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[rickardwestman]

I absolutely love the atmosphere in the video! Makes me want to bring out my water colours and start messing around. Can't wait to see what awaits at the other island.

[rundown]

great how the puzzle infuences the scene. Very original!

[Dks]

C'est vraiment chouette et ce petit côté ghibli n'est pas pour déplaire 

[wccrawford]

Love the gameplay, though the video was rather slow.  I know you were trying to show off some basic features and not confuse people, but it seemed you stood there for an awful long time a few times.

I'm quite looking forward to playing the puzzles if they're all as good as that one.

The inventory seemed a little annoying to use, though, with it disappearing after you pick up each shell/bone/whatever.

[Atelier Sentô]

Happy new year!
And thank you for your kind messages.

Love the gameplay, though the video was rather slow.  I know you were trying to show off some basic features and not confuse people, but it seemed you stood there for an awful long time a few times.

We'll try to make a dynamic trailer later.
This one was our first and it's too slow indeed.

The inventory seemed a little annoying to use, though, with it disappearing after you pick up each shell/bone/whatever.

In fact the inventory doesn't disappear after you pick up an item.
If you pick up an item and keep the mouse cursor over the inventory, it stays open.
But if you pick up an item and move the mouse curser outside the inventory, it disapears.
We tried to make it easy and fluent to use but if you have any suggestions, feel free to write!



Let's start 2014 with some explanations about how we make the Coral Cave's art.

I - Backgrounds

Every background starts as a very small sketch, like those:


Click on the picture if you want to zoom it.

This is how the game looks like at the very very beginning.
The puzzles and the backgrounds are created at the same time as well as the viewpoint, the lighting and the main atmosphere of the scene.
Because of their very small scale, those drawings help us to see the structure of the scene.
When we are happy with both the scene's atmosphere and the distribution of the puzzles in the space, we start drawing the final sketch.

Here is Mizuka's room, just before we color it :


Click on the picture if you want to zoom it.

This step is very important: we scan it, put it in the game engine and see if everything is OK.
The perspective is very important: Is the character at the good size everywhere in the scene?
Sometimes, we have to redraw a part of the scene because, when the character walks to the distance, she happens to be taller than the door she supposed to open!

Here is another exemple of a final drawing:


Click on the picture if you want to zoom it.

You can see it's very detailled. We create every scene of the game using those sketches.
All the events, the puzzles, are coded using those sketches.
Then we play the game.
If something doesn't work (or is disapointing), it's easier to redraw a sketch than a fully painted watercolor!

When everything is OK, it's time to color the background.
Here is a timelapse video showing how we color a background from the beginning to the end:


Click on the picture to open the video.

II - Characters

The difficulty when coloring an animation using watercolor is: every frame has a color slightly different and the character seems to flicker when he moves.
In order to get exactly the same colors on all the frames of the character in all the animations, we use a little trick.
Cécile paints areas of colors on several sheets: one for the skin, one for the pajama top, one for the pajama bottom…
On another sheet, using a pencil, she draws the different frames of the character.
Then we scan everything and, on the computer, she adds the colors to the lineart. This way, the same colors can be used in all the animations without loosing the handpainted feel.

Here is a little video showing how we color our main character:

Click on the picture to open the video.

III - Interactive objects

Interactive objects are difficult: they can't be done in one drawing. The player will activate/open/close/move them. So we have to plan all those states and draw them separately.

Here is an example: an electric box.
On the paper, it looks like that:



We draw the box closed, then opened.
The interactive parts (the plugs per example) are drawn separately.
The color circles will be used later to create lights on some devices of the box.

Here is the finished box:



Now, the player can interact with the box: he can open it with a key, click on the switches, light the diodes...

It wouldn't be possible to create it with only one drawing.
So we have to draw all the parts of the object several times, in different positions, and be sure they will match together perfectly in the end.
It takes time... but it's a fun job!

Thank you for reading and feel free to write if you have any question!

[William Chyr]

Wow. Some seriously beautiful artwork you've got going here. I'm impressed with the amount of attention to detail.

I can't recall ever playing a game with a hand-drawn watercolor aesthetic, so I'm really looking forward to following the development of this game.

BTW, have you ever seen this short animated film, 'Walking' by Ryan Larkin? http://www.nfb.ca/film/walking/ It's got some beautiful water color animation that I think you'd really like. 

