laiktail

Sounds awesome! I'd really love to watch that, Flutterz. At the same time, for the most part, I'm going to try to avoid other anime because of the same reason that people use to watch them - they're full of ideas. I wouldn't want to accidentally use some of those ideas, consciously or subconsciously. ...that said, I'll probably still watch it. In my mind is something like this. Masaru won't be able to recreate the book. Thus, in a sense, this is where the "adventure" begins. It would be hard to develop a likeable female heroine if the female heroine disappears for a lot of the plot though, so Chiyo will probably be around to say, albeit to accomplish a different motive. Thanks for the feedback! Hmmm, there's a lot of stuff I'd love to cover. I certainly don't want the story to become superfluous and artificial. At the same time, I'd probably want to deliberately miss some points in light of keeping some of the magic in mystery as well as put a more intense focus on the characterization, rather than exposition. I'll try to keep a good balance of both of course, but too much exposition can turn a story into a documentary rather than a tale. For example, Miyazaki's works have a lot of random and unexplained stuff happen, without needing to warrant a full explanation. The beauty is in the worlds and the delight is in the characters. Glad to get your approval IceD. After one of the comments talking about the genericness of 'Imagine City', I think I'll call the city Somnio. Somnio means "I dream" in Latin. If you want to look at it really deeply, "somniare" means "to dream" but can also be translated as "to talk nonsense" in certain contexts, so my friends say. I don't think it'll be a dystopia at this stage. It'll be a world just like ours. some parts of this world are dystopian enough to make even Orwell seem utopian. ...that probably won't happen. Haha! Funny reply. Only if he needs to be an anti-hero. I think situations and experiences shape people, who may or may not shape themselves. So whether he's an anti-hero will depend on what situation he's put in, and won't be as simple as "I do good stuff but now Imma do bad stuff". but, don't get me wrong: he will certainly develop his character as much as is believable and necessary. I probably don't want to Macbeth-ify him too much.

Maybe! I've only watched the first few eps of Bakuman. Interesting idea! I'll look out for Kono Yo Wa Kane to Chie. The concept of being able to create things is going to be, at this point, most similar to money in every way. How do children get their "money", for starters? Maybe you can transfer it from one person to another or something. As for the unique gift thing - I think it would change a lot of the original concept, as there would simply be a few superhumans running around as opposed to an entire ecosystem surrounding this resource of imagination. So essentially, it would become a story about very special people; however, people in real life are not necessarily superhuman by birth like that (unless you're talking about autistic savants...) and so it would lose a bit of that reflection. However, at this moment, I love your idea of an almost anti-hero - a bad guy forced to do good - which is something I have been thinking about. (I think the anti-hero is defined as someone who actually does bad things to achieve good outcomes, so it might not be the entirely appropriate term here.)

Submit away! I'll read everything. As I've explained in a previous post on this thread: the entire economy runs on people's imaginations. At the same time, it is a limited resource, because imagination takes ones own "mind money" in order to create things. If more people like what you create, then you get more "money" from this, which is how people sustain a living - by creating things that other people like. Identical to real life in a sense, actually, since that's essentially what money is - an object to trade things for other things. But, does that mean if someone has no "money" left, they stop thinking entirely? Nope - they just can't materialize things out of their mind. Masaru could be the exception to that rule, however - thus the reason he never runs out even while his creations proliferate the world. This is an extremely rough concept that I literally just came up with after the feedback from here, so I don't know if I'll actually use it or not! I'm sure that there are some gaping plot holes which need to be patched about this system.

Based on your feedback, everyone, I'm going to go with this general plot premise. I'll keep everyone updated on how things go. it's a really long term project and simultaneously studying Medicine doesn't really help in terms of life being generous with the gift of time. But I'll definitely keep every Fuwanovellian here in the loop. (If anyone else wants to leave feedback, I'd still love to hear it!)

Definitely! That's the hardest bit. Everything has got to be top quality. It's expensive, too. Regardless, I'm going to give it my all to make it the best damn Western VN ever.

