Danny CG Process (spoilers)

So this post is going to show the process for one of Danny's CGs.

This CG was originally conceptualized quite differently than how it turned out.

When working with the concept artists, I'd typically give them my personal vision for the scene, reference images if I had them and then I'd give them a snippet of the script so they could read the full scene for themselves. For some of the end CGs, I didn't have much of a mental image because ultimately they're all kisses or hugs or whatever.

The concept artists for Danny would usually do 2-3 thumbnails of basic ideas and I'd pick from those. This was the idea I ultimately picked. Because it was the best of the lot that she gave me. Even though I didn't necessarily see the scene looking this way - I did think it was an interesting idea for Danny. 

It's a cute moment but I didn't like how far apart they're sitting in the finished sketch. It feels like it's really lacking intimacy. I mean, there's a foot of space between them and they're not even looking at each other. Given what they've gone through by the end of the route, this felt really...lacking in emotion for an end CG.

I tried to rework it to inject some intimacy and closeness. And this was my version of this concept.

I tried to pull the scene in closer so there's less background and more of the characters. And I have them sitting much closer together. Again, I feel this is a cute moment but...

I still was never really happy with it.

First, I just don't like how the art turned out - I don't like their posing or their faces but I could just never quite make it work even after re-drawing it multiple times. Second, even though they are physically closer, I still felt it was just lacking emotion. It's hard to have them look at each other given the angle they're at. But when I had Nora's head turned toward Danny, I just didn't like how it looked.

In some ways, having her look at him while he kisses her hand just made it seem even less intimate than having her lean her head against him. I tried with their eyes open, their eyes shut...

I just could not make it work.

My other issue with this version of the CG is that Danny is already viewed by some people as the 'boring' love interest. He's very much the 'boy next door' type. He's kind, gentle, protective, thoughtful...

And even while people say those are the traits they prefer in love interests, it's kind of resulted in Danny being one of the least popular. I really struggle with the fact that the two love interests who happen to be people of color, are also the two least popular love interests. I worry that I've sabotaged Danny and William by making them seem boring in comparison to some of the 'bad boys' like Marc and Ewan. And the more I keep Danny as this seemingly passionless gentleman, the more I feel it will solidify this idea that he can't be an exciting love interest.

In some ways, ending on a kiss to the fingertips just does feel more boring than having him really kind of lay one on Nora like some of the other guys do.

So, in addition to not really liking how the lines turned out, I started having second thoughts about the entire concept for this CG. And I ultimately decided to redraw it and give Danny a more traditional kiss to end with.

Fortunately, I had reserved another potential concept from Elliot's concept artist ...just in case. Which kind of tells you how long I'd had reservations about Danny's final concept art.

The things I liked about this concept for Danny are the things I didn't like about it for an Elliot concept. Side note here: Elliot's concept artist always produced 3-5 clean sketches for me to choose from. Which always made it SO DARN HARD to choose because she always came up with nice poses and such. But in the end, it was kind of useful, too. So I asked her if I could keep this one on reserve for use in another route.

I felt the way Elliot is holding Nora here speaks of a lot more confidence than he'd actually have. I don't think he'd pull her close and smooch her like that because he'd be too shy. But Danny totally would. And it really plays to his protective nature as well, to just kind of envelop her in his arms while he kisses her.

In my first sketch based on this concept, I added in Danny's left hand, because I just like this better than the implication his other hand is on her waist.

Cleaned up the lines a little and started adding details.

 Further clean up, corrections...and hair! 

These were my final lines for the new CG - though I made further adjustments to them as I colored.

Colors partially done - you can see I started making some changes to their hair. Sometimes I go a little crazy with sketching hair and only notice it once I lay in flat colors.

So this is the shading complete. I have to decide at this point what kind of background to put in. For some CGs, I actually manually paint in a background because we can't really use existing BG art for the angle of the CG. Other times, I really just do some kind of flat colors or gradient for the BG because not much of the background even shows and I like the idea of the characters on some kind of gradient instead of a proper BG.

In the end, I decided to use the actual background we have because it works and it looks fine.

I also cropped it in just slightly since the image was bigger than it needs to be for the game. 

And that's how Danny's romantic end CG came about! Hope you enjoyed reading about it and seeing the CG from concept to completion!