LEVEL UP Your Visual Novel Sprites!

Learn how to use sprite scaling, camera movement, and clever composition to eke out static characters, and make your visual novel more visually engaging, and tell stories through visuals and direction!
Sprite in the Thumbnail is by Mugかぶり

[@zzzxxx7294]

You can still easily animate your static sprites without actually animating them. Define your sprite to switch between a closed eyes shot and an opened eyes one to create blinking, without actually having to animate anything.

[@zzzxxx7294]

I should add that a third sprite in between that has the eyes half opened would make it smoother.

[@dethpyredethpyre346]

@@zzzxxx7294 and that's basically what animating is.

[@muaythaiYT]

wouldn't you then need 2-3 sprites for every pose and facial expression variation, which could number in the hundreds

[@zzzxxx7294]

@@muaythaiYT well not anymore if you apply composites. Basically the eyes, arms, depending how much variety you want, are separate pngs that you overlay on top of the body This way you need way less sprites

[@muaythaiYT]

@@zzzxxx7294 interesting, i'm just now learning about this stuff because i'm looking to create a visual novel. is there a method to handling composites or you're literally adding and positioning pngs in renpy?

[@ichigostrawberry824]

I agree that these details could add a lot more POP to a visual novel! Great advice yet again, thanks Vimi!

[@vimi]

No problem!

[@TMichael66]

Just wanted to give you a shout out for your amazing Ren'py videos. Your advice concerning not just the engine but story, stagecraft, and everything else needed to make a VN amazing is pure gold for other developers. Thank you so much, and I look forward to all of your future vids!

[@vimi]

Thank you so much!

[@nosywendigo592]

When you started getting into depth on the staging of characters, this is a must watch for me. The advantage to what you suggest falls onto the category of 3D images which can do far more than positioning. It can also elicit emotion, expressions, and actions that determine the future path laid down for the character. Daz3D is the program for this. In anime, sorry to say this but this would become a constant pain for anime artists to actually draw each character in different images regarding the positioning then the expressions, etc. I can see this becoming a market boom for a compilation of faceless anime characters in different positioning and having a while slew of eyes, eyebrows, mouth, noses packs to customize that one character in a position through a sprite editor or something. Just my two cents.

[@hakimitus]

Dude...your channel is a treasure trove of creative goodness!

[@vimi]

I try my best!

[@rosesnscissors9200]

I agree!! I am so glad I found this channel!!

[@bexplosion]

Visual Novel should have been called Visual Play, as it more like a theatre play and not a novel. Also if you go 3D you have the same camera freedom as in movies.

[@vimi]

The term "Visual Novel" is actually a brand name! "Sound Novel" was the term used for Spike Chunsoft's story-based games, but when Key was developing THEIR story based games, they decided to emphasis the visuals, so they called their games "Visual Novels" I would totally be fine with "Visual Play" as the new name for the genre!

[@kingmaster04]

I have no interest in making visual novel myself, but as an avid visual novel fan, this video really help me appreciate visual novel presentation more. Thank you so much man!

[@vimi]

No problem! I'm glad you enjoyed it!

[@Budder28]

I'm honestly surprised you don't have more subscribers and views on your channel! All your videos are so well thought out but also easy to understand and has helped me tremendously, not only with the coding aspect of using Renpy, but the entire experience of making a visual novel. Your work here is outstanding, thank you so much and keep up the amazing job! 😄

[@vimi]

Thank you! I'm glad my videos are making your dev journey a smoother one!

[@ingthingart]

This is inspiring me to get into renpy and figure out some more sprite staging tricks! Thank you for the tips 🙌

[@vimi]

Yeah! Dig in there!

[@limondaes]

Suuuuper interesting! I definitely had no idea you could do all this stuff with Ren'py, and all the info about theater techniques was really, really cool-- also applicable to things beyond VNs, I think! Thank you very much. 😊

[@vimi]

👑👑👑

[@wertville]

Muv Luv Extra was the *king* of this, and IMO it wasn't dethroned until Tsukihime:Re some 17 years later. It's really amazing how ahead of the time it was. As for your last point, this is part of why I prefer NVL format to ADV format, at least for narrative heavy stuff. You get so much more control over the and it really puts the text first-and-foremost.

