This week's "screenshot" is a recording of the second scene of the introductory cutscene. As with the previously-posted first scene, there's no music or sound yet.
This past week was fairly productive, I feel: I perhaps didn't get quite as much done as I might have liked, but I think that I nevertheless got a fair bit done:
First and foremost, as shown above, the second scene of the introductory cutscene is done!
While the backdrop for it was completed fairly early last week, as I recall, arranging the mist in the scene took some time. I had a layout in mind when I began, but only in the form of a small thumbnail sketch. While it worked well enough in that small, somewhat-inchoate format, I found that it didn't look as good when laid out at full -size and -detail. So I tinkered and experimented, looking for an arrangement that I felt both looked good and conveyed what I intended for the scene. I'm not entirely happy with the final result, but I think that it's decent.
On a similar note, I went back and adjusted the timings of the narration in the first scene: While I think that the text was on-screen for long enough to be read, it was perhaps too brief to be spoken (against the possibility of voice-acting being added in the future); on top of that, having the screen visible for longer may benefit those who read a little more slowly. This does mean that the scene lingers a little more than it did, but I hope that it's not obnoxiously so.
With scene two completed, I've moved on to the third scene. This scene doesn't rely on a single, monolithic backdrop, being instead composed of multiple layers and components. Nevertheless, I've been painting most of these as though they were a single backdrop. The main exception is an image of the protagonist, which has been painted at a larger size to facilitate zooming in on her. (I may similarly make a larger version of the chunk of scenery around her, depending perhaps on how the main image looks at that scale.) I believe that I have this nearly, but not quite, finished.
Excerpts from the third scene
The above-mentioned mist-effect saw a bit more tinkering this past week, largely in fixing (or attempting to fix) a few minor issues. Perhaps more interestingly, I created a radial version of the effect:
There's a bit more work to be done there, primarily in enabling a means of animating its state (making it fade in and out, expand from a point, or dissipate outwards). Nevertheless, I'm happy with what I have there thus far.
Finally, I made a few minor changes to my cutscene editor, largely intended to make it a little easier or more intuitive to work with. Of these, perhaps the most useful thus far has been the ability to insert points into an object's "track", where before one could only add onto the end; this proved very handy while experimenting with the mist-layout in the second scene, I believe!
That's all for this week--stay well, and thank you for reading! ^_^