[Atelier Sentô]

Thank you for the comment.
We didn't know "Walking". It's beautiful!
We love when animation films have this handpainted feeling on both the backgrounds and the characters.

As you can see above, we use a trick to color the characters.
It helps us to save time and work faster.

But it would be wonderful, one day, to have hand-painted animations for the characters of a game.

[Voltz.Supreme]

This looks incredible! 
Following.

[Dan_Tsukasa]

This artwork is amazing!

I'm interested in hearing a little more on the games plot, what is the big catastrophe that will befall the small okinawan village exactly?

Since its set in Okinawa, will you be making reference to (or perhaps simply using) Okinawan folklore too? It's pretty diverse and interesting.

I have a slight critisism of the animation, I know its still wip but its too 'stiff', the little girl stands perfectly upright all the time, and when she walks there is no 'weight' to the steps and she's still very stiffly posed. A rather robotic feeling animation I feel.

The racism thing from before, personally I think you should be fine, you have eyes like much edo,kamukura, tokugawa and genroku era Japanese artwork, especially woodblock prints, and a character design that is, to me, somewhat referential to the stylings of Shigeru Mizuki in some of his character and yokai designs (specifically Konaki Jijii).

If you guys want any help with Japanese text for cave carvings or artefacts, especially if you're after older ancient Japanese then I may be able to help (bare in mind that my ancient Japanese isn't so great, just good for getting a point across).

For watercolour things, have you tried using painter at all? you can achieve the same look, and, since its 100% digital you'll find it easier to fix any mistakes made in the painting process. Plus things such as wave animation would be much easier.

[Atelier Sentô]

Thank you for your kind words !

I'm interested in hearing a little more on the games plot, what is the big catastrophe that will befall the small okinawan village exactly?

We'll wait a little more before revealing the plot.
Maybe when we'll have a proper trailer.

Since its set in Okinawa, will you be making reference to (or perhaps simply using) Okinawan folklore too? It's pretty diverse and interesting.

It's difficult to find precise and complete cultural informations about Okinawa.
We do our best to use elements from the culture and folklore.
The soundtrack, per example, is inspired by Okinawan nursery rhymes.
But most of the game, of course, is going to be pure invention of our part.

I have a slight critisism of the animation, I know its still wip but its too 'stiff', the little girl stands perfectly upright all the time, and when she walks there is no 'weight' to the steps and she's still very stiffly posed. A rather robotic feeling animation I feel.

We are total beginners in animation. It's the first time we animate something.
Let's hope we'll improve during the making of the game!

If you guys want any help with Japanese text for cave carvings or artefacts, especially if you're after older ancient Japanese then I may be able to help (bare in mind that my ancient Japanese isn't so great, just good for getting a point across).

Thank you for offering your help!
The stone and its carving are one of the first things we created for the game.
Now, it looks like a mistake: we shouldn't use random characters on it.
We'll probably create an imaginary writing for the yôkai based on ancient Okinawan carvings.

For watercolour things, have you tried using painter at all? you can achieve the same look, and, since its 100% digital you'll find it easier to fix any mistakes made in the painting process. Plus things such as wave animation would be much easier.

It's difficult to answer this in English. Sorry if what I'm going to write is confused.
Here are some reasons:

1- We think the "look" is not important. It's the consequence of the technique but it's not its goal.
The digital world is obsessed by the "look". Instagram photos have a polaroid look, comics artists compulsively use textures to get a done-on-paper look in their photoshop works, video-makers endlessly look for a 35mm look...
It's very strange.
The look is just not important at all.
The technique is important.
So: "watercolor's look" means nothing. Only "watercolor" means something (= water + pigments on paper).

2- We use photoshop to sketch quick ideas (the wave animation you've mentionned is a early photoshop sketch).
But what's the most interesting is to find tricks to do the final version on paper!
It's absolutely fascinating and we learn a lot from this process!
We really happy of the unexpected trick we finally found for the wave animation, per example (you'll probably see it in a coming video).

3- Almost everything is done 100% digitally nowadays.
Since we released the first screenshot, we receive messages of people telling they are tired of seeing computer works everywhere and that they enjoy seeing watercolors in a game.
It wouldn't be fair to deceive them by making fake 100% digital watercolors.

We hope those explanations aren't too fuzzy.
Of course, we're only speaking about our own process and our words shouldn't be generalized to anyone else's work.

