Deification of Artists & Divinification of Viewers

This storyboard/animatic also came with a lot of (post-it) notes =)

The fact I managed to create THE OUTSIDER꒦꒷ in only 10 months as ONE guy in my freetime is insane, you know? There is a reason why animation studios with tons of animators at their disposal still need many months, years, to create their episodes and films. And it’s not like I took the easy route! There’s a lot of complex animation and backgrounds, and I prefer to know how to cross a bridge before I get to it. That’s why there are so many notes. During the storyboarding, if I knew I would have issues animating one scene because I don’t know how to tackle said issue, I would figure out the answer during the storyboarding. Then I note it down, so my future self has the answer and can just stay in his workflow and doesn’t have to waste time figuring out how he’s gonna do this and that.

From a pacing standpoint, I should have cut a lot more. I am aware THE OUTSIDER꒦꒷ is absurdly fast and there is a lot happening at once. This is the unfortunate result of me trying to tell the whole complex story in just under 5 minutes.

Personally, I do not see this as exactly… wrong?

I am not one for creating art that is easily consumed and forgettable anyway. Where it is so dumbed down and simple that you understand and catch everything on your first watch, and then move on… I think it’s good when it invites you to re-experience it multiple times, to interact with it, dissect it, think about the individual aspects, in order for you to experience it fully.

I know this isn’t profitable. But I am not doing this for profit.

And THE OUTSIDER꒦꒷ does this- I condensed a roughly 30 page story in under 5 minutes.

The animation is visually appealing. But you need to pause the video in certain sections and think about what you saw to piece it all together. Like a fun easter egg hunt, I am inviting you to dissect and read into what I made! And when you watch the animation again, it feels different. You, through your own efforts, now understand the meaning of it all.

That’s also one of the big differences between human made art and plagiarism program AI generated content. We can make art with context. When you point something out in the art I made, I can tell you exactly why it looks the way it does, why I made these choices. There is reason. The machine cannot, for it is not intelligent. It is a glorified form of autocomplete operating on statistical approximation. It generates an amalgamation of work from other artists, without their consent, devoid of context or reason. It can generate the most generic, bland things. But the moment you ask it for something specific, that actually requires a person to comprehend what you are telling them? Well.

Okay, rant aside, there were some things that needed to be cut for story reasons.

The major cut being Anna & Alex. While these characters are very important in DeMenchev’s life, they don’t make an appearance in the tale between DeMenchev & Beylord. And since DeMenchev & Beylord are the main characters, I want the focus to stay on them- There is already too much going on anyway… Because Anna & Alex are important. I can’t really just reduce them to simple background characters, like the people in the pub. They have their own distinct designs. And introducing a major character, who feels important, with a unique design ONCE super briefly and then them never reappearing again, like you think there would be more but then there isn’t, it’s quite jarring and- *remembers the Arvale 2 Ocean of Time Beylord encounter* errr…

Not to mention, I think their relationship could be really easily misinterpreted for the people not in the know, with the way I depicted them here…

Like, Anna Rosen is DM’s girlfriend. And Alex is his young assistant, who is really good at making all sorts of excellent tools for DM. DM considers Alex his » young friend. « But the way it is depicted in panel 7 and 8 on page 18… if you don’t know, this could look like they are traditional family with Alex as their adopted son who’s showing DM an arts&crafts project and that’s not- That’s not what they are! At all! Anna Rosen is not anyone’s mom and DM is not anyone’s dad, he’s that weird and eccentric teacher, with him and Alex having what I would describe as a mentor and mentee thing going on…

It also doesn’t mix well with the » On my own again « bit, ‘cause… DM is not depicted on his own here.

And that’s why panel 7 and 8 on page 18 got changed. As well as panel 15 on page 10, which would have briefly showcased DM researching a cure for Beylord’s vampirism at home in Queous. It also felt a little random, to just jam it in there for one split second between two scenes. Especially since Queous has such a different colour palette compared to the scene that comes before and after. Sometimes things being discordant is good, if it’s done on purpose with a good reason. This is not the case here, so it had to go.

