and I only need to clean up the lineart a bit and make sure the head has the right shape (one of my sloppy areas). And then there are times when they look like that example up there…

Poor Erin.

Actually I could redraw the whole thing and that might be easier, but I’m too lazy. So instead I try to patch up the lineart I have, although the amount of work ends up pretty much the same!

Hours later…

(Fixed Erin sprite)

Yay, much better!

2010-2011

Posted on January 25, 2011 by LTB

It’s 2011 already! Time to follow the example of others and make another post looking back at what we have accomplished so far. Hey, it’s still January, I can still make it!

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2010:

In the beginning of 2010 I was chatting with some friends, discussing what we were hoping to do in the new year. My humble hope was to at least finish the script of the large VN I had begun working on, Blue Rose. Much to my relief I succeeded in this goal! Not too long ago the final route was finally written, and the script is now going through proofreading and editing.

Also, through the power of outsourcing, all backgrounds and in-game music tracks were finished before the new year as well! Blue Rose has really seen a lot of progress, and now I’m focusing on finishing character lineart and just got a great colourist on board.

As a part of my work with Blue Rose something else happened in 2010 – I finally decided to found my little commercial game company, White Cat. So far it has had a humble beginning. I haven’t really done any advertising as I haven’t finished any real products yet, but I made a small site for it and also decided on a name. Hopefully it will all look a little better by the time I have something to sell.

I also released the two very short vn’s, My Eternal Rival and Dust, both part of events running on Teacup and both somewhat related to each other.

My Eternal Rival was a bit of an experiment in making fast but pretty visuals for a short mini-story. I think I succeeded in this – even though the sprites for this game definitely have their faults, they are still some of my prettiest art on my DA portfolio. (Damn, makes me cry when I work so long and hard on other things!)

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Non-VN related things:

Unfortunately I had to pretty much shove Angelic Orbs aside in 2010. Nothing at all has been made for this story this year. Le sigh.

A secondary project for White Cat was begun though, the small rpg called “The Nest Egg”. This was for when Blue Rose was driving me nuts.

And then were regular commissions taking over from time to time…

Phew, even though I didn’t really release anything major, it still felt like an awfully busy year…

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2011:

A new year! So, what will I hope to accomplish this time?

– Release Blue Rose sometime in the first half of 2011. Go-go!

– Promote The Nest Egg to primary project

– Begin work on ??? as new secondary project (won’t reveal anything about this one yet.)

Those are what is certain. Then follows wishful thinking:

– Return to work on Angelic Orbs ;_;

– Blue Rose is amazingly successful <_<

– Finish another game!

– Improoove on… everything.

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That’s it for this long summary post. See you all in 2011 🙂

Another milestone reached

Posted on November 24, 2010 by LTB

What I didn’t mention in the earlier blog post is that a major milestone has been reached in the development of Blue Rose – the script is practically complete! The last word of the last ending has been written, completing all 5 routes of the story. Huzzah!

When I say “practically” it means that I still need to make another few runs through the script and fill up any gaps that connect all the branching that occurs in a game such as this. And after that, I’ll have to pass it on to a couple of proofreaders for a final check. (Anyone interested?)

As for other parts of production, I can say that almost all background pictures are done as well. A good deal of character art (sprites and CG’s) have been finished too, except they only exist as lineart thus far. Half the music is as good as done, and I’m getting more of that shortly.

So that’s pretty much it. Sounds good, but there is still far too much work left! (I still have to code it all together, *le sigh*.) Which means I better get back to it.

Silence before the storm

Posted on November 22, 2010 by LTB

So, about time I actually showed some real art from Blue Rose. Except it’s still only lineart!

But here you have the main cast of the game – the protagonist Lena in the front, and all the pursue-able characters around her:

Aran is being all mysterious in the back, turning his face away from the audience. Not to make him super mysterious or anything, but he’s never been that close with the rest of the group anyway! You’ll get to see what he actually looks like later…

Character names from left to right: Gavin, Lena in front, Aran in the back, Erin, Tobias looking annoyed in the front and lastly Simon.

