Somnova Studios

And we're back. This thing's on, right? Can everyone hear me? Okay, cool. So I hear you folks have been demanding more blog posts. I can't really blame you. We've been silent going on two and a half months, and that's probably not very reassuring from the outside. Let me assuage any concerns you have: we're still alive, we're still kicking, and we're still making progress. Cards on the table, though – we've lost some people along the way. That may sound like pretty bad news, but we're a tighter, stronger team for it. It's sad to see old faces head out the door, but as we move forward, it's reassuring to know we've pared the team down to our most dedicated, most passionate, most hard-working people. And each loss hardens the resolve of the rest of us. On the flipside, we've also welcomed a lot of new talent on board. TJeffy (aka TonyTwoFingers on the forums), one of our resident fanfickers, has been hard at wor...

The title says it all. Whether your're a son or daughter of an awesome mom, be sure to thank her for being awesome. Speaking of moms, here's one of our character's! Art by Troyd Take a guess as to who she is in the forums!

Some of you more astute followers may have noticed a slight change on our forums. It took many a night chanting over forbidden text, maidens sacrificed, and making shady pacts with dark forces. But, we finally decided on a new design for our group's logo! Many thanks to keviniskool for whipping this baby up and slathering it over our unworthy eyes. Discuss this blog post on the forums.

Missing Stars is a visual novel. Since visual novels were pioneered in Japan, most VNs use manga-style artwork. But Missing Stars isn't most visual novels. Keen readers and frequenters to the forums might have noticed a decline in releases of concept art. That is because the artistic direction of the project has shifted. Missing Stars will now be using digital photographs for character sprites. The user interface and promotional materials will still feature drawn artwork, whenever necessary. Given the game's setting and our aspirations for the broadest audience possible, this is a logical choice. After all, most if not all of our backgrounds were intended to be filtered photographs and photorealistic (w)renderings. However, this does present us with production related challenges. Our strive for visual realism has upped our demand for on-location photographs since rendered images will just have to be that much better(and time-consuming) to keep up. Fortunately, our staf...

Happy Easter folks! Hope you manage to grab more eggs than your basket can carry! Art by Aiwa Just a little production update along with our Easter Greetings; - Our writing had been restructured to fix storyline intertwining, continuity problems and character events - the greatest problem among these is to ensure the transition between one writer's scene to another to be merging in a smooth way - Music materials are pouring in - our particular challenge is a proper execution of leitmotifs to fit their intended momentum - Art organization and breakthrough had been achieved - we are aiming higher for the visual experience in this VN and there are new standardizations. Expect more art-related news in future! That's all for now - I suspect that we will have subsequent update blogs from our respective departments soon enough. Stay tuned! - Imperial Discuss this in forums