Panel 6 on page 15 also got changed. Originally it was supposed to be young DM and young/human Beylord sitting, with DM leaning against Beylord has he’s writing in his journal. And you would see snippets of their duo adventures in the background. There are… many reasons I cut this. At least from this storyboard. I’m not a big fan of » kill your darlings « as my Narration & Storytelling professor often said, I prefer to… store my darlings in a box, and hope I get to use them in a different project, if they don’t work or cannot be executed well in the current project.

I… would like to… depict their adventures and the continents they explore, but better than this. + I planned to showcase the continents 🤖Jaybot7 teased, but never got to show himself. Denizum, Lanthys, Spicule. This would require a lot of interpretation and adding onto the scraps of information we do have of these places. I would like to… but I do not know if I should do that.

In the end, I settled for DM & Bey posing epically in front of a shield. DM’s pose is the same one he takes in Arvale 2 Ocean of Time when he level ups, minus the crossbow. He doesn’t have it yet, in Arvale 2 Ocean of Time the shopkeeper in Queous mentions how it is new, after all. So he got it some time after Beylord left.

Every Arvale game is represented with a unique shield, with the exception of Melonchi Minecarts and Treasure of Memories (which I find really odd. Melonchi Minecarts I understand, it’s a small puzzle game. But why does Treasure of Memories not have one?)

The shield depicted here is a mixture of the Arvale 2 Ocean of Time and Arvale Short Tales shields! And the A is now referencing DeMenchev’s hat ribbon, instead of Duncan’s hair (protagonist from the first and last game).

The last panel, on page 20, was a cut idea for the outro. Young DM snoozing while young/human Beylord is playing his melody on his lyre. The one you hear at the lake in Arvale Short Tales. Text would appear on the empty space to their left.

The melody makes use of exactly 16 notes.

And if you look closely at the lyre in human Beylord’s reference sheet, you see how the lyre has exactly 16 strings…

…

There is this gag about how instruments are never animated correctly. How if you were to copy the movements of a 2D animated piano player, you would get a dissonant mess and not the piano music you hear in the animation. That’s because it’s supposed to only look/feel like the instrument is played correctly, and if it actually does or not is irrelevant. Plus it would be insane for an animator to go through the giant extra amount of effort to make it accurate. Especially because most people, unless you are a musician, wouldn’t even notice it is inaccurate.

But the thing is.

🤖Jaybot7 is a musician.

🤖Jaybot7 is also the same guy who composed the melody in the first place.

🤖Jaybot7 would notice.

(I can’t believe I actually planned to do this)

In the end though, I opted for something that would more closely pay homage to the Arvale games.

THE OUTSIDER꒦꒷ starts with footage from one of the games, so it would be fitting if it ends with art that also resembles footage from the games. Not to mention the original idea only included Beylord playing, but not DeMenchev joining in with his barrel (very important!!!) with the music now changing to play DeMenchev’s leitmotif as well.

The audio for the outro was originally a lot longer, way too long, as well.

DeMenchev goes through with being his friend to start, we might not know to what capacity, but enough to be referenced again and again, almost sadly in guides which feels out of place. Like the man you see before you is a tragedy. Almost as if DeMenchev is grieving despite the dude being right there. But you're playing as the good guy [in Arvale 2 Ocean of Time] and Beylord is obviously killing people [in Arvale Short Tales] so what is happening here? Only to go in deeper with Arvale Short Tales and DeMenchev is the one to put 'him' [it] in the ground as dormant. Not dead! Dormant. A way to fucking buy time in order to fix his friend that's just murdering anything that happens to come across 'his' [its] path. Like that wasn't just some guy he knew, he isn't keeping Beylord alive because its easier, (if he can kill gods it sure as hell isn't) Thats His Guy™ [...] God that's so sick,,, Beylord [on the back] paying homage to the Arvale Short Tales game over screen and the empty dead husk 'he' [his Body] becomes with the long fangs. The pinky swear making the heart silhouette. DM's just absolute anguished desperation [on the cover], how despite both his disguise falling apart and his eye ripped out, neither have any part of his attention. It's all forward as he's reaching out- To the manufactured memory of a friend long gone. Who would have likely reached back but. Well that's not Beylord anymore, is it. The Husk he's brawling with. The man who he'd tease and bicker and travel and support. Sure he could be a bastard but this. This is wrong. He's Wrong. Because the man in the memory is long dead, and what's leftover is hardly anything more than rancid malice. The Beylord he knew is long dead, but he kinda skipped his afterlife to try and fight the good fight. If The Spirit at the lake is anything to go off of.