Now back to drawing art that actually appears in-game…

Blue Rose update

Posted on September 21, 2010 by LTB

Time to post an update on Blue Rose! The script is nearing its end, and I am nearing my limit… *_*

I have been writing on this story for a little over a year now, most intently the past couple of months, and it has now grown past 105.000 words which means the end result will be more than twice as long as Angelic Orbs. Of course this one also has 5 “capture-able” characters which increases the volume of story by quite a bit.

The first pieces of real, finished art have also started to trickle in! (Mostly because I’m not making it, hah.)

I got a real talented BG artist on the team, and he has made some pretty promising things so far. I’m looking forward to when the parts of script already inserted into renpy will evolve to more than just a black screen with text. I want to show it off… but I should probably wait… <_<;

Character lineart (which I am doing) has also begun taking shape now, you saw a short glimpse of Simon’s sprite in the last blog post. I have some ideas of how to use art in this game that I hope I can pull off.

Hmm making interesting blog posts about a game is hard when art is one of the last things to be produced – no shiny pictures to post…

So… all I really need to get sorted is music. (I’ll be looking for a colourist soon too, but that I’m not as worried about at the moment.)

There is no end to this! OTL

Blue Rose – Character development?

Posted on August 30, 2010 by LTB

During the writing of a story some characters can develop in very surprising ways. I’m sure other authors know this well. In the early stages of Blue Rose, I mapped out important characters and the roles they were going to play along with their personalities and stances on the main plot. But as is usually the case, things take sudden changes in direction when these characters jump off the drawing table and are actually let loose in the script.

It doesn’t matter how much preparation and planning is done, the real development happens in the actual writing.

One of these is Gavin, for who I first finished writing the final ending and epilogue. Gavin is the superficial skirt-chaser who would say a nice word to any lady walking past, without that necessarily having any deeper meaning to him. At least that’s what he was supposed to be. That part of him still exists, but he has taken on quite a life of his own and shown me sides of him that I never knew would come to be. When I yell “come on Gavin, you shouldn’t care about silly things like that!” he’ll reply with a defiant “but I DO!!”

It’s the same with the rest. Erin who was supposed to be the frail, sensitive girl has ended up kicking aside anyone who gets in her way (especially Gavin gets to feel this), determined to make it on her own. Due to that she sometimes borders on being somewhat of a troublemaker and pain in the ass, but I hope the readers will be able to see past her flaws and see her good intentions 😉

Simon has moved from passive non-caring role to someone who is serially confused about what to do with Lena. (Serially confused. I love that phrase. Guess where I stole it from and I’ll give you a cookie).

Especially Simon has changed so much and acted so opposite of what was originally planned that for a while I wasn’t even sure how he would shape up in his own route, where he finally gets the chance to step up front. The result has been… interesting. As usual he has a tendency to draw the short end of the stick, but I like what he has turned into – even his bad ending feels important to me, and really show what kind of person he is. For a short (insane) moment I even considered making it canon when thinking of what general consequences that ending has for Lena’s future life. (But that’s just too sad, isn’t it? Let’s hope for things to turn out better than that!)

Just like the other two characters I have written so far, Simon is now a hard competitor for being my favourite. Now it’s Tobias’ turn.

Which means I am done writing the first 3 out of 5 routes in Blue Rose. Hurray!

Names and origin of Blue Rose

Posted on August 1, 2010 by LTB

Time for a post with content about the development of one of my current games.

Before Blue Rose I originally intended to work on different project under the w.i.p. name “Academy”. I had done a lot of script planning and world building for this project, but when the writing of the script began in earnest, I ended up shifting over to something different – from the supernatural mystery taking place in a huge castle/academy and with a male lead, it turned into a story taking place in a distant corner of the same country, but with a completely different plot and cast (the main lead now being female). That is Blue Rose.