[@TrueMonkeyNinja]

Great content as always! Playing around a bit more with Sprite movement because of a character that’s not done justice just with text in my game at the moment, and seeing these gives even more ideas for what to try with him! Great example with the shoes segment as well btw, it’s really great seeing VNs be more emotive that way (and 100% important for games without voice acting I feel!)

[@vimi]

I'm glad the video is giving you some inspiration!

[@MINTGL0W]

THANK YOU for talking about this!!! Static sprites/angles and/or sprites with only a few set expressions have always bugged me since there's so much potential for showing action and life in the VN medium. It's a lot of work, but it's worth it as the end product can feel like a playable show/movie. (It's called a VISUAL novel for a reason!) I saw you say in another comment, but it would be neat if you do get to talking about body poses in another video :D

[@vimi]

I'll be getting into some art-focused videos, and sprite design is a big thing I wanna focus on! The trouble is, I've been a professional artist for over a decade, so every time I try to start a video script, I get really stuck in the weeds. I'll get there, though!

[@bexplosion]

For a full body sprite, I think many would get align and proportion problems with the feets and the ground

[@vimi]

That is definitely an important consideration when you're setting up your sprites and backgrounds!

[@monalu2640]

Me: "Yeah...I'll just animate my characters"

[@Armadill0h]

This channel rocks. Totally using some of these techniques.

[@vimi]

🤩🎸✨

[@jakearsenal4400]

This really opened my eyes

[@vimi]

👀

[@GRHmedia]

Great input. I can see a few issues. The art would have to be reasonable quality to bring much closer and zoom in. The engine would need to support moving the character position like that not all do. Not every engine even supports animation of character sprites / dolls. Then the biggest issue is the developers. Most developers creating VN suck at programming. So if it requires them to do any coding a lot will just refuse and others will make a mess of it ...

[@Sket4i]

Great video. Very helpful.

[@morantNO1]

This was very helpful! I am an aspiring solo game-dev and want to use visual novel elements to convey my games story. I never thought about the things in here. But I could immediately see how they drastically improve quality, while saving my ressources, as I can use non animated sprites and maximize the expressiveness of them. Very cool and just what I needed!

[@vimi]

I'm glad I could help!

[@JuleSan_jk]

Thanks a bunch for your practical tips'n tricks with theatrical insights to use more potential for storytelling! It makes the storyboarding and coding easier to write it out that way in the first place ^.^

[@jinzolaamenazadelamaquina8287]

It’s always a pleasure to see a new vid! Thank you so much for your work.

[@Crim_Zen]

Making a VN with Bakemonogatari's anime style of cameras seems like a pretty interesting way to tell a story.

[@SleepyDevs-e8k]

What's your opinion on the sprites facing the camera compared to sprites facing each other?

[@VisionOasis]

I ran into this with Clannad recently. They actually have sprites “move” and flicker. With some decorative text now and again. It’s very minimal but makes a world of difference. It can be hard to get into visual novels in the beginning (as that is almost always the most dry part of the story.) but I found that kept me invested through my the “courting” period of a visual novel I was unsure about.

[@recentlydanny]

Loved this vid! I definitely thought you were going to preach the importance of different body poses to emote as opposed to just changing the facial expressions but everything you proposed was so much more resourceful and time-effective! I approach visual novel making from the very....very....high-effort lens of being a cartoonist, so my go-to way to add life is to add more drawings... which is fine if you have the time... but not everybody is as nuts as I am XD

[@vimi]

Ooooh and I will get to different body poses in another video - lots of tips+tricks to maximize utility for that stuff!

[@nadiarey4196]

I relate

[@CalixRomeroOfficial]

Really happy that I found your channel! The last time I used Renpy was 4 years ago and now you made me want to come back to using it. Haha

[@vimi]

Yeah, come back to Ren'py! We got drag'n'drop features now! Python 3! And Speech Bubbles are coming soon!

