Good_Haro

Can't speak for Grisaia specifically, but generally (at least in my limited experience) the role is kind of variable depending on the game and company (and a few different JP terms get translated to the same thing sometimes). Sometimes the "director" (ディレクター） is sort of just a project manager role––they're responsible for organizing pre-production planning materials, ordering and keeping track of assets, assisting in voice recording sessions, organizing promotional material, etc. Sometimes it's more of a scripting-related role (usually 演出) focusing on scene presentation within the game and things like that. But still other times it might be a more creative/supervising role, "directing" the game (監督), but that usually comes with an additional credit for planning (企画) or something similar.

We actually announced Umineko last year!

Glad I could clear that up for you guys! (Funny story I've actually been trying to reg here for months but the forums didn't like any of my e-mail addresses...) Yeah, it basically comes down to the genga artist's preference/ability most of the time. Sometimes they don't even draw in any of the details for the genitals and leave it to the colorists to figure out. You have to remember that, for most of these companies, the idea of an uncensored western release is the furthest thing from their minds, so why spend the time drawing something that no one's ever going to see, right? There are also some coloring conventions used under mosaics specifically to give a certain look with the mosaic on (exaggerated colors or contours to give the illusion of detail through the censoring). Sometimes there are even silly things under the mosaics (iirc JAST had to have some of Demonbane's CGs retouched because a few of them had smiley faces drawn on the penises under the mosaics!). There are some artists who are just really passionate about drawing porn and put a lot of detail in even if it might never be uncensored––one of ClockUp's artists, Hamashima Shigeo, says that she likes to put a lot of detail beneath the mosaics on the off chance that someone will get to see it. But not every eroge artist is particularly passionate about porn, so you end up with quite a variety of detail levels and whatnot. Imouto Paradise's animations, for example, were completely messed up beneath the mosaics (dicks clipping through legs and all sorts of weirdness).

No, this is untrue, CryingWestern is misinformed on this particular subject. We very rarely have had CGs redrawn. The only game in recent memory that we had to do this for was Cartagra because a handful of uncensored assets were lost (I believe it was less than 10% of the CGs). Generally if the uncensored CGs do not exist, the game is released with mosaics intact. I believe some of the confusion may be coming from the fact that we do some de-mosaicing in-house, but this simply involves reprocessing the original PSD files (namely, turning off the mosaic layer and re-generating all of the variations), not redrawing anything. Occasionally, our image editors will do some minor touch-ups (shifting some elements around so they line up correctly with the mosaic removed or adding a bit of shading if the underlying art was left flat or was miscolored) because quite frequently very little care is put into the art beneath the mosaics because it isn't meant to be seen in the first place. A few companies do put a lot of effort into what's beneath the mosaics (ClockUp for example), but many don't bother because the art was always intended to be censored.

I'd encourage you to take a look at things we've actually posted about the game again if you seriously think that's how we've been presenting it. Perhaps you would care to check out the game's promotional site or try the demo. As much as it'd make my job easier we unfortunately can't control how the press decides to spin things. Anyone expecting a nukige or anything close to one is going to be sorely disappointed.