Alora Fane

As a break from the usual self-pitying melodrama, I'd like to write about the creative project I'm currently working on, which I've been intending to do for ages.

It's something I've been 'working on' in some vague, in-the-background sense for a few months now, mostly in the form of very occasional notes and character concepts, and a general sense that it was in the back of my mind such that external influences might inspire the direction it'd evolve in.

It's... different to the other projects I've made before in that it's not a game, but hmm, how do I explain it? Where do I begin?

I might as well just link first to a live 'alpha' version of it, which you can explore if you're interested. It's ∞ here ∞.

Basically, what it is is a story thing told through these conversations, which you progress through by just clicking. It's more like a webcomic than a game, which I'd update with new conversations as time went on to progress the story forward. It's much, much, much easier to do something like this than to make a game.

I've made it for desktop browsers; currently it has various issues on mobiles, so that's something I'll look into if I actually get this thing up and running at any point. It might also look bad at different resolutions; that screenshot is how I see it and how it's intended to look, but if you see it as much worse than that (like if things look cluttered or unpleasantly sized), I'd appreciate seeing a screenshot and knowing what resolution you're using.

I've only been working on it for a day or two so far, which included coding the thing, writing the dialogue, and drawing the (very unrefined) character art that's currently there. So it's very much in an extremely rough alpha state. (Eventually the characters would change poses and expressions; only Gemma does currently, and only a bit.)

The two conversations currently available (you can select them by clicking the top black bar to bring up a menu, or just wait until it appears at the end of a conversation) are very much just tests, in the sense that I was playing around with technical aspects of the viewer and exploring how the characters' voices might sound; they're not meant to introduce anything well, and I'd completely rewrite them for a more formal release. The first one ("Arrivals") does give some hint about the general setting/plot of the thing, though not much.

(The other one, "Soulmate", is just silliness and Oneira in particular doesn't sound like she should much at all; I'm only including it because some bits make me laugh.)

For now, here's a bit about the general setting/concept behind it:

Professor Samuel Sara is a psychologist who's interested in transcendent or 'spiritual' topics like the nature of the 'soul' or life after death, but he's unable to actually research them at his university because they're treated with derision by the scientific community. So, one summer he acquires a recently-abandoned Buddhist temple to use as a base for some practical experiments. He sent out notifications to the students at his university asking whether anyone would want to spend the whole summer living there with him and each other, exploring these things, and six people volunteered. Each has their own reasons for wanting to explore the transcendent, most of which boil down to dissatisfaction with this life and the hope that happiness and fulfillment lie beyond it. The story explores whether or not this is true, or wise to pursue, as well as some (what I find) interesting ideas about what might await after death.

(It's sort of absurd because there's no way someone could get ethical approval for any of that in the real world, but oh well!)

There's more to it than that, but I can't really describe the whole thing without spoiling it all!

It's tentatively called 'After Life' at the moment, but that name is too basic to stick with. I'll come up with a more appropriate one as time goes on, before I 'release' it (I think Life 2: Electric Boogaloo would be just perfect).

The characters involved (except for the professor, of course) are all students, and - as is typical with the stories I've always tried to write - they represent archetypes that resonate with me, or which are meant to represent parts of my own personality or to generally have some kind of 'meaning' or 'purpose' to them. For example, Oneira is that shy, sensitive, lonely, socially inept INFJ type I always include (or rather, which I feel I've made multiple attempts to explore in stories I never finished), whose character arcs would explore things like the psychological unhealthiness of pining for a 'soulmate' at the expense of real relationships, or pursuing transcendence in another life rather than living the one you already have, etc.

I don't know if it's anyone else's sort of thing, and it's so easy for me to imagine people taking issues with my approach, but it's what I find interesting, and I don't think I could make something that deviated too much from what I find interesting. I'd rather write something like this than stories of dragon-slaying, political intrigue, or steamy romance.

So that's the gist of the story. Now, I'd like to spend the rest of this post talking about the art decisions / struggles that have led to choosing the medium through which I intend to tell it.

As I said, I 'planned' the story in some vague sense months ago, but I've been wondering about how I could actually tell it. I've made games in the past, but the amount of time and effort required for those is immense, and I don't think I could handle it with my current university commitments and mental health issues.

