CG's Look Fancy Now

Hey!

Well, shit I did jinx it last time. Would've been cool to get the update out by the end of the year but I don't see that happening anymore. Some of the tasks are taking way longer than ideal.

As you can see in the header I did some post edits on the images. For every previous update I always just lowered the brightness and raised the contrast and that was it. Not that I was happy with only doing that, I just didn't know where to start experimenting. This time I was dead set on doing some actual editing and I think they turned out pretty good.

You should be able to zoom in on the photos but if it's not visible, the top one is the finished drawing, the second is with -5 brightness +5 contrast, or how you saw them uploaded here before/ how they would've appeared in game, the next one(s) are my initial experiments, and the bottom one is the finalized version.

I knew very well that I used some unsaturated colours when drawing but seeing them side by side the difference is crazy. Also, I just titled them initial but the third row was supposed to be the final version. I experimented with Lightroom a few times this year but I really didn't have a clue how to do this. First, I hoped there would be a universal solution, a filter that fits every image and makes all the levels identical. However, since I can't shade my drawings the exact same way twice, there were always going to be differences in the lighting and tones, which meant I had to develop individual filters for each CG.

What to do if the image looks washed out? Obviously boost every slider by a shit ton. I randomly did just that and since I liked the result I decided I'd go for a really saturated, heavy contrast, deep shadows, bright highlights look. I liked it initially and went all in adjusting the sliders for days but when I was almost done I realized it was not right after all.

Nice😋

I wasn't a complete retard, I tested them in both daylight and night time and I found them cool but then gradually started second guessing everything. It's the weirdest thing because when I stared at it long enough my brain started processing colours differently. Even now I wouldn't say they look bad, just different, but definitely not what I was going for. Way over the top.
I was shitting bricks to have wasted days making the custom filters but fortunately I was able to repurpose them. Still, I have no idea how any of this looks on you guys' displays so let me know in the comments. At least they won't cause blindness when
the lights are off anymore...probably.

As the art always has been the utmost priority, I never really searched for anything coding related. I was just happy things worked in the first place. That's how I only recently found out about the Renpy action editor. It's a tool that lets you do real time transformations/movements in-game. It's great to have stumbled upon it because I've been having some worries about the update turning into a slideshow. I mean visual novels that aren't animated are essentially slideshows but the large amount of images this time around would amplify that even more.

The editor is really helpful with zooms and stuff and I think those would be a nice touch and make the scenes feel more interesting. Depending on how long it takes I'll be implementing it in at least a couple of scenes. That's the plan.

Have a nice weekend!
BP