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The Coral Cave - a watercolor point & click set in Okinawa

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Kasper F. Nielsen - 09 June 2013 12:14 PM

I prefer the eyes the original way without a dot.

Me too.

Nothing wrong with the original art style, imo.

     

The truth can’t hurt you, it’s just like the dark: it scares you witless but in time you see things clear and stark. - Elvis Costello
Maybe this time I can be strong, but since I know who I am, I’m probably wrong. Maybe this time I can go far, but thinking about where I’ve been ain’t helping me start. - Michael Kiwanuka

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Looks beautiful!

And Lambonius presented a good image to explain the art style.

This looks very promising, and fun!  Please keep us updated!

C’est bon!


Bt

     
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OK, thank you!
We feel the same about the eyes.
We won’t add the dots.

The water animation looks great so far. 
Perhaps you could slow it down a bit, if you can do more frames and avoid too sharp angles where the single waves meet.

OK, we’ll try to slow it down. It’s true that it’s too fast now…
Thank you!

     

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I really liked the other one, btw. (The one you linked to. )
Very nice for calmer water moved by some wind.

     
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TimovieMan - 09 June 2013 01:58 PM
Kasper F. Nielsen - 09 June 2013 12:14 PM

I prefer the eyes the original way without a dot.

Me too.

Me three Smile

     

Duckman: Can you believe it? Five hundred bucks for a parking ticket?
Cornfed Pig: You parked in a handicapped zone.
Duckman: Who cares? Nobody parks there anyway, except for the people who are supposed to park there and, hell, I can outrun them anytime.

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I love it. big fan of miyazaki myself

     
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Hello everybody,
We’ve spent part of the summer polishing the first scene of the game so we are now able to show you a gameplay video of the Coral Cave.

It features a few backgrounds, animations and a glimpse of the first puzzle.


You can watch it here on youtube:

Capturing the video wasn’t an easy task because our computer isn’t really powerful…
So the video isn’t as smooth as we would like.
But it should be enough to give you a first glance of the game in motion.

We hope you’ll like it!

PS: Many thanks to Kino and Koyu, the little girls who sing at the end of the video.

     

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Simply beautiful! I love the music, too.

     
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Apart from stereotypical character design, art looks amazing.

     
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This is of course coming from a Westerner’s perspective (and has already been said) but I much prefer the original eye style. I don’t look at it as stereotypical but rather as ethnically familiar - this looks like other things I’ve seen and clearly places it as Japanese in my mind. That’s not a negative, I don’t think.

     

“Drinking rum before 10 a.m. makes you a pirate, not an alcoholic!”

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The game looks as good as ever. When do you guys expect to be ready to release? And what platforms do you have in mind currently?

     
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Really stunning, it’s like Ghibli made a video game! Will you be trying to get this Greenlit on Steam?

     
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Stuart - 09 September 2013 07:09 PM

Really stunning, it’s like Ghibli made a video game!

Ahem. Wink

But yes, I agree, the animation has that Ghibli vibe. Which is a very good thing, imo.


And I endorse the idea of trying to get Greenlit. Being on Steam will boost sales exponentially.

     

The truth can’t hurt you, it’s just like the dark: it scares you witless but in time you see things clear and stark. - Elvis Costello
Maybe this time I can be strong, but since I know who I am, I’m probably wrong. Maybe this time I can go far, but thinking about where I’ve been ain’t helping me start. - Michael Kiwanuka

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Thank you for your kind comments!

To answer the questions :

1 - When do you guys expect to be ready to release?
End of 2014 would be wonderful… but it may be later.
We’ll tell you when we know the date.

2 - And what platforms do you have in mind currently?
Windows for sure.
Wintermute, the software we are using, can handle Mac, Linux & iPad too… so may be those platforms too. But we’ll probably need some help to port the game.

3 - Will you be trying to get this Greenlit on Steam?
We are Steam user and play most of the adventure games on it. So we would love to put The Coral Cave on steam.
We feel it’s too early now. But yes, in the future, we’ll submit it on Greenlight.

     
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Happy new year!

Let’s start 2014 with some explanations about how we make the Coral Cave’s art.

I - Backgrounds

Every background starts as a very small sketch, like those:


Click on the picture if you want to zoom it.

This is how the game looks like at the very very beginning.
The puzzles and the backgrounds are created at the same time as well as the viewpoint, the lighting and the main atmosphere of the scene.
Because of their very small scale, those drawings help us to see the structure of the scene.
When we are happy with both the scene’s atmosphere and the distribution of the puzzles in the space, we start drawing the final sketch.

Here is Mizuka’s room, just before we color it :


Click on the picture if you want to zoom it.

This step is very important: we scan it, put it in the game engine and see if everything is OK.
The perspective is very important: Is the character at the good size everywhere in the scene?
Sometimes, we have to redraw a part of the scene because, when the character walks to the distance, she happens to be taller than the door she supposed to open!

Here is another exemple of a final drawing:


Click on the picture if you want to zoom it.

You can see it’s very detailled. We create every scene of the game using those sketches.
All the events, the puzzles, are coded using those sketches.
Then we play the game.
If something doesn’t work (or is disapointing), it’s easier to redraw a sketch than a fully painted watercolor!

When everything is OK, it’s time to color the background.
Here is a timelapse video showing how we color a background from the beginning to the end:


Click on the picture to open the video.

II - Characters

The difficulty when coloring an animation using watercolor is: every frame has a color slightly different and the character seems to flicker when he moves.
In order to get exactly the same colors on all the frames of the character in all the animations, we use a little trick.
Cécile paints areas of colors on several sheets: one for the skin, one for the pajama top, one for the pajama bottom…
On another sheet, using a pencil, she draws the different frames of the character.
Then we scan everything and, on the computer, she adds the colors to the lineart. This way, the same colors can be used in all the animations without loosing the handpainted feel.

Here is a little video showing how we color our main character:

Click on the picture to open the video.

III - Interactive objects

Interactive objects are difficult: they can’t be done in one drawing. The player will activate/open/close/move them. So we have to plan all those states and draw them separately.

Here is an example: an electric box.
On the paper, it looks like that:

We draw the box closed, then opened.
The interactive parts (the plugs per example) are drawn separately.
The color circles will be used later to create lights on some devices of the box.

Here is the finished box:

Now, the player can interact with the box: he can open it with a key, click on the switches, light the diodes…

It wouldn’t be possible to create it with only one drawing.
So we have to draw all the parts of the object several times, in different positions, and be sure they will match together perfectly in the end.
It takes time… but it’s a fun job!

Thank you for reading and feel free to write if you have any question!

     

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