Join Charlie Bramall as he embarks on his ultimate power fantasy in August's action-packed, imaginative prologue.
styofa doing anything
Alisa U Zemlji Chuda

★
i don't do bad sauce passes
Claire Keane
DEAR READER
NASA

titsay
Show & Tell
Today's Document
todays bird
Jules of Nature
One Nice Bug Per Day
$LAYYYTER
Cosimo Galluzzi
cherry valley forever
Sweet Seals For You, Always
KIROKAZE
occasionally subtle
Three Goblin Art
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@halfwitherouk
Join Charlie Bramall as he embarks on his ultimate power fantasy in August's action-packed, imaginative prologue.

Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
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A quick screenshot from the conclusion of August's prologue sequence, taking place on the evening of 18th March 2020, as the UK prepares for the imminent closure of all schools as part of wider national lockdown measures.
I haven't posted anything for ages, what with being busy with work and family. However, I have still been hard at work on August's prologue and fleshing out the design document for the rest of the scenario. The plot will follow the trials faced by the Bramall family from December 2019 through to around July 2021 (including flashbacks and the currently planned epilogue).
For now, here's a fresh look at the springtime actor sprite for Robyn Bramall, taking a whistle-stop tour of her younger brother Charlie's bedroom - now in its final design.
Introducing Captain Thunderbolt, Charlie's favourite superhero and one of the key party characters who will influence how August grows. If August chooses to become the Captain's apprentice. he too will adopt a superheroic persona and develop fantastic powers of his own.
Since the art-style for our main characters has changed, I decided there was a need to update August's current banner. Enter this image of Charlie with his favourite toy.

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I'm developing August sequentially, which means I've been mainly working on content from the the in media res prologue onwards. I know this won't be possible throughout the whole of the development cycle, but it's working so far.
One thing that this process has given me is time to consider how I want to visualise the narrators of the story - Charlie and Robyn. Initially, I'd gone with a anime art style for the protagonists, but the more I developed the in-game fantasy narrative, the less appropriate this felt. Most of the art in the imagined narrative takes inspiration from storybooks, animated films and the occasional videogame. To jump from an art-style dominated by Western children's illustration traditions to a sketchy, Ghibli rip-off started to feel unnecessary the more progress I made.
On the left, you see the original concept for Charlie, complete with stereotypical exaggerated messy anime hair. On the right is the updated version. I'm much happier with this edition, and as a result I've felt much more comfortable moving forward to create contextual busts for dialogue, which change based on character emotion and the seasons covered during August's 2020 pandemic timeline.
When we first started thinking about the scenario for August's prologue, I asked my kids who they thought should be the villain. My son (aged 4) immediately launched into a description of the beast. Here's my recollection of the planning meeting:
"He should have tentacles. And one eye. And a spear! And a furry beard! And he lives in a logpile house in the woods and is keeping Nightingale... in his tummy!"
"Wow, what should we call him?"
"GANON!"
So, here we are, introducing... Ganon apparently!
In August, part of the narrative will see Robyn calling Charlie out for being unimaginative or for wholesale ripping elements from his favourite cartoons, films and videogames and pasting them into his story. So, yes, when he finally turns up in the game, our grim kidnapper WILL at least temporarily bear the name of Link's long-time nemesis - and since my son is a huge Legend of Zelda fan, this is unlikely to be the only homage.
Please, Nintendo, hold off on the cease-and-desists! This is all coming from a place of love!
I'm gradually working my way to the finale of the prologue, refining the scenario a bit as I go. Artwork for two crucial scenes has been completed. The first is a path through the woods that plays host to the monster mob ambush event, and the second is the setting for the climactic encounter between August and his nemesis.
Unseen in these images are the simple animations that will give the scenery a little more life. The torches in the ambush scene include animated flames, and the moat around the logpile fort will also contain small animated ripples and waves. Soundscapes are still being used here to enhance the mis-en-scene, including bird sounds, wind and flickering flames for the torches.
Since I'm using parallax mapping with layers and custom collision mapping, it would be impractical to animate these effects using events or animations within RPG Maker MV's normal grids. As a result, I'm actually using Yanfly's Doodads plugin, which provides functionality for customising scenes during play-testing, using grid-free element placing. It's a super-powerful tool, and near-essential for anyone wanting to give their scenes a real sense of individuality - whether you're using a traditional tileset or not!
Stay tuned for a full prologue playthrough once the events have all been sequenced!
Here's an updated look at concept art for August's deuteragonist, Nightingale. I went through a whole range of designs, including taller, more slender versions, some with more feminine eyes, and others actually wearing a simple dress, but this one seemed to gel most comfortably with August's key art. This version of Nightingale will likely form the basis for the design of her character sprite moving forward.
I've been giving lots of thought to the aesthetics of menu and text boxes for August as a traditional menu-driven, turn-based RPG. So far, I've landed on text boxes taking the form of torn bits of note-paper to reflect the narrators' makeshift way of documenting their improvised story.
Here's a screenshot from a planned battle in the prologue, in which our hero August is mobbed by villainous characters. Some of these wrong-doers should look distinctly familiar, so drop a comment if you can identify their origins. Also note the anthropomorphic evil combi-boiler, born from my own son's irrational fear of the noisy old boiler near his bedroom that has stopped us all freezing alive this winter!

Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
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The art-style is evolving as I make increasing use of more helpful plugins for RPG Maker MV. I've now added Yanfly's Doodads to the mix, allowing me to make full use of animated effects on my non-grid, parallax maps. This path will be the scene of a second ambush by another kidnapper - one that bears a striking resemblance to the Numberjacks' dreaded Problem Blob (my kids have been irrationally terrified of it for the longest time!).
I've been mainly working on setting up August's base battle sprites for the first prologue combat encounter. Here are a few examples.
Howdy folks! It's been a while since I posted an update on August, and I've had quite a lot of professional and personal distractions to keep me away from MV recently (preparing to switch jobs being chief among these diversions!).
I've been reacquainting myself with the complexities of eventing and autorunning while using parallax mapping, making custom animations in-engine, and utilising plugins to customise the game's interface.
I'm fine tuning the prologue - I haven't yet got as far as setting up the first combat encounter, but I HAVE managed to set the scene for it!
While working on the prologue setting, I couldn't resist dropping some of the assets onto the scene to create a bit of impromptu concept art depicting the first combat encounter of the game.
A quick piece of concept work for one of August's deadlier jobs. Now all that's left is to decide who he could possibly learn the lethal art of ninjitsu from...

Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
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August's Deep Dive
I've revised the setting of the prologue of August: A Pandemic Epic.
Instead of being set during the day, with a Kingdom Hearts-esque daylight deep-dive to open the story, I've instead opted to change the setting to night time.
The prologue takes the form of Charlie narrating one of August's adventures on his own, without help from his sister. As a result the storytelling is a little less nuanced; Charlie's five-year-old mind imagines August as an infallible powerhouse who steam-rolls through enemies without a hint of challenge or drama.
The objective in this early sequence is to rescue August's lady love from a villain's fortress hideout in the woods. I decided to play up to the cliches by setting this particular rescue mission at night. I've also included here a brief transition cutscene made very basically in the course of an evening using GIMP and HitExpress to animate.
I'm not completely satisfied with the results; while the transition from in-engine scene to video is fairly seam-free, I'm a bit of a novice at traditional animation and will look into ways to make this look more polished in the future.