[@arindika1]

This is so INSPIRING! You inspire me to make my visual novel always better and better. Best part is, this is something you can add in to your project pretty easily.

[@vimi]

thank you!

[@YoshiKirishima]

Really concise and useful video thanks!

[@ayafan3876]

This is awesome, I love how these can all be done with one character drawing! A question: would you have any suggestions on the easiest way to make a sprite in renpy do those entrance animations/mid conversation animations, for example sliding into the scene with squash and stretch, or shaking when scared, etc.?

[@vimi]

All of those animations can be done with simple ATL statements, and can be defined as custom transforms. My Action Editor and Transitions & Animation videos cover most of the basics! www.renpy.org/doc/html/atl.html#transform-statement

[@tjreed7797]

I've recently started playing Muv Luv Extra and Witch on the Holy Night and my mind was blown by how they use their sprites and cg! Those vn and this video are really inspiring! Also, what's the name of 0:29?

[@vimi]

That's "Necrobarista" - an Australian 3d Visual Novel that was released in 2021.

[@nosywendigo592]

There's a Korean TV series that is comedic and funny to me at least. It's called Backstreet Rookie. The TV series had a really great transition where the main female lead, Sae-Baet (sp?) ends up with a intro and a comedic pose in a karate flying kick stance, iirc, and it plastered like a comic book her name and interests. Then there's Triad Princess where each character gets their own comic book intro. I'd like to see that replicated in Ren'Py. By the way, awesome work on this video. You have no idea how much help you're offering to the Ren'Py community at large with your precious time! o7

[@vimi]

Thank you! I'm gonna be checking out Triad Princess later!

[@nosywendigo592]

@@vimi Let me know if it can be replicated.

[@vimi]

@@nosywendigo592 Will Do!

[@thelastsecret3514]

Wow, I've never seen such a cohesive set of ideas how to use positioning and other features of sprites before, and I think I'm going over my newest visual novel (to be published in a few weeks) once more, trying to implement some of these ideas. Thank you for the great work!🥰

[@MariJadeWrites]

Thank you for the tips, I will consider these tips for my VN I am working on :)

[@Crazy4Daisy]

love the bee and puppycat shirt

[@vimi]

🥰 i love it too

[@insanecoolaid7299]

How did you do that at 8:57! Please! I've been trying to find the word, term or whatever on how to zoom the camera to a specific area! D: and no, I don't want to zoom the specific character forward, I want the camera to zoom in! >A< *frustrated with the terminoloy on the web* Pleaaaaaase! Just the code will do! T_T

[@vimi]

I did a live stream where I covered the code for this game specifically! The tricky part was creating the 3d scene so the camera effects looked a bit more elaborate, so it's worth watching the whole video if you're into this sort of stuff! kzbin.info/www/bejne/bpXTeah_i7useNE

[@insanecoolaid7299]

@@vimi To think that the Camera, is literally a character on itself! OCO *mind blown* Thank you so much! It's just what I needed for most of my scenes! >w

[@PalominoBlueGames]

I love your videos. This is really great information. Do you think there’s a chance of running the risk of turning off a player by wiggling things around and putting text all over the place? I’m new to creating VNs but I always thought the convention of keeping things more static was to remove cognitive burden from the reader/player.

[@vimi]

The convention came about because it's labor intensive to create a bunch of conversations that use frequent camera moves like this. Movies and animation are a good point of reference for how these directions should be used; it's nice to use interesting camera positions, but most live action shows still stick with over-the-shoulder shots most of the time, and cartoons stick with mid shots at 3/4 views of the characters in most scenes. Use these techniques as ways to break up the monotony of simple conversations, and add a bit more visual interest to your VN.

[@PalominoBlueGames]

@@vimi it sure is ;)

[@kimosabee1899]

Hi, nice video, thanks! I would like to know if you could do a probability tutorial? For example, I want there to be a 50% chance that a certain scene will occur in a game. is that possible?

[@vimi]

You'll probably appreciate my ren'py random numbers tutorial, which covers just that!

[@sageo7618]

Amazing advice and techniques, tysm!! I get irritated when a visual novel is too text-heavy and now I understand why. So glad I found this video.

