Hello, and nice to meet you!

With the release of the SweetCanvas demo around the corner, I wanted to take the time to introduce it to everyone over here at Itch.io, since the community here played such a large part in inspiring me to start the project to begin with.

So, what is SweetCanvas?

SweetCanvas is my successfully Kickstarted indie visual novel passion project. It features romance, drama, magic and most importantly (depending on who you are) monster girls!

My vision for SweetCanvas is to create something that I believe is surprisingly rare in the western visual novel space; that being a "full length," narrative rich visual novel, in the vein of a Clannad, Muramasa, Muv-Luv and so on. 

Of course, while I did say that it was "surprisingly rare," I obviously know why they don't tend to be made in the west. There's seemingly no money in it (which I don't fully agree with, but will concede to it being an understandable thought process), meaning that the time investment typically can't be justified. Not to mention that on top of both of those things, it's just an extremely difficult thing to pull off, especially if you're working mostly solo without a proper team, like most indie VN devs tend to be.

All that being said, I'm a firm believer that almost anything can be achieved with enough hard work and work ethic, and as such I decided to leverage my position as a decently successful independent artist with no standard day job (aka, a lot of "free" time) to take the task upon myself! 

Although, as I'm writing this, I am noticing that this section has become more of a "Why is SweetCanvas," so let's get back on track a little:

So, for real this time, what is SweetCanvas?

SweetCanvas is a work in progress, full/feature length, branching romance visual novel. It focuses heavily on the interpersonal relationships between its cast members and how they grow or sometimes just change alongside one another.

It's at times a dramatic tale of introspection, a heartwarmingly sweet first love story, a passionately lustful situationship. It's a puzzle box of a narrative that rewards actively engaging with the characters, considering their intricate thought processes and what might be the origins and results of them, all with an undercurrent of something potentially sinister beneath its surface.

You'll learn, from the perspective of Yoshiya Isa, about the seven girls whose stories happen to intertwine with his, about hidden truths of the world, and about hidden truths of his own.

And naturally, you'll meet lots and lots of monster girls along the way!

Be sure to check out the  the Official Website, or join the Discord if you want to learn more about the girls individually, beyond what's available on the Itch.io page!

So then, how is SweetCanvas going?

"That all sounds very ambitious," I hear you thinking, especially for a one man project. And it is, so I understand why you'd think that, strawfriend, but I've actually made a significant amount of progress over the past three years since the Kickstarter.

For one, barring any future edits, cuts or any other kinds of changes, the script for SweetCanvas currently sits at a massive 860,939 words. And since I'm nearing completion on that front, that means that, at least as far as writing goes, I'm very nearly done with the game.

I imagine to some of you, that might seem like a pretty ridiculous wordcount, but for one, It's spread across seven different characters, as mentioned previously, so it's not that any one route will be extremely long. It's just that, if you wanted to do everything possible to do, that's what it would add up to. 

Secondly, I actually lied to you all just earlier when I said that I had been working on this since only three years ago when I launched the Kickstarter. In reality, SweetCanvas was in a sort of "preproduction" phase for three years prior to the launch of the Kickstarter, meaning that I actually started in 2019. The Kickstarter just marks the start of actual production, meaning that I got all of my first, second and third drafts out of the way before I finally settled on the version of SweetCanvas that currently exists, prior to the launch of the Kickstarter.

But that's only one facet of a visual novel. The most important one, I would argue, but not the only one. There's also art and the actual build of the VN itself to consider. So how are those going?

Art

Great, actually! Considering how art is my career and everything, the illustrations are the thing I've been having the least issues with. 

The only considerations there are whether or not I'll make the bills every month, since otherwise I can spend most hours of the day, most days a week working on these without getting tired of it at all; since not only is that just what I would be doing anyway if I wasn't working on this, I have a strong attachment to this project, so I've retained pretty consistently high levels of enthusiasm for working on it across all six years so far (officially three) that I've been at it.

As mentioned up front, I'm currently working on the illustrations for a demo that will release at some point within the next two months (next month, ideally) and that has been going very smoothly. You can keep up with my progress on that either on Patreon or by becoming a Discord subscriber, since I post my works in progress for my supporters, as well as interact with them there regularly.

