My contributions for Touhou Fan Game Jam 16
Back in early 2024, I had joined up with Ougi, Redi, and Jwap in a group informally known as the ‘Flan Appreciation Club’. Together, we made both Flan and the Highway to Hell and March of the Beast, which were submissions for Touhou Fan Game Jam 14 and 東方ゲームジャム2024 respectively.
We were unable to work on Touhou Fan Game Jam 15 due to scheduling conflicts, so it had been over a year since we had last worked together as a group. Redi and Jwap had worked together for a project of their own, but me and Ougi weren’t involved with that.
Around the end of September, Jwap shared interested in joining in with the upcoming Touhou Fan Game Jam 16. They suggested a shop managment game in which you produce hats for fairies.
The idea was well recieved by the group, and we agreed to work together once again. Unfortunately though, the dates of the game jam conflicted with Ougi’s schedule (our primary sprite and character artist).
With Ougi unavailable to participate, I offered to cover for the art that would’ve usually been provided by him.
I’m an artist now??
I’ve done many many game dev projects with various friends, but I’ve never been on the art side before now. I’ve only been learning to draw for about 1 year, so it was a really daunting feeling for me to take this role but it was also a challenge I was willing to accept.
Redi envisioned the game would have 4 fairy ‘factions’, one for each season of the year. During gameplay you increase/decrease the favourability of each faction with your actions, which influnces the ending of the story.
I was tasked with making the sprites for the fairy NPCs of each faction. This faction mechanic never made it into the final game due to time constraints, but it still influenced the way I chose to approach designing the characters.
In the end, these 4 girls are the final result:
Creating these characters was an interesting learning experience. I’ve never done OC work or made game sprites before, I’ve only drawn fanart of existing characters. I also wasn’t sure how to approach making game art either, so I was mostly trying to figure it out along the way.
Thankfully, Redi had provided me with a rough draft of how he wanted the gameplay screen to look like for me to use as a reference point.
Right away, I knew that I wanted to use a chibi style for the sprites. Chibi style felt perfect as they’re cute, readable at a small size, and are also quick to produce (perfect for our strict deadline).
I’ve never worked with chibi style before, so I had to “ease” myself into it. For each fairy, I started out by making concept drawings in the artstyle I am accustomed to, then turning them into mini sprites later on.
I created a shared template for each of the fairies with 2 poses. One pose was for waiting in line, the other pose was for placing their order. This template was shared between each of the fairies and was used as a basis to draw the rest of their details.
I usually draw with a 4000px x 4000px canvas, but I felt that size would be inappropriate to use for how small these NPCs appear on screen. In the end, these sprites only ended up being about 320px x 900px.
The summer fairy was created first, followed by the winter fairy, then autumn, and lastly spring. While the designs aren’t anything complicated, there were a couple ideas I tried to convey with them.
The summer fairy is quite obvious, it’s a cute summer dress and a big hat. Though the hat was removed from the in-game sprite as I realised it didn’t make much sense for her to already be wearing a hat if the game was about making them.
I may have subconciously based her on Lillie from Pokemon Sun and Moon seeing as she’s one of my favourite game characters and that game carries quite a strong summer theme. Her wings were supposed to resemble sun rays, but it kinda ended up looking like how Cirno used to in Touhou’s older games lol
The winter fairy was loosely based on the winter school uniforms in my country. That may seem like a somewhat random inspiration, but it’s a style that always felt “wintery” to me. Fairies in Touhou are supposed to be young looking anyways, so I felt like it makes sense.
Autumn was based on the leaves changing colour with the season and spring was based on the colours of the newly regrown grass and flowers. In a way, they’re like direct opposites of each other.
If there’s anything I could’ve changed with the designs, I would’ve made their hair bangs a little different. While they each have different hairstyles at the back, they all have the same style towards the front.
Conclusion
Working on this project has been a really interesting learning experience. I dont know how to describe it other than pushing myself into working on a project that I didn’t “feel” ready for yet was really scary at first, but also really surprising too when I realised how much I was really capable of.
I haven’t been drawing for very long and I still have much to learn, but I was very surprised by how well I was able to contribute to this project! Even just a few months ago, this wouldn’t’ve been a posibility for me so its always encouraging to see how I’m progressing with my learning!
Thank you for reading!