[@trturistofficial]

I will definitely use some of this tactics on my visual novel project. Good work!

[@vimi]

Thanks! Best of luck on your project!

[@fenrik8178]

As someone who’s currently creating sprites to use in my first visual novel project, thanks! Thanks for your videos in general, if those didn’t exist I doubt I’d even be trying to create a visual novel right now haha.

[@justinseiyanyx6092]

wow this channel is just a treasure trove of creative content. this is just so smart and creative

[@unciervoenciervado]

What a talented guy you are. I'm glad you are sharing this with us

[@dutchkenshin]

Thank you for making this video! I never thought of moving my full-character sprits or making them different sizes. the black bar section is something I would have never considered either.

[@vimi]

No problem! I'm just glad I could help!

[@shaynsnyolo]

Amazing to see your vast knowledge on this matter!

[@vimi]

Thank you!

[@Milkipaws]

I have smt to ask, whats the recommended size for vn character sprites if my game res is 1920 x 1080

[@SerMon22]

Man, my drawings are stick figures. Just about anything will be an upgrade for the sprites I can make at this moment. Joking aside, thanks for the pointers. This will be useful even if it's things I don't draw myself.

[@VoltitanDev]

Is it possible to do use those sprite examples for the text with a textbox?

[@vimi]

Yup!

[@spicypeachdev]

Thanks so much for the tips!

[@faiyazahmed7838]

Bro could you plz make a video on compiling ren'py games for Android,PC and IOS plzzz ... I'm Searching whole KZbin but didn't find anything plz it's a request 🙏

[@skidrenz]

It would be great if someone made a tutorial for all of these animations!

[@LearningWithBandE]

I'm really loving your videos! Please keep 'em coming! 🙂

[@vimi]

Absolutely!

[@KasiaOno-be7xs]

Thank you so much for this video. You have returned faith in my project. I already subconsciously planned to use many of these narrative devices (bird's/worm's eye, scaling, proximity, depth ) and I was really surprised there are terms for these, I am one of those people who imagine things in my head but have no name for the techniques. I actually wanted to use the character's height as a narrative device for framing, but then I started to wonder if I am being silly (even though it influences my script a lot). But when you mentioned that this is deliberately used in the theater to signal the power balance, you only validated my choice. By the way, do you happen to have any resources where that is talked about? My script deliberately invokes Greek stage play at times, so that would be very helpful for me to analyse further. Again. Thank you so much for your videos.

[@kevinramos7903]

Muito obrigado pelo video. Seu canal me ajuda muito!

[@depotemkin]

10:49 - how to make these effects in RenPy?

[@vimi]

I break it down in my Action Editor video!

[@Phiiiiiiiiiiiii]

Hundreds of hours of education diluted to one 15 minutes video. Extremely useful.

[@roadman_hanzi]

Note that in cultures where you write right to left going left to write looks...like you are going back to a place rather than making progress, heck have you seen arabic movies or Even Instagram and such social media apps in arabic xD, they swap the direction of things , simple put it because we Arabs focus on the right direction more than the left one , keep that in mind when making stuff for (let's say) a transilation or making a visual novel for a certain group of people ,

[@ElUltimoNacho]

Fantastic advice, Your videos blow my imagination. Thanks!

[@vimi]

🤯

[@KoriyaKori]

Genius thanks!!! I didn't think about most of this it really helped you deserve my follow

[@baltiir2953]

What game is at 14:05? id like to play that...

[@vimi]

That's called "What Comes After"

[@starryeyed110796]

This is genius! Cheers mate👍

[@vimi]

Cheers!

[@depotemkin]

The movement of sprites can make them more alive, even if they are not animated (I'm talking about static sprites whose facial expressions do not change) eeit: Yes, it has already been written about :)

[@bedivere20]

This is super useful, thank you!!

[@vimi]

I aim to please!