But just. The grief of it. If he's wrong, he can be fixed. The problem is, not even DeMenchev can fix death. Sorcynth didn't even fix it completely. But on the surface, Beylord looks alive. A dead man isn't this eloquent, this agile, or this damn strong. Beylord was, though. Except theres one damn problem. Two actually. And looking at this man, who you knew and spent however long with, in the eyes, and seeing only hunger as 'he' [it] says [in Arvale 2 Ocean of Time] "I'm sorry, do I know you?" «

DeMenchev goes through with being his friend to start, we might not know to what capacity, but enough to be referenced again and again, almost sadly in guides which feels out of place. Like the man you see before you is a tragedy. Almost as if DeMenchev is grieving despite the dude being right there. But you're playing as the good guy [in Arvale 2 Ocean of Time] and Beylord is obviously killing people [in Arvale Short Tales] so what is happening here? Only to go in deeper with Arvale Short Tales and DeMenchev is the one to put 'him' [it] in the ground as dormant. Not dead! Dormant. A way to fucking buy time in order to fix his friend that's just murdering anything that happens to come across 'his' [its] path. Like that wasn't just some guy he knew, he isn't keeping Beylord alive because its easier, (if he can kill gods it sure as hell isn't) Thats His Guy™ [...] God that's so sick,,, Beylord [on the back] paying homage to the Arvale Short Tales game over screen and the empty dead husk 'he' [his Body] becomes with the long fangs. The pinky swear making the heart silhouette. DM's just absolute anguished desperation [on the cover], how despite both his disguise falling apart and his eye ripped out, neither have any part of his attention. It's all forward as he's reaching out- To the manufactured memory of a friend long gone. Who would have likely reached back but. Well that's not Beylord anymore, is it. The Husk he's brawling with. The man who he'd tease and bicker and travel and support. Sure he could be a bastard but this. This is wrong. He's Wrong. Because the man in the memory is long dead, and what's leftover is hardly anything more than rancid malice. The Beylord he knew is long dead, but he kinda skipped his afterlife to try and fight the good fight. If The Spirit at the lake is anything to go off of.

But just. The grief of it. If he's wrong, he can be fixed. The problem is, not even DeMenchev can fix death. Sorcynth didn't even fix it completely. But on the surface, Beylord looks alive. A dead man isn't this eloquent, this agile, or this damn strong. Beylord was, though. Except theres one damn problem. Two actually. And looking at this man, who you knew and spent however long with, in the eyes, and seeing only hunger as 'he' [it] says [in Arvale 2 Ocean of Time] "I'm sorry, do I know you?" «

It was from @alienmoths. They were curious about the animation and what this whole Arvale thing was about… so I indulged them. After a very thorough and deranged explanation later, and me lamenting how Arvale Short Tales could only be played on a physical Pocket PC, and I had no luck finding an emulator, they told me:

» I’m good at finding things. «

On the very next day, they sent me this:

To put it simply, I fucking lost it.

They found a working emulator … Kinda. You read the previous bit, you knew it wasn’t going to be this simple.

When I booted up the game, I was met with this:

And here is what it is supposed to look like:

This was a game breaking bug. Arvale Short Tales functions differently from the previous Arvale games. In the previous games, you buy weapons, armor and healing items that have a limited amount of uses, so once they are used up, you buy new and better ones.

In Arvale Short Tales, you start with one piece of armor, one weapon and one healing vial, which never get used up and get upgraded over time.

And as you can see, they are missing. The missing healing vial is especially critical, because without it, you can’t heal on your own. I was able to camp next to a healing spring, which let me fill up my HP again after a battle. It took half an hour… but after running back and forth I was able to grind enough money to buy the upgraded version of my missing vial.

So I guess it’s not game breaking after all, just really unpleasant and tedious, no?

Wrong! This bug would make Beylord unplayable, because it already starts with a fully upgraded vial (flagon) you can’t upgrade. And if the flagon is missing…

There were also other bugs where the music wasn’t playing or the player character’s battle animations weren’t being displayed.

