I came up with the character Yuka a year ago when I was super new to digital art (I'm still a beginner today though). I was flirting with the idea of making a VN, and was looking for ideas and inspirations for characters. So I drew about 6 characters and one of them was the earliest version of Yuka. I didn't think much of the character art, but I did like it because it had that girl-next-door look.

So by the time the development for Friendly Favours was underway, I used that character as a placeholder. You can see my Reddit post on it here (the link opens in new tab). And by the way, Friendly Favours isn't actually my first story idea for this project. I specifically came up with it to be the story for my very first VN. It was intentionally designed to be short (it used to be much shorter actually).

The second version

Anyway, when the development started to look promising, especially after I completed all background artworks (which was the biggest hurdle for me at the time, I really REALLLY couldn't draw background), I started working on a character art, based on the 2021 version of Yuka. And that was how the second version came to be.

But I didn't like it at all. It looked stiff and its pose lacked emotion. Yuka is a cheerful albeit awkward character, and the second version did not resemble this at all. I was halfway through creating all her expressions, when I decided that "no this isn't it." So I resumed working on the story and Renpy coding.

The third and final version

Two months later, early April, the VN was about 50% complete. The big missing part was the art: character sprites and CGs. So I started working on the character art again. I looked for several references online and found some really good poses like the one you see on the final version. And the rest was history.

Outfit variety

One of the things I'm happiest with and proudest of is the variety of outfits that Yuka has. I want the VNs in this project to be a bit more "realistic", in a way that the characters don't wear the same clothings all the time throughout the story. This, of course, means I would have to come up with 3 or more outfits for every character, even for a short VN such as this, but I think it's worth it.

The different outfits convey a lot of different emotions, and provide a lot of contexts to the each acts of the plot. For example, the second outfit (yellow dress) gives the relaxing vibe that Yuka was probably on a day off, and doing her groceries as she was in the story. The fourth outfit, meanwhile gives the vibe that she is trying to flirt with the MC (visible bra straps, for example) without coming off too strong (the outfit still looks as casual as the first outfit).

What's next?

For my next VN, which is already under development, I'm going to apply lessons learned from Yuka's art development. There will be different outfits, as well as hairstyles, based on acts and scenes in the plot. I'm still experimenting with line thickness, but the next VN will likely have finer lines. I'm thinking of making two or three hand poses as well, so it'll be a lot of work. I don't know if anyone is reading this, but wish me luck and thank you for reading!

P/S: I post development talks on both my Itch.io page (https://parkg.itch.io/), and Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/parkgdev).