[@hg7299]

Please make more videos about how make rpgs in Renpy 🙏

[@D3stinySm4sher]

A lot of neat things to consider that renpy is capable of! I just…wish there was literally any guidance on where to go to LEARN how to do them (something you’ve done plenty of in the past with at least brief walkthroughs). Some of these I already know how to do, which feels reassuring in that I’ve been starting to do more with how my characters at least move around and are positioned. I’ll have to look up how to execute some of these more advanced bits, unless anyone has any direction on where to go.

[@vimi]

My Action Editor video and the Transitions & Animation video should cover most of these things - were there any of the "advanced bits" you'd like me to cover in particular?

[@ComingSoonEntertainment]

0:29 what game is this?!

[@vimi]

Necrobarista! An Australian 3d visual novel with some great visual presentation!

[@robiimadot.9273]

3:40 what's the name of the game, i really want to experiment with animations like that

[@Hardts]

This is excellent! I will probably keep coming back to your channel wh8pe developing my VN. Thanks man!

[@vangogh4508]

This video is so eye opening

[@beckphan77]

Great video. I could really use some small, quick minigames for my skill trainings. Do you have any suggestions?

[@vimi]

Find small, simple games, and research to see how you can effectively recreate them in ren'py. You'll find the limits for the engine really quick, and find problems that you didn't know needed to be solved! Start with simple stuff like a number guessing game or Mad Libs, and move on to more complicated games like Texas Hold'em or Battleship.

[@chaennelchaennel]

now we just need to learn the codes to do all of this😂😂💓

[@anatoliyadonin8013]

Hi. I have built a mini-game into my project. Everything works. But when I want to save the game and exit, an error appears: Exception: Can't pickle a Render. Does anyone know how to fix this?

[@vimi]

🤷 I have never gotten that error! Try asking on the Ren'py subreddit, and make sure you show your code!

[@grimgreycastle5141]

Would love if you went over making sprites next

[@vimi]

I make my living as a video game artist, so actually doing videos on art are what I'm the most self-conscious about! They're coming, it's just gonna take some time before I feel comfortable getting into it!

[@grimgreycastle5141]

@@vimi its fine take your time. Your vids are very good and informative. So keep up the great work

[@user-zh9qu6qn2g]

Very helpful. Thank you

[@mrrabbitch7491]

I just accidently clicked this video but I'm glad I did thanks for sharing your thoughts about VN I'm currently making one but not really an expert about it.

[@vimi]

Best of luck on your VNDev journey!

[@cyfangz9238]

I had not thought about this at all, thanks!

[@robin-sempai1756]

This channel is literally a gold mine. Thanks, gonna start watching around.

[@vimi]

Awesome! I hope you like my other videos!

[@robin-sempai1756]

@@vimi Gotta ask tomething- there's this part in the video where the characters are speaking as the sprite is moving by himself. coding wise how did u make that? my programmer said he dint know how to get the text and characters to work in that way. If you can illuminate me it would mean the world.

[@vimi]

​@@robin-sempai1756 In ren'py, you can add an animation statement to an image that can happen over a set amount of time. For instance, "linear 30.0 zoom 2.0" would sloowly increase the size of a sprite to 2x the size over thirty seconds. If you include dialogue after that, without making any changes to the character sprite, then the animation will continue as the user clicks through the dialogue. You can also give characters repeatable animations that can continue as you go through dialogue!

[@robin-sempai1756]

@@vimi Thanks a loot. Gonna send this to him. Just as you said in your vid. VN can get a little unexpressive when it's made whit only the basic elements. This is gonna help much whit that. Thanks again.

[@inarisound]

awesome tips, thank you!

[@Україна-о2щ]

Do you need to have image editor or can it be done with vanilla renpy? Thank you

[@vimi]

You CAN do it with pure code, but the action editor will make it a lot easier.

[@IRONRTS]

Can you do a vid of how to do a manipulator mc for a vn

[@hankthepatriot3733]

So glad I found this channel! It has given me so many creative ideas that I wouldn't have otherwise thought of!!! I do have coding questions that I have yet to discover answers to (I'm very much a novice in my endeavors) and probably haven't quite figured out HOW to ask the proper questions (terminology) to uncover the answers I seek. For example, I would like to build my story in an episodic/chapter format, where each release starts off from the previous one without having to release new content mixed with previous content... or if this is even the best route to undertake. I'm also concerned with file size with this route... I know persistent data plays a factor (choices made in chapter one dictates path in chapter 2 or 3, etc) Alas, I'm not certain if I'm even asking these questions correctly. Anyhow, I'm thoroughly enjoying this channel and the content. I eagerly await new content!