Some things carried over from the first project since Blue Rose was supposed to take place in the same world. One was the attitude towards magic and users thereof in the country of the main character, the other was usage of names. This country is called Tanves.

When creating the setting for Academy I decided to use names for the characters that are used where I live myself, since the place is very European in appearance anyway – names that are ordinary here in Denmark, but also acceptable in English (no pronunciation issues, hopefully!). Since Blue Rose takes place in the same country this rule also applies here, and that has taken part in deciding names for characters like Lena, Simon and Tobias.

Gavin is from the neighbouring country of Helen and thus has a very different name that you wouldn’t see often around here. The same with Aran, who is something completely different than everyone else in the story. The sisters Erin and Marie also come from the same place as Gavin, but! Useless trivia will tell you that these two are 2nd generation immigrants from Tanves, and as such they are named after the same rules as Lena.

I could keep talking about this by mentioning last names as well, but I’ll spare you…

“Academy” is still a project that I intend to work on as I think it has some very interesting characters and a premise that I like. Maybe it will become my next vn project when Blue Rose is finished.

A little late, but…

Posted on January 4, 2010 by LTB

Everyone else is doing it! ™

So here is a few words on my 2009. Well, the one related to my creative endeavours at least.

2009 saw my first release of a visual novel, Angelic Orbs: Broken Memories. It had taken me two years to make, and it was finally time to get it out of the door. In the end I couldn’t do all I wanted with it, but this seems to be a general problem to vn creators, and I’m still pretty happy with the result. Hopefully I can pull myself together and release the version with fixed english some time in the near future.

I also had a second release out, the small short story My Eternal Rival, which was featured as a part of the Cute, Light and Fluffy project. MER was very short and non-serious, and most of it was written on small pieces of paper while at work. But I still got very attached to the project, and I don’t regret taking part in it at all.

And so came to tough decision of what to work on next. I had a few ideas on hand that I was very interested in doing, and even started one of them. But in the end something (I’m not even sure what) changed my mind, and production began on the script for a new game set in the same general universe. An otome game. Something I thought I’d never make. But I’m taking up the challenge, and will hopefully succeed in making something interesting for girls to play, without it sinking completely into useless fluff. But that is for this year. Back to 2009.

Apart from the two mentioned VN’s I didn’t manage to much else of my own out there. My comic is still lying dormant although I constantly wish to return to it, but life has been too busy for me to work both on my game projects, the several new commissions that I received this year, and the comic at the same time. Hopefully I will be able to get something done on that soon.

That’s right, there is something else that I had released. The very first TCG cards with my illustrations on them.

All in all I think I came a long way this year when looking back at these achievements, along with my amazing 2-month long stay in Wales. But enough talking about me!

As Hime mentioned, there has also been a lot going on when it comes to translations of Japanese visual novels. Most of it something that the majority of VN fans thought would never happen, like Higurashi getting an official release in english, Jast partnering up with Nitro+ and visual novels released on the iPhone/iTouch.

But you probably already knew that.

So here’s to a great 2010! (Hopefully)

Blood will flow(?)

Posted on December 25, 2009 by LTB

group1_sketch — For the first time, a glimpse of two male characters.

Hello everyone, have you all had a nice christmas so far? I certainly have.

Since my Christmas Eve was dealt with yesterday, I have spend most of today playing Galaxy Angel, which has proven to be a really nice experience. Forte is awesome.

Apart from that I have managed to write through one more important scene for Blue Rose. And I must say, looking at the pieces of text that I have written for it today, Blue Rose is turning out to be a bit darker (and bloodier) than I initially thought <_<;; Oops.

I’ll need some cheering up after those scenes. Maybe another round of Galaxy Angel is in order – at least I’ll put on some cheerful music for now.

After finally finishing that part I will be able to begin on some more relaxed scenes again, some that don’t involve any jumping around or fighting. Action can be a pain to write.

Have a great day!