Hello!

This is  my first devlog for my very first visual novel, Working with Ruslana!
This is more of a brain dump so I apologize if it's a little rambly.

A little backstory

I dabbled in making visual novels around 2010ish with the Novelty engine (Ren'Py seemed far too complicated for me at the time).  I was very inexperienced with writing, art and any sort of programming so all my little projects and ideas never came to fruition. 
In the passing years I've often thought about creating a visual novel again but was always intimidated by the time sink and learning curve.

As a hobby artist, I've always had original characters and I love creating worlds and stories for them to inhabit.

Two years ago, I ended up creating a webcomic called Grimm's Adventurer's Guild featuring some old and new characters.
It was relatively successful but I was quickly overwhelmed with the amount of time and effort it required to stay regular with uploads, have fresh ideas, draw  up all the panels and add dialogue.  This was all while working in an essential worker role during the height of the pandemic.
I was frustrated that I was unable to successfully get my ideas onto the canvas with my current skill level and time restrictions.
I put my comic on an indefinite hiatus but felt so sad leaving my OCs with their stories unresolved and so many other ideas in my head.

This year, I had a fairly drastic change in my career, swapping from healthcare back to retail, and have been left with a lot more free time.

I decided to have another look at Ren'Py and what I could create.
I was surprised at how simple a lot of the coding is, not needing advanced knowledge to create something decent and functional.
So, I decided to bite the bullet and just give it a go!

My scope

I wanted to create something short, a snippet of my characters' lives, that could be played in around 30 minutes with a couple of choices here and there.
I have a tendency to overwhelm myself with new projects, going too big too soon, so I needed to have small goals.

I opted to use characters in the aforementioned webcomic but shift focus to another character within that world, rather than following the titular Grimm.
I settled on writing a script focusing on you, a young adventurer, spending a week working with Ruslana and getting more than you bargained for when you get involved with the odd collection of people in her life.

I am by no means a good writer but I am very passionate about my characters so at this point I am just creating for the sake of creating!!

Progress I've made so far

I've been working on this for around 2 weeks at this point but I have only just decided to get on itch as I feel as though I have committed enough time to think I will actually complete this project! (I have a bad habit of starting things and not completing them)

Completed:
Script first pass approx. 8k words
Script second pass approx. 7k words
Coding completed for first 4 days
Music implemented for first 4 days
Sprites for 5 out of 8 characters
CGs for first 3 days
GUI customization 

Here's some screenshots!

The main menu screen

A sprite and textbox sample

The customized GUI

A WIP of a CG

Next on the to-do list

At the moment, I am using placeholder backgrounds.
I was originally just going to use them as finals as they are all royalty-free/free-to-use assets, however due to style clashes, I have opted to do something different.

 I have aphantasia and really struggle with visualizing anything I want to draw, especially things existing in a 3D space. My brain just doesn't work like that...
So, I've opted to use the backgrounds I originally planned to but redraw/heavily edit/paint over them (this is allowed in the ToS for these assets). With a base point to start from, it's much easier for me to be able to draw a background!

Here's an example of what I'm doing:

This is hopefully make my final product more cohesive and unique!

With this change of plan, this will push my completion time waaaay back as it takes me a really long time to complete backgrounds as I get SO frustrated with myself...
I do think the payoff will be worth it though.

So! That's it for my first devlog, I apologize that it's a bit long and rambly, the next ones should be much more concise.

Thanks for reading!