Behid the scenes: scene planning

I've already talked about the process of creating the lewd scenes in past posts, and it hasn't changed that much: normally, I start by having a general idea of the scene, the characters involved and any plot point I want to advance in it. With that in mind, I decide on the beat of the scene, and which images I need to illustrate it. I choose my reference material, create the drawing, send them to the colorist, edit what she sends back and export the final assets with any layered images (tattos, clothing,etc) they might need. Then I code the images or animations and finally I write the scene, using the illustrationsv I already created to draw inspiration.

Lately, however, I've been finding neccessary to create a storyboard to plan the scene out. One of the reasons is I try to find illustrations I can re-use or re-purpose to aid to the flow of the scene, or because I'm not sure how to order the main beats of it, which action should go first, etc. In Chapter 12 there was the added complication of modularity and timing of the scenes, which made hesitate a lot on how to order the scenes, where to insert them in the narrative of the episode, or how to combine them when some plotlines intersect.

Here you can see the storyboards for the Holly Trinity scene. At first I was considering having the scene play out slightly different if Ian was dating either Lena or Holly, but in the end I decided to streamline it to save myself some heavy work that wouldn't add too much to the final experience. This was a very important scene and I wanted to make it justice, so it was hard to decide how to structure it, which images to include and how to write it. You can even see a drawing that didn't make the final cut (but I will surely use in the future). At first I pictured the scene happening in the bedroom, but in the end I decided it would be more interesting and varied if it happened on the beach, so I had to edit some of the drawings and scrap that one.

As you can see, some storyboards mix finished or reused images, with work in progress drawings or  the reference images I'm considering using or adding to the scene (I've blurred them due to Patron tos). The IanxLena scenes in chapter 12 were especially hard to figure out, because they were several and they were very sensitive to the different routes that exist in that storyline. I went over the storyboards for a while and created many iterations until I found one that worked okay.

 

 Emma's scenes were easier, but it was important to decide which events and images would be used in the different scenes (morning and night, and both the full-on or partial IanxEmma routes). I had the pareticular beats in mind and I had illustrated them, but how to order and connect them required a bit more thought.

Finally, this is the storyboard I quickly put together to plan out the scene where slutty Holly makes a move on Ian. This was a scene I had in mind but almost didn't include due to time constraints, but it was the perfect moment to do so and I really wanted to. Since in this route Ian hasn't had any (at most 1 or 2) lewd scenes with Holly, I felt justified to reuse a lot of the drawings I had created for other scenes, some with minor variations. Here, it was a matter of seeing what I had to work with and how could I connect the images to describe a scene that made sense in my mind and felt new. However, I'd really like to add some dedicated illustrations to this scene, and I will. The illustrations are being worked at right now.)  

I hope you found this behind the scenes look interesting, I haven't come up with anything else that's worth showing, but if you have any ideas or questions about the process of creating this last update, let me know in the comments and I'll see if I can make a new post about it. Thanks!