Support would be greatly appreciated, as while I do get funds for the visual novel itself in increments from my publisher JAST, I do still need to buy food and pay rent and such, so any help on that front goes a really long way.

Now, with that ad out of the way, there is more art to a VN than just the CG illustrations. There are sprites, backgrounds, sound, UI and in the case of SweetCanvas, 2D animations as well. 

So to go in order:

Sprites

All of the main cast's (the seven girls with routes) base sprites, for the full game are completed, including their alternate poses and expressions; with the only remaining work to be done on that front being a bunch of outfit alts (especially for the routes), which won't take as much time, comparatively. 

As for the extended cast, there are still sprites I need to paint for them, but everyone who appears in the demo (plus several others) are also completed along with their alts, although potentially not all of the alts that they'll end up having in the long run.

There are about twenty characters remaining who need to be painted, so that'll take me a decent amount of time, but as mentioned, the painting process is the easiest part of all of this for me so it's less daunting than it may seem written out. 

Also, if twenty more characters on top of the seven girls and five extended cast members I've shown here sounds like too many, keep in mind that outside of these five, the remaining characters are distributed across all seven routes, so that's about three unique characters per route, rounding up.

It doesn't work out exactly like that in practice, since some routes have more or less new characters introduced than others, but you can think of it that way for simplicities sake.

Backgrounds

There honestly isn't all that much to say about the backgrounds that couldn't be inferred from the "how is SweetCanvas going" gif from earlier. There will be a significant number of unique locations in SweetCanvas, with a large majority of them having not only time of day but also seasonal variants. 

This isn't exactly groundbreaking stuff, don't get me wrong, but it's just another one of those things that's necessary for SweetCanvas to reach its lofty storytelling goals.

It's definitely been done before, so don't take this to mean that I think that it's impossible, but the story I want to tell simply wouldn't work if it was confined to just two or three locations for nearly one million words worth of narrative. So we need these.

There are currently 141 backgrounds including all variations, 53 of which are either entirely unique backgrounds/rooms across 29 unique locations.

I still need 30 backgrounds (excluding variations) to cover absolutely everything that happens across all seven routes (which is another reason why support is invaluable), but I'll be commissioning those from my wonderful background artist @Omorphia1 into the end of this year,  as well as all of next year.

Another more subtle thing  (not in these specific examples, but generally) that relates back to sprites is that: Since color editing in Ren'py itself doesn't tend to satisfy my artistic needs pretty much ever, I've found myself manually editing sprites based on the environment that they appear in to make more cohesive or just generally more aesthetically pleasing visuals. 

I find that this typically produces better results, although it is much more work. I think that it's worth it though, since the lack of this kind of thing has always stood out to me in titles that take shortcuts on it.

Again though, I'm not trying to sell anyone on the game by pointing these things out (it should just be expected that you put effort into the things you make, I feel), especially since it'll be a free release, so you either care enough to try it out or you don't, your wallet isn't even a factor.

I just wanted to give some insight into the project so far and what I'll be doing as part of the process of seeing it to completion, for anyone who decides that they want to follow along more closely. Which very well might describe you, if you've made it this far into reading this!

Sound

On the subject of sound, music wise at this point in time I have no plans (or money, really) to procure or commission any more music than I already have. Basically, the soundtrack as it is, is complete!

That's not the only aspect of sound in a VN however, there's also sound design, foley, ambience and the like. All of these I do myself, although I'm not recording my own foley or ambiences since I don't have the equipment for that, just EQing, mastering and otherwise editing them in FL Studio as necessary to suit my needs. I'm also doing all of the original sound deign in FL.

The characters all have randomized animalese "voices" since  voice acting is off the table at the moment, although keep in mind that nothing here is final:

If you're not a fan of the "voices" then they're easily disabled though, so don't worry. Those are the only two options right now, though.

Proper voice acting would sadly only be possible if there was some extreme increase in supporters or received some huge investment, which while not impossible are both not super likely so I wouldn't hold my breath on that.

Maybe after the demo release it could be reconsidered if that's super successful (again, I wouldn't hold my breath for it, considering how long the full VN is) or after the full release at some point down the line, which is a much more feasible, and maybe even likely scenario.

