LEVEL UP Your Visual Novel Sprites!

Learn how to use sprite scaling, camera movement, and clever composition to eke out static characters, and make your visual novel more visually engaging, and tell stories through visuals and direction!

Sprite in the Thumbnail is by Mugかぶり

[hakimitus]

Dude...your channel is a treasure trove of creative goodness!

[kingmaster]

I have no interest in making visual novel myself, but as an avid visual novel fan, this video really help me appreciate visual novel presentation more. Thank you so much man!

[bexplosion]

Visual Novel should have been called Visual Play, as it more like a theatre play and not a novel. Also if you go 3D you have the same camera freedom as in movies.

[ShuyaTheDark]

A Must Watch for creators. I didn't even realize there was so much you could do with sprites and camera and text. The few popular novels I've seen don't even make use of all of these possibilities!

[wertville]

Muv Luv Extra was the *king* of this, and IMO it wasn't dethroned until Tsukihime:Re some 17 years later. It's really amazing how ahead of the time it was.

As for your last point, this is part of why I prefer NVL format to ADV format, at least for narrative heavy stuff. You get so much more control over the and it really puts the text first-and-foremost.

[ichigostrawberry]

I agree that these details could add a lot more POP to a visual novel! Great advice yet again, thanks Vimi!

[MINTGLW]

THANK YOU for talking about this!!! Static sprites/angles and/or sprites with only a few set expressions have always bugged me since there's so much potential for showing action and life in the VN medium. It's a lot of work, but it's worth it as the end product can feel like a playable show/movie. (It's called a VISUAL novel for a reason!) I saw you say in another comment, but it would be neat if you do get to talking about body poses in another video :D

[Budder]

I'm honestly surprised you don't have more subscribers and views on your channel! All your videos are so well thought out but also easy to understand and has helped me tremendously, not only with the coding aspect of using Renpy, but the entire experience of making a visual novel. Your work here is outstanding, thank you so much and keep up the amazing job! 😄

[sageo]

Amazing advice and techniques, tysm!! I get irritated when a visual novel is too text-heavy and now I understand why. So glad I found this video.

[ingthingdev]

This is inspiring me to get into renpy and figure out some more sprite staging tricks! Thank you for the tips 🙌

[morantNO]

This was very helpful!
I am an aspiring solo game-dev and want to use visual novel elements to convey my games story. I never thought about the things in here. But I could immediately see how they drastically improve quality, while saving my ressources, as I can use non animated sprites and maximize the expressiveness of them. Very cool and just what I needed!

[VisionOasis]

I ran into this with Clannad recently. They actually have sprites “move” and flicker. With some decorative text now and again. It’s very minimal but makes a world of difference. It can be hard to get into visual novels in the beginning (as that is almost always the most dry part of the story.) but I found that kept me invested through my the “courting” period of a visual novel I was unsure about.

[TrueMonkeyNinja]

Great content as always! Playing around a bit more with Sprite movement because of a character that’s not done justice just with text in my game at the moment, and seeing these gives even more ideas for what to try with him! Great example with the shoes segment as well btw, it’s really great seeing VNs be more emotive that way (and 100% important for games without voice acting I feel!)

[jinzolaamenazadelamaquina]

It’s always a pleasure to see a new vid! Thank you so much for your work.

[Crim_Zen]

Making a VN with Bakemonogatari's anime style of cameras seems like a pretty interesting way to tell a story.

[codeargent]

Suuuuper interesting! I definitely had no idea you could do all this stuff with Ren'py, and all the info about theater techniques was really, really cool-- also applicable to things beyond VNs, I think! Thank you very much. 😊

[thelastsecret]

Wow, I've never seen such a cohesive set of ideas how to use positioning and other features of sprites before, and I think I'm going over my newest visual novel (to be published in a few weeks) once more, trying to implement some of these ideas. Thank you for the great work!🥰

[arindika]

This is so INSPIRING! You inspire me to make my visual novel always better and better. Best part is, this is something you can add in to your project pretty easily.

[dutchkenshin]

Thank you for making this video! I never thought of moving my full-character sprits or making them different sizes. the black bar section is something I would have never considered either.

[justinseiyanyx]

wow this channel is just a treasure trove of creative content. this is just so smart and creative