He's a bit of a badass. vicious people are created out of vicious situations. Kind people recreate kindness. I can't say more than that because it might be a spoiler for a plot that doesn't exist yet. Haha. As for a non-harmonic city...real life cities aren't actually all that harmonic either. There's ways to steal, cheat, lie, swindle. But certainly, with this VN, I want to aim for a realistic world - not one that is overly dark hopefully! Oh! That's interesting Crunchytaco. I've never heard of it but it sounds surprisingly similar to my concept. Thanks for the suggestion. Tenkuru, that VN sounds awesome! I absolutely love the idea. I think what you're getting at is the concept of "show, don't tell" where the rules of society (in this case) will be seen by what happens to people/what people can't do even if they try to.

Love the feedback everyone, thank you so much! Good idea. The contents of the book actually won't make sense to both Masaru and the reader for a long, long time. So many ideas to explore. I haven't fleshed out the specifics because this idea only popped up into mind a few days ago. But I will definitely explore questions like this. thanks Palas! Thanks DoodlyNyan and Xypers for pointing this out. What I'm thinking about at the moment is making it similar to a currency. Since the entire system runs on imagination, it is limited in the amount of "money" one has; if individuals create things that people like, then they get more "money" (hence how people earn a living working). Maybe. This is something that I'll think about. Haha about 'Imagine City'! You're right, it's very generic. I guess the aim was to be straight to the point here. Love the feedback about the MC and also about detailing the society. The MC will (at this point) be someone who can't refuse a challenge if it comes to his creative abilities. Lots to think about still about his personality and what position he is in in society etc. as it'll depend on the ultimate message I want to convey with the visual novel.

Hey Fuwanovelians. I want to ask a very simple question: is the following plot a VN you'd like to read in the future? --- "If you can create everything, then tell me...can you create this?" 'Imagine City'. A bustling metropolitan city fuelled by only one resource: imagination. Coffee materializes out of the thoughts of the city's baristas, buildings pour out from the wishes of the city's architects, and whatever is created in the mind by the city's inhabitants will come to life. A playful but cynical loner, Masaru, is a celebrity in the city for being the one person that is so creative, he can make anything from his mind that people ask of him. That is, until he meets the vivacious beauty Chiyo, who shows him a mysterious book that he can't recreate - and that will change his life forever. --- I'd like to know if you guys think I should develop this into a full VN. I'd love your honest, brutal feedback!

I can speak from the perspective of someone who's planning to make my own VN in the West. 1. The budget is huge even for a simple VN. This simply doesn't work for most poor doujinshis. Things are a bit cheaper if you use the current engines out there, which I think are not ideal. I'm planning to hire someone to build one. As an extremely rough estimate, I'd put the cost to be $30-40,000 to make something of a decent enough quality to par the Japanese VNs. Other people might have a better perspective on this though. 2. There's many more skills than writing involved in actually creating a VN that people will love. There's the obvious things like music and graphics. And then there's more subtle things like menus, transitions, etc. that all contribute to the overall feel of the project. 3. Prejudice. Even I am very sceptical of a Western VN, despite setting up a project to write one. So you'll automatically and probably subconsciously not be as open to it, even if you don't want to. 4. Lack of editing. Again, a cost-issue. 5. VOICE ACTING. This is the hardest issue for me currently because, let's face it: 90% of people prefer subs rather than dubs. I'd love to get a great voice actor. I think the workaround for this is not to get a voice actor at all - just an actor who has no idea what a VN is but knows how to act. Again, super-expensive. 6. Weeabooism. I think VNs might try a bit too hard to be Japanese and are thus written like subtitles for an anime, when they should be produced as original works in English. Plus, an awesome tsundere in Japanese games does not translate to an equally awesome tsundere in English games. TL;DR Basically, the problem is cost. So the solution is brevity. I think a 2 hour VN is more than enough for a Western indie with hardly any budget. The market is super-niche (anime is a niche, VN is a niche within a niche). Speaking of the VN that I want to do, I'll put up a post with the premise of my own and see if it's something people are interested in reading.

Gonna start making a visual novel sometime and in the process of considering character design. So, we've got this fiery yet optimistic tsundere character who is horrible at cooking but randomly brilliant at miscellaneous things. If you had to pick a color for her hair and eyes, what would you pick? I'm thinking brown hair and purple eyes right now (below is a picture of Youji from NouCome), but post your answers with a picture if you can - your choices may actually affect the character design of the main heroine of the VN!

