Hey, want to hear a bit of development trivia?
If the player joins the light music club, they can play a rhythm minigame that allows them to put on a musical performance in order to increase their reputation at school. The rhythm minigame features some cute chibi artwork of the characters swaying back and forth as they perform two-frame animations. I’m happy with how it turned out, but originally, I was planning something much different…
My initial plan was to have the characters animating in 3D, exactly like the visuals that appear when playing a game like Guitar Hero or Rock Band. Here’s an example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5LDjNLU-zQ8
In pursuit of this goal, I asked an artist to design performance costumes for the Light Music Club girls, and then I asked a 3D modeller to model the costumes. The costumes were designed and modeled, but shortly afterwards, I realized how much additional time and work would be required in order to make the sequence look as good as Guitar Hero or Rock Band. I decided that it would be a better idea to focus my efforts towards more important priorities – like putting Osana in the game – so the animated sequence was never made, and the minigame was created with cute chibi artwork instead.
(I’d love to show you 3D renders of the models that were made, but I’ve lost track of them. I know they’re somewhere in my files, but I went digging for them and couldn’t find them, so I’ll have to share them some other time.)
There is a part of me that still wants to one day make the Light Music Club rhythm minigame into a 3D animated sequence, but it’s impossible to rationalize putting time and work into it when there are much higher priorities to take care of. Still, I wanted to share the concept artwork that was created for the light music club girls’ performance outfits, so I’ve posted them over on my Patreon.