You probably didn’t catch this, but if you compare the emulator vs. my physical Pocket PC picture, you can see that the HP is bugged too. Instead of using a / like in my physical version, it’s using a : . I pointed out that this is how HP is displayed in the previous games, and after digging through the code (what was readable in notepad, anyways) we found a lot of remnant/unused code of Arvale 2 Ocean of Time (as well as a little bit of Arvale 1 Journey of Illusion).

Moth also found unused code where Beylord’s fangs were its original weapon, instead of its claws. I can see why that got scratched, that would have been rather awkward for Lankha (and Beylord) to put spells on/upgrade it…

Furthermore, after some digging on my part, I discovered the old UI design for Arvale ‘Short Tales’ looked like this:

That’s… Arvale 2 Ocean of Time. Mostly. That’s DeMenchev right there- And the title screen… that looks like the one for Arvale Short Tales.

The UI design in Arvale 2 Ocean of Time is supposed to be reminiscent of DeMenchev’s journal, and here we actually see a journal! It’s even got the golden edges DeMenchev’s journal has in Melonchi Minecarts:

What's also interesting is how the old UI presented here is the same old UI Arvale 2 Ocean of Time had while it was still in development.

BTW here is another work-in-progress screenshot from 🤖Jaybot7 when he was working on releasing Arvale 2 Ocean of Time for the iPhone, which I found... peculiar.

It reminded me how The Beylord Spirit, which is a mirrored (and inverted) sprite of Beylord, is called "Beyghost" in the Arvale Short Tales files.

Image of 🤖Jaybot7 using the beginner Arvale 1 Journey of Illusion quest as a placeholder to showoff the UI for the iPhone... And some of these other questlines (with the exception of the "Travel to Idraces" one) remind me vaguely of Arvale Short Tales quests...

Get the key -> Tabys (needs a key to break into one of the Maestyl houses at night to steal something) Letter delivery -> Varju (I got a video of that on my blog but basically Varju, among other Arvale Short Tales player characters like Koden, has to play mailman) Find the missing girl -> Lotus (Arthur's little sister runs off into the Thannes Plains outside of Maestyl) Collect flowers -> Tabys (Tabys does need to get his hands on a "Sable Rose" to unlock invisibility) Destroy the orcs -> Tabys (goes on a orc/goblin killing spree on Thannes Plains sent by Arthur, it's actually one of the very first quests)

There's also the one and only scratched soundtrack from Arvale 2 Ocean of Time which is called...

*squinting*

*squinting harder*

Beylord castle...?

That's what it was called in Arvale 1 Journey of Illusion before it got renamed to »Beylord Manor« in Arvale Short Tales. And it's connected to Kytar, where it is. Cannot be visited in Arvale 2 Ocean of Time, though.

Instead, you meet Beylord in Arvale 2 Ocean of Time in the Dividion Temple (which is actually just a Mazulen Temple, which Dividion just built his castle on top of, I'm pretty sure). And speaking of Dividion, he got cut from the game as well. He even had his own custom overworld sprite:

Okay so... I might be reaching a bit, and I don't exactly have a good track record of being normal about Arvale-

... But could it be that Arvale 2 Ocean of Time and Arvale Short Tales started out as one game? And then later on got split into two… Is that why we have so much unused Arvale 2 Ocean of Time code? Is that why we have such a » lore load bearing vampire « as Moth put it, even though Beylord plays such a small role in Arvale 2 Ocean of Time? Despite feeling so… important, Beylord has such little screentime. Even in Arvale Short Tales. I guess The Vampire was meant for more, originally.

Okay so, we have a bunch of unused Arvale 2 Ocean of Time code, inventory code, that the emulator seems to be reading instead of the Arvale Short Tales code. So… we just get rid of the Arvale 2 Ocean of Time code.

Easier said than done.

1). The game refuses to accept any edits to the code.

2). Even after managing to edit the code anyway, the emulator refused to read it. That’s because the game was packed in .CAB (cabinet) files.

[Moth] » so im like halfway figured it out because its two cab files. Its a cab within a cab and i cant go that deep. But i can extract the outer and edit the inner, leaving it partial intact. The main issue is now how to recompile it together and have it work. Ive tried zipping it and converting but it doesnt like that. and i do notice that the file size is fairly different so maybe zipping is eating or artifacting the files enough to make it mad «

After yet another long search, Moth managed find a program built to take apart CABs properly.