I made and grew fond of ∞ a thing where two girls talked to one another ∞, which started off with static 2D characters before I got carried away and made full, animated 3D models for them. It was an interesting experience, and I thought that maybe I'd go in that direction with this project. I got as far as making a 3D model for Oneira, at least (though it's incomplete, especially the texture).

But that seemed like far too much time and effort, and it might not have worked in browsers for technical reasons anyway (I was building it in Unity, which does have a web player, but people would probably be prompted to download or install it or something, and there was a 'MADE IN UNITY' logo at the start, and, well, many barriers to entry that made it unfeasible).

The 3D models also look a bit 'dead', since I'm limited in experience and resources, so they might have made things more unnerving had I used them.

So, after months of intermittently developing the girls-talking thing beyond its basic static 2D origins, I decided to return to those origins with this, but to make it in the browser to get around the barriers to entry that Unity development would bring.

In terms of concept and characterisation, I'm drawing upon a lot of my past work, especially things I liked but never went very far with in other projects. I suppose I always do this.

Professor Sam Sara is a similar archetype to what I meant Enki to be in Taming Dreams (that is, an inspiring mentor figure who sees the wonder in the world), though he's also a combination of an Indian spiritualist and a Western scientist that I find interesting to explore. Sort of like a combination of the monk and professor archetypes; both wise, but in very different ways.

Oneira is originally from a project called Soulmate, which I'm still fond of in concept but which would have been too difficult to actually make as a game, as originally intended. It's strange to think it's only been just over a year since I planned it all... Feels like forever. I made ∞ this page for it ∞ back then, explaining what I wanted to do with it.

She looked somewhat different then.

I might incorporate some of the concepts from that in this, as part of Oneira's personal story. In that idea, she interacted with an imaginary (and deliberately androgynous) 'Soulmate' in her mind, who looked like this:

I've included that character in these two test conversations, though I've yet to decide whether to include them in the final story. I suppose it depends on whether or not it works with or detracts from everything else.

She also interacted with various manifestations of herself, representing different aspects of her personality... I'm less sure about including that, though.

Oneira's speech patterns are probably going to be similar to those of Emeela in Taming Dreams, since she's essentially got the same personality in many ways. I'm always aware when I reuse personalities like this that people might take issue with it, but then I think of terms like 'Byronic Hero' which nicely encapsulate the fact that many writers have idiosyncratic archetypes that they reuse to tell the stories that they want to tell.

Of the other characters, each is based on one of the six sentiments that I came up with for the Alora Fane world, though this isn't set in that world. They're not colour-coded though, nor is it explicitly stated; Oneira is Sorrow despite not having any blue on her, while Gemma is Creation despite being blue, etc. They're more like behind-the-scenes guides for characterisation than explicit aspects of the universe as they were in Alora Fane.

Speaking of Alora Fane, Glimmer is based on the Alora Fane version of Solaar from MARDEK, which I developed for Taming Dreams. I was looking forward to including her in that, but she wasn't set to appear until like chapter 10, so sadly that never happened. Solaar is one of my oldest characters (hence the childish name), originating in something I made long before MARDEK, so it was quite... lacking in the design department. When I 'rebooted' MARDEK as Taming Dreams, I envisioned that character as an albino Varnyn (an Alora Fane race) girl who suffered from terrible nightmares but tried to keep up a constant positive, 'Pollyanna' attitude to life as compensation for that. She called herself 'Glimmer' because she wanted to be a light that guided others through the darkness. Here are some sketches from 2014:

I really did want to explore her as a character (and planned her personality and backstory out in great detail), but since I never got that far with Taming Dreams, this new project gives me another chance. I didn't want to make her an anthro since that wouldn't make sense for the world, so instead she's just an eccentric person who wears wolf ears instead. She's Bliss, and is openly positive and ~spiritual~ as a way of coping with her inner demons; it'll be interesting to see where that goes. Her eccentric, energetic speech style is inspired by Solaar from MARDEK, and she reminds me a bit of Luna Lovegood, too.

Gemma also has a history behind her, as I've written about a bit before. I've had practise developing her voice in the girls-talking thing, and she's been my go-to character when I want to experiment with different visual styles for a few years now; I included this image in that other post as an example of the way I've used her to play around with how to portray people:

I envy artists who have one clear, distinct Style they can easily reproduce, which they turn to whenever they want to do any art at all. I don't really have one myself; I have tendencies and a nebulous idea of the look that I like, but it's not like I have a clear and reproducible method for things like drawing faces or eyes or turning a drawing from a sketch to a finished piece.