[Dan_Tsukasa]

It's difficult to find precise and complete cultural informations about Okinawa.
We do our best to use elements from the culture and folklore.
The soundtrack, per example, is inspired by Okinawan nursery rhymes.
But most of the game, of course, is going to be pure invention of our part.

I'd suggest looking up information regarding the Ryukyu Kingdom (琉球王国), it was a kingdom that was seperate from Japan en encompased the Okinawan islands, along with a few other things.
There were 3 principles in which everything was created under, those were:
Hokuzan (北山)
Chuuzan (中山)
Nanzan (南山)
Known as the North, Central and Southern Mountains respectively.

I don't know if you'd be able to weave that somehow into your narrative, but it is somewhat difficult to come across much information, you could try looking up Ryukyuan religion perhaps, its quite interesting, all about ancestor worship and, in stark contrast to Shinto and the rest of Japan, in Ryukyuan women were seen as the embodiment of pure, instead of men. I imagine theres a lot to work with there, but I wouldn't be much help as I'm not too knowledgeable of that side of it, Shinto I know, old Okinawan stuff I don't, I've never even been there.

Thank you for offering your help!
The stone and its carving are one of the first things we created for the game.
Now, it looks like a mistake: we shouldn't use random characters on it.
We'll probably create an imaginary writing for the yôkai based on ancient Okinawan carvings.

Ah the game features Yokai, one of my all time favorite things, thats an area I know a lot about, I don't think its a mistake however to have used Japanese on that stone carving.

It uses Seal script(篆書体) around the edges, something more or less nobody except a few historians and ancient language professors can even read, I only know a few simply because they're the same as normal (fire, person, 1,2, mountain are the same more or less).

The upside to Japanese is that it doesn't need to be ancient to be nonsensical to most people, the language has undergone so many reforms in history that even documents written before WWII are mostly unreadable by the majority of Japanese under 40 (though that specifically applies to Kanji).

Heres a guide here on wikipedia for what Seal script applies to what Kanji, provided you know a few of the current Kanji you'll be fine, otherwise give them a google. http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E7%AF%86%E6%9B%B8%E4%BD%93 (bottom of that page for the list).

All in all, creating something imaginary will be a lot easier, otherwise you might end up wasting time trying to form a real sentence or finding the correct kanji, and you'll end up taking forever like I am with my game.


Your explanation for choosing to stick with the current method is well explained, I understand its not about the 'look' but more about the feel and the method involved, regardless the game looks beautiful.

[cactus]

This looks stunning!
Amazing artwork, love the colors.

[Savick]

Why, yes, I would like to play an adventure game that basically makes me think of Miyazaki movies in both style and substance. Best of luck.

[alvarop]

Okinawa? Is this you, Chris Marker?

[Conker534]

Beautiful.

[Atelier Sentô]

Hello everybody!
It's been a while. We're having fun working on the game and a demo should be ready soon.
But the holidays are close now so let's not speak about work: it's time for...

The Coral Cave - Christmas Contest!!!
Vote for your favorite illustration.

To celebrate the end of the year, let’s play together!
Here are 4 sketches:

1 - Looking at the sea
2 - In the jungle
3 - Playing in the street
4 - Quiet evening
Only one will turn into a beautiful watercolor!

Vote for your favorite:
Follow this link to vote: http://www.easypolls.net/poll.html?p=548c89c7e4b08e1f99e93079
You have until Monday, 6:00pm (GMT) to vote.
Then we’ll start drawing the chosen illustration, share the process with you everyday and give you the opportunity to win the finished watercolor!

So have you made your choice?

[mono]

so glad this still being worked on

[Atelier Sentô]

Thank you!









Only one day left to vote!
http://www.easypolls.net/poll.html?p=548c89c7e4b08e1f99e93079

[EdFarage]

The gameplay and the graphics really impressed me, im glad you're still going with this, cause i wanna play it.
beautiful.

[Atelier Sentô]

The gameplay and the graphics really impressed me, im glad you're still going with this, cause i wanna play it.
beautiful.

Thank you! We have a monthly devlog in French here but it's difficult for us to write the same kind of article in English. We'll try to keep you updated more often!

And now, the results:
Number 4 - Quiet evening - wins the vote!



We are very happy: many have voted and it was interested to hear people thoughts!
Tomorrow we'll start working on the illustration. We'll share the process with you and explain how to win the finished watercolor!

Many thanks for your votes and see you tomorrow!