I absolutely LOVE the portraits we saw in your latest update. Brilliant artist you have. If this is who is going to be doing all the close-up art, I am very happy. This artist has an impressive knack for doing eyes; they have a real, warm human quality. The subtle expressions in these portraits are just great.
I would love to see as many close-up scenes as possible, hopefully not just in cut-scenes but in interactive sequences as well.
I love the work of Karen Petrasko, too. Can't wait to see those portraits in motion!
Are you going to have the characters (in portrait or close-up view) make certain facial expressions (like irritated, amused, happy) to correspond to what they are saying? I liked how that was done in the LSL games, for example. Can't remember if your previous games also had this feature.
We hadn't planned on doing so, since it all adds the development costs. We only really budgeted for the standard dialogue portraits and 8 phoneme mouth frames per portrait.
If certain scenes call for it, and the budget allows, we *may* do something like this if certain scenes would benefit from it. Though it wouldn't be for all characters.
Ok, that's understandable. It would be cool if even just D'arc (and no one else, if it's not feasible) had the different expressions, since he'll have a ton of dialogue throughout the game and we'll be seeing his portrait a lot in all the conversations. Maybe he could smile between or during certain lines. Maybe wink sometimes. Furrow his brow, etc. It could give him more personality.