UI

This is, admittedly the area that SweetCanvas is currently most deficient in, with the current UI being entirely a placeholder. 

I'll be going through and polishing the transitions, transformations and other presentation things up until I'm satisfied, but at least for the demo release I probably won't be changing the UI very much, aside from addressing some obvious readability issues with the transparent text box, just making it more opaque. 

Going into the full build, I'll be spending time to flesh out the UI and make it both more appealing and unique, although I do have a "less is more" attitude when it comes to UI, so don't expect it to look like PC98 or anything, it'll just have a more well thought out direction and theme.

Animation

In stark contrast to UI, we now have the area that SweetCanvas may end up excelling the most in, 2D animation.

The entire VN won't be fully animated or anything insane like that, but the full build will feature: 

• A fully 2D animated opening featuring anime industry talent
• Fully 2D animated eyecatches, at least one for each girl (the header and middle eyecatch gifs in this section will not be featured in the game, they were quick things I made for fun/promotion years ago)
• 2D animated full body idles/emotes for each girl, for use during significant scene/day transitions
• Fully 2D animated cutscenes for specific climactic events (think Kou Yoshinari's contributions in Muv-Luv)

Which is, from my own experience at least, a lot more animation than most other visual novels.

Being an animator myself, I love the medium and I think that it has the potential to greatly enhance the VN experience, through something as significant as leaving the player with a permanent memory of a moment, to things as comparatively small as enhancing characterization via expression and body language.

It's just nice to see things move! I think that's something most people will agree with.

So if you've gotten this far into the blog and also love seeing things move, I'd appreciate any kind of support, including just checking out either the demo or SweetCanvas in full when it finally releases. Free of charge!

Free of charge?

Yes, free of charge! I've mentioned this I think twice now, but SweetCanvas is a free to play visual novel! You will not need to pay even a single cent to experience it.

I'll often receive somewhat skeptical questions about this, so I'll address two of the most common ones here before I wrap this whole thing up:

You mentioned wanting to make something that could hold a title like "The Clannad or Muv-Luv of WVNs." If so, why would it be free?

Part of the reasoning is that, I feel very strongly that lots of people would/do like visual novels as a format, but they don't want to pay for visual novels. Which, while unfortunate, is honestly understandable if you look at things from their perspective.

"Full length" VNs often go for anything from twenty to fifty or even sixty dollars, which I would confidently say that they're worth, but for anyone outside of the genre enthusiasts who actually do pay for them, they're stacking VNs up against whatever current AAA title might be releasing, or even some mechanically dense indie game that they've been excited for forever, and in that contest, VNs almost always lose.

The most important thing to me, personally, is that SweetCanvas is experienced by as many people as possible. I just want people to play the game I've made, the passion project that I've put so much time and effort into. 

I didn't put all of this time and effort into it to be reimbursed. I did it so that hopefully people will enjoy it, and I feel like more people will give it a chance if there's no barrier to entry.

You mentioned having a publisher earlier. Even if you don't want your money back, what about them?

My publisher, JAST, has very graciously taken all of my points into account and after much convincing, we settled on a model where SweetCanvas, the full game and intended experience, will release for free, then be followed up shortly with several DLC offerings; which I won't get into here, since it's just not super relevant right now. You can read this Patreon Update about it if you're curious.

Those, along with us both recognizing SC's potential for upgraded versions, merchandising and potentially adaptation down the line (given all of our connections put together) are all how we can see SweetCanvas inevitably recouping its investment.

Their investment, at least. I don't care very much at all if I make any of the money I've put into this back. I'm doing this literally for the love of the game.

It would obviously be nice, since it would mean that the VN is successful, but it's not my goal.

With all that said, that's everything for now!

Hopefully, from what I've shown here as well as all of what can be seen on the original Kickstarter, Official Website, Steam Page and Patreon I've convinced any of you that made it all the way to the end that, while the game may be releasing for free, I am not at all approaching it like a free release.

I'll be putting my best effort into polishing up everything for the demo, which will itself be fairly long, to give everyone a more tangible idea of what they might be able to expect in the full release, so look forward to that since I'll be posting another update when that's out!

Although that one will be much shorter! Thank you all so much for reading!

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