But there was another issue, because of course.

There were a bunch of files with said remnant code that couldn’t be properly opened in a notepad and edited.

And sometimes they were completely incomprehensible. I mean, just look at THIS:

So we needed to find the software, AKA the game engine, that could open these files proper.

Such as .ITM (items?) .MON (monsters?) .NPC (Npcs) .RGN (region?) .TRG (triggers?)

… and .RPG

.RPG is an RPG Maker format.

There are sprites split into hair, face, nose, etc. RPG Maker typically does this, but it might not be exclusive to it. The wall sprites come in batches, which is also reminiscent of the way RPG Maker groups its sprites.

So… It’s gotta be RPG Maker? NOPE!

It was developed with a C++ engine called Razor, made for palm devices, built and PDAmill released in 2002.

But there’s another problem! It’s not even a whole game engine!!! You need another program to even operate this thing…

This entire thing forced Moth to do bullshit like setting up a virtual machine (to emulate old Windows operating systems) to set up the .CAB editor and tinker with multiple different Pocket PC emulator versions.

In the end, this was a wild goosechase.

Moth has been cycling through different Pocket PC emulators and trying to run different versions of Arvale Short Tales on them in the meantime (which also took lots of finding first) and one day.

One of them just worked.

It was a much older version of Arvale Short Tales as well. You’d expect the newer ones to be less buggy, but no. We still don’t know why.

Melonchi Minecarts is playable on this emulator as well!

Other programs (CAB files) can be added by dropping the file into the SD file and downloading them in the emulator through path (Programs -> File Explorer -> Storage Device) The CAB for Melonchi Minecarts can be found here.

Sadly the audio of Melonchi Minecarts is completely busted. A great shame, because the tracks are remixes/arrangements of the OSTs from the previous titles! And I recall 🤖Jaybot7 being quite proud of them as well... Anyway, Moth is still working on it- As well as the other games! (Except Arvale Treasure of Memories)

Sadly their audios are also busted, but once that is fixed… They’ll release all Arvale games (minus Treasure of Memories) packaged with one emulator!

While 🤖Jaybot7 released Arvale 1 & 2 playable for normal computers on his own blog already, their windows are extremely small. The emulator allows for bigger screens and would allow them to be more pleasantly playable.

MAN, the way you painted young/human Beylord here… bravo!! I adore it!!!

And menacing! Very menacing! Especially with that lighting. His hood is pulled over his head, his turtleneck is pulled over his face, he’s being all sneaky and trying to blend into the shadows... and he does. Hah hah hah! I have similar animation/illustration ideas where his black cape helps him blend into the shadows, and I am really glad that even though I didn’t get to show that yet, someone else could already tell that this is something his cape is/can be used for. Hah!

But somewhere, the sunlight still hits him and reveals his shape.

I really like that it's very clearly sunlight here. With how bright it is, probably midday sun too. A clear sunny sky.

Sunlight… something only human Beylord can be exposed too/seen with.

Aww I just realized… Both DeMenchev AND Beylord are in the sunlight here… with DeMenchev it’s just more obvious.

I really like how it reflects on his dagger as well… like a warning.

There is this looming sense of violence here that I really like. Beylord’s clearly hiding, but he’s already pulled out one of his daggers and he is gripping it tight.

He’s looking back, looking for something or someone, somewhere in the direction of the exposing sunlight. Ohhh he is preparing a stealth attack! Or ready to defend himself from something/someone looking for him!

I really like the rendering of the chainmail shirt, especially those small reflections/highlights… Very lovely. Almost like fishscales!

Man, the folds in the black hood/cape are so satisfying. And the glove- You added a subtle blue backlight in here and it’s 👌

And that face, hah! That nose is spot on LMAO good job!! I myself yoinked it straight outta his vampire design (among the shape of the rest of his face), along with that little hairstrand he has poking out of his slick hair, to be as accurate as I could. And you included that too! And it just looks really good!! You even added that eyeshadow I gave his human form, and I see that scar!! HELL YES! Even the eyes… the blue is brighter around the pupil and you included that too! I really like how the sunlight subtly reflects/shimmers in his eyes, making them almost glow. It’s so cool. I love these.

In conclusion,