The last few months have gone by in a blur. I graduated from university in December and spent January going on road trips, making a company website for someone (and getting paid for it!), and readjusting to life at home.
Work on
W.I.S.H had been postponed first due to needing to finish up everything for graduation, and then because of a lack of resources. First, the artist doing my title screen art bailed on me after completing only a rough sketch of Seiko (pictured above), so that really sucked. Second, I couldn't figure out what I was going to do for the antagonist's sprite. Since "The Apparition" wasn't in the original cast of
Starlit Dreams, I didn't have a character sprite for him, and I couldn't go back to the artist to commission one because 1) their style has changed since then and 2) they haven't been active for a while.
Some of my friends suggested having the Apparition as an off-screen voice, but the fact that Seiko/Ein has the "Sight" and can not only hear but
see the Apparition is a crucial aspect of the plot. Another idea was to try to take pieces of the other sprites and combine them, but that ended up in disaster. Nothing was working. I was afraid I might have to scrap the whole idea, which was a depressing thought, so I did what I do best: I avoided the whole thing.
Recently, though, I started playing
Absolute Obedience, one of the few BL visual novels that have been localized in the U.S. Although it didn't stack up against something like
Togainu no Chi, it was still entertaining, and I realized that the episodic format it uses - where you choose your character and then choose a "mission" to play through - would be perfect for my other WIP,
Lustful. So, I started working on that again, mostly by working on lining and coloring the character sketches, but also by thinking about what might go into it.
Inspiration breeds inspiration, and as I was thinking about
Lustful, I had a "Eureka!" moment with regard to
W.I.S.H. At the beginning of the game, you can choose which main character you want to play as, so what if the other, unused character were to be the Apparition? Without giving away any details about the ending, this actually makes sense in an alternate-timeline sort of way.
Anyway, now I have sprites for the Apparition and can
finally resume working on
W.I.S.H in confidence...that is, when I'm not working on, you know, finding a job and all that grown-up stuff I'm expected to do now that I'm a college graduate.
Thank you for your patience, everyone!