[@vimi]

Easiest way to do that is to just update your game over time with the new episodes - that way the user's saves will be kept along with every new update. I haven't done it myself, so there's probably some nuance involved with releasing your game in episodes if each of them are a separate DLC, but if you're just updating your game over time, it should be as easy as just updating!

[@n_o_marsh]

Man all your videos are gold.

[@vimi]

Thanks!

[@raseruuu3742]

AYY so much great points!!

[@vimi]

i aim to please!

[@bowlOnudel]

What vn is this 0:29

[@vimi]

Necrobarista

[@bowlOnudel]

@@vimi cool I'll check it out!

[@zongle5073]

can you do these sprite movements in Ren'py or with python script?

[@vimi]

Yes - I went through how to do most of them via my actionscript video - kzbin.info/www/bejne/gaC8ia2IequraqM

[@juliannaquino-torres2742]

I'm no longer using renpy but this helps me alot still.

[@angshappy3424]

Hi hi, how would you go about making a shell game in renpy?

[@vimi]

Spend 95% of my time on animation, graphics, and presentation to hide that most of the actual mechanics are made up of renpy.random.choice(['left', 'center', 'right']))

[@frikoffmom]

I have some tips for anyone who's actually drawing their sprites themself. Focus on whatever you're more comfortable with! If you're better with poses than faces, you can do a LOT through body language. If you focus primarily on faces, make more expressions and just program the sprites to move around a bit more to make them feel more alive. Although I HATE drawing poses, I like to focus on both depending on the character. Some characters have TONS of poses and others have only a few. Some have lots of expressions, others don't. It creates a lot of personality to make some character more expressive than others.

[@user-zp7mg5zf3x]

Thanks a lot, buddy. Your videos are fantastic and I'm happy every time I see content from you :)

[@willowtreeyt244]

All the advice here is sooooo good. The only problem I have is that I have the artistic skill of a toddler with no arms. So I'm basically just binge watching videos like this until I find an artist who can help me turn my ideas into visual novels lmao. So many stories, no art skills. Yet somehow I want to make visual novels. 😂

[@acebandit1231]

Does anyone know what game is at 0:28 ? Very great video by the way!

[@vimi]

That's Necrobarista! Real short'n'sweet 3d Visual Novel from Route 59!

[@PaxleyLuke]

Speaking of VN Sprites.. I'm wondering if it's possible to use Live2D in Renpy to make the characters more lively?

[@vimi]

Yes, and I'm doing some videos on that in the next few months! If you check out my Live Streams, I showed one video I used for the 02A2 jam where I did some Live2d integration for various effects.

[@PaxleyLuke]

@@vimi Thank you so much, it'll be a great help! Your videos really explains tutorials easily and it really helps me a lot! And I'll check it out! Thank you once again!

[@MDunn-x9k]

This youtube channel is a godsend

[@vimi]

Thank you!

[@inallcaps1715]

ough

[@chaennelchaennel]

thank you so much for all of your videos, truly!! I appreciate you so much😭😭💓

[@zzzxxx7294]

Amazing video

[@nonorihara]

Could you make a review on VN maker if possible? a lot of ppl had been comparing it to renpy and i wanted to know ur opinion

[@vimi]

If they sponsored me, maybe? At a glance, if you have a really hard time at programming, and just wanted to make a barebones visual novel, it's probably fine? I'd really have to delve into it to figure out the limits of the engine before I can make any solid determinations, though!

[@nonorihara]

@@vimi thank you for the response i understand

[@erikdong]

Great point!

[@KasimValov]

Моё искреннее тебе уважение, вроде бы очевидные мысли, но подано так подробно и вдохновляюще. Спасибо за твой вклад в искусство визуальных новелл!

[@donatoclemente4421]

Awesome content!