Hi hi!

Welcome back, everyone! I’m teaisfortoby, the developer of PATIENCE IS A VIRTUE. I hope you all had a restful Disability Pride Month!

WALLPAPER

How are you enjoying your June wallpaper? This month’s wallpaper is exciting… because it’s from a scene that isn’t in the demo!

If you didn’t get last month’s wallpaper, you can grab it in Devlog 1. And don’t worry. You’ll get another freebie in the next devlog, too!

In case you missed it, some cool stuff happened this month...

NEWS

We were a part of the Nonbinary Coded Games event on Steam a few weeks ago, and the demo got a tiiiiiny little cosmetic update to celebrate. If you haven’t played the demo yet, you totally should, but should ALSO go check out all the other games featured in the event here!

In terms of development, things are going very well. Some late-game art was finalized, but mostly it was lots of debugging this month. I can’t share much of anything due to spoilers, but things are happening! Stay tuned.

In other news… I made a new game!!

A field of broken glass is a free toxic yuri puzzle VN I cooked up in a week for the TOXIC YURI VN JAM. It is completely unrelated to PATIENCE IS A VIRTUE, but I had a lot of fun with it! Give it a try if you wanna. I’ll be sending out a bonus devlog for that game sometime in August, so now’s the time to play if you want to avoid spoilers.

DRAWING CHARACTER PORTRAITS

This month, I’m going to talk about character portraits — AKA sprites, AKA the little expressions you see during dialogue. They’re one of my favorite things to draw!

When approaching any new character’s portraits, I always try to think intentionally about how they take up a space. How often do they move around? How willing are they to emote? What parts of their bodies do they move? I come up with a short list of notes that tell me how a character physically acts. Think of it like blocking for an actor.

LOUIS

These were the acting notes I wrote for Louis:

• full body emoter

• doesn’t know how to use his braces

• shows his emotions very openly

• overacts sometimes for the bit

With him, I had to consider how he would be using his hands whenever he had his braces on. His relationship with his disability is such that doesn’t care about caring for his aids… so some of his sprites have him in positions that would be actively uncomfortable. He’s not just overacting because he’s dramatic — he wants to prove that he’s not disabled by successfully being over-the-top. I tested the feasibility and comfort of each of his poses with a pair of my own wrist braces before drawing.

NATALIE

As the deuteragonist, Natalie’s acting needed to not only be distinct, but to work well side-by-side with Louis’s. The two foil each other in a lot of ways, so Natalie’s body language reflects that, too. Their acting notes were as follows:

• ultimate gesticulator

• full body movements are rare, only happen in highly emotional moments

• loves making silly facial expressions

• curls inward when afraid

With Natalie’s Tourette Syndrome, they are frequently suppressing their tics while in public. This makes their posture overall a lot more rigid than Louis. In trying to control larger body movements, they end up emoting mostly through their face and controlled hand gestures. That’s where most of their character acting comes in!

Even though it’s not in his notes, curling inward is a trait Louis shares with Natalie. When either of them are scared of something, their instinct is to protect themselves. What makes them afraid, and how they choose to protect themselves, however… that’s where they differ.

ALICE

Alice was probably my favorite set of portraits to draw. I won’t go into detail for the sake of spoilers, but she has a lot of really fun facial expressions. Her acting notes were:

• leans, sways, and bounces a lot

• looks away when thinking

• smiles when upset

• emotes with its eyes more than anything else

  

You’ll be seeing plenty more of her in the full game.

RAELYN

And finally, Raelyn’s notes:

• looks down from above

• back STRAIGHT

• moves as little as possible to avoid expending unnecessary energy

• piercing gaze

This kind of extremely rigid posing also helped to accentuate the sharpness of her character design. She’s almost always trying to communicate that she is in charge.

She has the lowest number of portraits in the game, which is both because she’s in fewer scenes and because she is extremely conscious of her posture. If Raelyn’s posture ever changes, she’s been caught very off-guard. Look forward to seeing more of her in the full game!

At the end of the day, whenever I draw someone’s portraits, I’m trying to do it with intention. I try to develop a physical language for each character, and make them all feel unique and alive. I hope it shows!

Thanks for reading. Wishlist the game if you haven't. See you next month!