I wasn't sure how to draw the characters in this thing, so I used Gemma to explore some possibilities:

I'm still not entirely sure of the art direction, and I might end up changing it, but drawing characters in this huge-headed cartoony way seems easy enough for me to do (I drew all the current characters in like half a day). Besides, it doesn't need to be perfect or anything... I imagine very few people will even see this. I'm just always aware though of how people might criticise things, or be put off by them, even if those 'people' are just my own inner critics. I'm also wondering whether using a style like this will prevent people from taking any more introspective themes seriously; it seems like the further your characters' designs deviate from realism, the less 'serious' your work is perceived to be. ∞ Probably ∞.

It's interesting, though, how different people respond to different things. I showed the "Arrivals" conversation to someone (female), and she got caught up on Sam Sara's "call me lovedoctor69" line towards the beginning. I found that line funny, because it was a play on those incredibly common exchanges in translated-from-Japanese works where a character addresses another in polite language and is told "please, just call me Sam!" or similar (I imagine it's tricky to translate those things in a way that doesn't seem clunky, since English doesn't have the same focus on various different types of honorifics as Japanese). I just found it amusing to have him request to be called something absolutely absurd instead. Something way too informal and inappropriate. But she, instead of just laughing and carrying on, became very wary of him as a character and seemed concerned about the safety of the female characters who'd be living with him. I get why, but it's interesting how that didn't occur to me when I was writing it; I suppose it's like how works by males often focus on lofty, impersonal concepts or humour, while works by females are more likely to focus on characterisation and social dynamics. To use a sweeping generalisation.

Another girl (the sort who's into fan fiction and anime) said that she only likes media where there are male characters who she's attracted to. I always hope my own creative work will appeal to all genders (instead of almost exclusively guys like usual), but since this thing probably lacks attractive male characters, I wouldn't be surprised if only guys liked it, annoyingly. Girls like her - the geeky sorts - seem to be drawn to male characters who are coldly aggressive, dark, emotionally distant arseholes with a fiercely protective side to them, usually directed towards some more vulnerable male companion with whom they have a ~special relationship~. Or so I've noticed. Not really the kind of character I include in my own stories, but abundant in anime, it seems. Hmm.

Of the two male characters I have, one, Eugene, is the sort of socially inept 'nice guy' who's fearful, insecure, and generally repellent to women. So the archetype I frustratingly fall into, then. I want to explore that personality type in a balanced way, if I can. He's inspired by Tim Burton (and his characters) looks-wise, though I think he's the ugliest one at the moment and might need some redesigning. He's mainly joined Sam Sara's project to spend more time with Gemma (his only female friend ever), more to his excitement than hers, though he's also interested in transcendence from the perspective of technological augmentation, VR, AI, the technological singularity, that kind of thing, so I can explore those concepts through him.

The other guy is the least-defined so far. He's called Thomas because of the term 'doubting Thomas', and he's the token sceptic and (ostensibly) the more sexually 'appealing' male. I don't want to just make him some basic jerk jock though; I'd rather make someone more well-rounded who just happens to be more, well, masculine, to contrast with Eugene. It's going to be challenging for me to avoid making him a caricature... but I suppose they're all caricatures anyway, so we'll see how it goes.

Since I've mentioned every other character, I might as well mention Robyn, though I have little to say about her. She's the Courage one, and is meant to be someone more well-adjusted and confident, to serve as the voice of more 'normal' people at times. She's also very big into social justice, which I'd play with not in a mocking or preachy way, but... again, just an exploration of how personalities interact with one another. She's part of the project because she's ambitious and wants to add it to her CV; she's the sort who'd be a prefect or student rep or class president or whatever cultural term you might use for the students who take on extra responsibilities like that.

Anyway. I could say more, but I'll just conclude this with a miscellaneous collection of ugly, ugly concept art drawings of these characters from months ago:

And here's what they look like currently:

I've got a lot of work to do for university, and the dark thoughts still overwhelm me most days... But when I can find the time, I'll probably try to work on this.

I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on it so far, though please be aware that it's not meant to be in the form that would be released so I'm aware that the story doesn't flow or grip and the scenes don't 'make sense' yet. So please see it as a test of concept, not as an attempt at storytelling!

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