Digitalized anime in novel form - love the ring of that. It appears that 75% of the consensus is "it's porn" though... LOL maybe there is a secondary avenue for making visual novels popular in the West.

There's the simple definition you offer to your non-VN comrades of "it's an interactive novel with pictures", but surely there must be a way more awesome way to capture the essence of a VN. Like, "it's an anime-like story driven by the emotions and dialogue of its illustrated characters" or something. Like, "it's a revolutionary form of media at a crossroads halfway between anime and manga". What's your way of persuading people that VNs are even better than the best sliced bread?

I see - thank you Emi. I'm having a chat with one of the guys from the Live2D production team on Tuesday. Might have to actually get them to produce the content (or alternatively hire a Japanese translator to help hire a Jap artist lol since the number of people who know how to use Live2D in the West is nearly zero). Clever idea about using iFunBox! I never thought of doing that before.

Working on it! (not LB but an independent visual novel project for iOS/other platforms - the fully voiced bit has to take a backseat though as I've never liked English dubs) Originally the project was just gonna be for iOS, but based on this thread it looks like PC is an absolutely necessary platform for it. Which totally makes sense in the end. So it'll be for both.

As superficial as Nisekoi might be... Onodera is still the best girl.

Would you ever play a VN on an iPad? Or would you still rather use a PC/Mac option given the choice?

Thanks for your detailed reply Emi it makes sense to sketch it in SAI. Photoshop is better for drawing small details though? I'm also curious about how hard it is for an artist who has never drawn in parts before, to suddenly go and draw each individual part. I've also heard that you can draw the full image first, and then cut it into parts later? And also about where you found the individual parts for MiraiClock3? So many questions to ask.

That's cool! How did your experience go with it? Was it hard to make all the individual parts, from an artistic perspective? (since most artists are used to drawing an entire image e.g. face or full body) The project is a visual novel to be released on iOS (and most likely Android/PC) called 'Tales of Tuesday'. The main heroine is a girl named Tuesday who can paint anything and it will come to life - but only for one hour. The main hero, Chae, is a genius and trickster who uses villainous methods to achieve pure-hearted goals. I'm heading the production of the visual novel and I want to make it one of the best in the Western world as a non-translated visual novel. Speaking of which, if anyone knows any phenomenal artists that makes their jaw drop, please let me know! (since I'll be hiring when the project starts)

Just curious, how does the s;g phone trigger system work? I've never played Steins;Gate but it sounds really crazy.

Has anyone used Live2D before? I would like to hire an artist that has experience with it for a huge English visual novel project, but it seems that it has been basically untouched by anyone that isn't Japanese. I'm not really sure if this question is in the right section so to mods, feel free to move it if it isn't.

I personally think Kantoku is one of the greatest (a picture of his art shown below). What do you think? Replaced original link with imgur mirror, original link here: https://yande.re/sample/0a5ffb2c813f28bc60fea7f58db80205/yande.re%20170523%20sample.jpg -- Nayleen

Highly recommended. Also make sure to set it to Japanese locale or you won't be able to play much at all.

AGREE 100%

My top four qualities would be: 1. Very funny 2. Moving (the romance part of the plot or otherwise) 3. Beautiful art 4. Has a deeper meaning (Clannad --> family, for example) What's yours?

We all have those which are like, "this is definitely going to be stupid..." and then they turn out to be masterpieces! Similarly, we might have those anime or VNs that we say "are going to be mindblowing (good)" and then turn out to be mindblowing (bad). What are some of your surprises? For me, the one that surprised me the most was the very first visual novel I played - Kanon. When I first saw the art, I literally burst out laughing because I thought that their facial proportions were so ridiculously wrong that I actually played on just to see if it could get any better. I had no idea about the Maeda Jun method of plot stories before then, so I was completely blown away by the amazingness of Ayu's route. Another amazing surprise was The World God Only Knows (KamiNomi), which I read as a joke at the start because the premise was ludicrous, but...then, it turned out to be a truly godly manga that I read to this day. It's STILL godly.