Somnova Studios

Here's hoping that everyone has a safe and wonderful holiday this year. We have a few treats for you, but no tricks, on this spookiest of evenings. For one thing, Kosherbacon, Gloom, and Hamadyne all worked to put together a couple short stories to get into the spirit of things. Hama's "Halloween Costumes"  story is a much more cheerful piece that you might need after reading the others. Kosher's "St. Dymphna's Mystery Club"  is dark and suspenseful, but at least it won't leave you hanging. Finally, Gloom's latest work, "The Little Death,"  is more on the intimate, emotional side of things. Please feel free to leave some feedback either on the stories' respective threads, or of course come discuss everything on the forums. And of course, it's not a Missing Stars blog post without some art, so we hope you enjoy this year's holiday pieces as much as we do. thank mr sendo and morth

Note: This post contains nudity and shouldn't be viewed if you're in a place where nudity isn't appreciated, like work or a children's play park. Hello again friends. Today's blog isn't a progress one, so much as it is showing you a little bit of the artistic process. Some people might not find this stuff all that engaging, but we've had a few requests for a sprite post, so here ya go. In order to actually have something interesting and factual to read, I've asked Morth to kinda walk through his process some. Enjoy. Hello! Morthiasik here, artist responsible for Isolda artworks. Because I am the first one to have completed a basic set of main heroine linearts, I have the privilege of writing about how it's even made. At the beginning, Raith handed me assignment document with list of all poses, expressions and outfits needed. Thankfully everything was nicely organised and no single change was made later, I could just do my work without ...

A month ago, I swore I was going to do one of these every two weeks. For the most part, there isn't a whole lot to say here, given that we're in a bit of a slow phase. Or at least a boring phase, because editing progress isn't exactly thrilling to read about. I can, however, announce one of the artists I had mentioned a while back. She's recently begun working on some actual stuff for Missing Stars, so I'm comfortable saying who she is: Lian-ne will be a welcome addition to the Missing Stars art team, helping out with some of the side characters' art. Additionally, there are two other promising applicants to the team which are still pending, for various reasons. More on them later. One bit of nice news is that we can finally, with 100% certainty, confirm that Mike Inel will be providing animations for Missing Stars. In the past, there's been some confusion among the audience, and even among ourselves, as to whether or not he's still on board. We r...

Quick summary of progress: -Our medical advisor recruitment went well and we've been joined by two talented individuals who will be giving feedback on the medical aspects of Missing Stars as well as helping out with the general editing. Armymond and TotallyGeekage are both very welcome additions to the Somnova team, especially now that art production is starting to pick up and demo release actually seems achievable. We'll be doing some rewriting of a few scenes to better define Erik as a character, but it's not expected to delay overall progress at all, since editing and rewriting should still be finished before art is. -With regards to art, we've got a couple new members in that department as well. Honitsu, already a popular Katawa Shoujo fan-artist, has joined the team and will be lending his talents towards the creation of Annaliese's art. Below, you can see the piece he made as an application to the team before he actually joined. Clearly, he has good taste ...

The purpose of this post is to clear up a few long-standing misconceptions. If you feel that there are any issues that we as a team haven’t been clear enough with, within reason, feel free to ask after them. One frequent criticism leveled at us is that we’re simply a bunch of concept art and that that’s all we spend our time making. While some aspect of this is fair, of course, a lot of it is inaccurate. Last Christmas, when we launched the art gallery, which is the bulk of our concept art, it was with an art team of approximately two members. For varying reasons, all of the past artists had left the team, and so we were left with their works in progress. Some were sketches, some were concept pieces, some were even now-defunct sprite-sets. We chose to release those to the public because we had them, and there was no reason not to. There was not a single piece in the gallery that hadn’t previously been for internal use only. In other words, not promo stuff. Since then, we’ve ob...