VN Soft Annoucement

Hi everyone! Gear up for a long post and a ton of info to slam you with!

Now that a fair amount of assets have been created, I can finally give a bit more info about the visual novel I'm producing with the help of some very talented artists, programmers, editors, and musicians. Previously Sweet Leaves had been only a webcomic (and later, a motion comic), but I came up with a story that would be impossible to produce as either of those, both in expense and production time. Using a VN format, however, allows that story to be told, so here we are! We've been in production for about 3 months now and I just wanted to drop an initial teaser of what this thing is going to look like and the kind of FVN it is.

First off, the genre and setting - it's slice of life/romance/fantasy animated kinetic novel set mostly in our world, just furry. This VN's all about family and relationships -  it features both gay and lesbian couples, siblings and grandparents and aunts... and dads, of course. The main character and two other major characters (Colson + Nico) all work together at the high school and elementary school as a teacher, guidance counselor, and principal. Most of the cast ranges from ages 29 to 42! The lone exception is Toby, Colson and Sebastien's son, who is 6.

This is a fully kinetic experience, and while there is a main character, he is not a self insert, and you aren't playing as him -

The character artist for the novel is Mousenoises/Flint (https://t.me/MouseNoisesArt, https://bsky.app/profile/mousenoises.art), who's done some very lovely sprite work. In the carousel are the base sprites (more are possible by mixing/matching individual facial elements) for all but two of the characters. In case you're curious, the MC is the ferret, named Red:

Everyone's favorite baker badger:

A new character to the series, Sebastien's younger sister, Emma:

The best boy, Toby:

The parrot with too much pep in her step, Jo:

Nico and one other secret character is still in the works, so for right now, last but not least, is Mr. Principal Sunflower himself, Colson:

(As you can see, Colson is dressed in one of his three outfits; we are still working on other characters like Nico and a secret 7th, before doing more clothing sets. More on clothing sets in a moment.)

The character sprites will all have mouth and blink cycle animations as well! Think JRPG style sprites. I'm excited to get those programmed, right now they're just layers in a photoshop file. 😅

We're doing all hand drawn backgrounds. Our background artist is R_Snep, who is doing some wonderful work I find myself staring at from time to time. Because we're spending so much time and thought on the backgrounds, we were trying to think up ways of having the characters inhabit the space.  Mousenoises came up with the idea of simplified sprites, which we call "dolls", that we can place into the backgrounds to represent the position of the characters in the environment. Their lighting is adjustable, so we can match them to the time of day/lighting in the background being displayed. Here's what the dolls look like in action:

Because the story takes place over an entire calendar year, we wanted locations, both outdoors and indoors, to change based upon the season. Here's the faculty lounge at the Pinecrest school in both summer and fall.

We also wanted to give characters different clothing appropriate to the season as well, so each character has 3 outfits (spring/summer, fall, winter). The dolls will also have matching clothing to the sprites!

And for some of the more prominent locations, especially the outdoor ones, we're doing animated backgrounds, like this gazebo in both a snowy winter's day and starry summer night. 

The format of release will be episodic, like a TV/streaming show. Each episode covers two calendar months, so there will be 6 total episodes. I expect the first episode to be ready by March/April of next year, and then aiming to release a new episode every 2-3 months. The first episode's script is in the bag and I have the finished outline of the entire story to guide me through building out the scenes/episodes. At this point, it's just climbing the mountain, and the team is very much into climbing the mountain right now. We're all super into the work we're doing for it and I think the enthusiasm shows in the details and ideas everyone is bringing to the table. Speaking of team...

Wattson will be our programmer.

FoxAmoore and BirdBot/Icky, and myself will be providing music for the project.

I'm the creater/producer/writer/director for the project, and I'm slowly going crazy being all those things, but hey, it's nice to focus on projects right now given the state of the world. It's a genuine joy to see it all slowly come together.

If you want to follow along with development, you can do so here, or on socials. I'm trying not to use Twitter anymore, so you'll have better luck keeping up if you use these other options.

Bsky

Telegram

Patreon

Please do consider supporting this project if these interest or excite you, it's not inexpensive to make. I do have Ko-Fi and PayPal where I can take donations instead of a subscribe here.

Finally, to add, because I know a lot of people will ask or have already - If we're able to get to $1500/month on the Patreon we can add in some NSFW romance scenes, so you'd get more Spicy Leaves content, if you enjoy that kind of stuff. Flint will be illustrating these as well, so you'll get a consistent sprite and CG experience across all the art, SFW and not.

It's worth noting that the romance scenes, if we get to produce them, will be skippable and not impact the storyline at all if you choose not to watch them.

Hope the lengthy post was okay, I'll shut up now! If you have any questions you'd like to ask, feel free to comment and I'll answer when I can. ❤️