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Visual Novel Sprites - Mouth open or closed while speaking?


Zodai

Mouths open or closed while speaking?  

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  1. 1. Open or closed?


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So, we have an artist for our VN project finally, and he's been running a bunch of tests on art style, aesthetic and whatnot using the protagonist as a base.

 

I noticed most of the mouths were closed during the style tests, which makes sense since the character is rather restrained or reserved, but it got me thinking about whether or not having the mouth closed when the text is having a character speak would be a little bit strange - having it closed makes it easier to use it to express emotion but I wasn't sure what to take.

So, I opened up Majikoi to take a look, and to my surprise when I loaded up my save, early in the common route when the old man first shows up on the bridge and Momoyo chases Capt. around, that the mouths are actually closed while speaking at a rather alarming rate.  They open their mouths quite a bit but it doesn't seem to be based around whether or not they're speaking at the moment at all, though I don't know the design logic behind it yet myself.  Capt. seemed to have his mouth open to some degree more than the others as well.

 

So, I ask you - when a character is speaking, should the mouth on their sprite usually be open, or is there some other logic to this?  Do you know of any VNs where the sprite design almost always has a character's mouth open while they're speaking?

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I think it should be based on how "open" a characters personality is

For example Capt, an extremely extroverted personality  should have his mouth open

Moro, an itrovereted character should have his mouth closed almost always

Well, that's how I think at least, to bring their personalities out more

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2 minutes ago, Arcadeotic said:

I think it should be based on how "open" a characters personality is

For example Capt, an extremely extroverted personality  should have his mouth open

Moro, an itrovereted character should have his mouth closed almost always

Well, that's how I think at least, to bring their personalities out more

If I remember correctly, Moro actually has his mouth open in a small circle-ish shape sometimes - I remember seeing that so I pulled a reference from the net.  Though it's still taking up a small amount of space and everyone in this scene has their mouths open. 

mPzrXCe.png

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Just now, Zodai said:

If I remember correctly, Moro actually has his mouth open in a small circle-ish shape sometimes - I remember seeing that so I pulled a reference from the net.  Though it's still taking up a small amount of space and everyone in this scene has their mouths open. 

  Reveal hidden contents

 

mPzrXCe.png

 

I roughly rmemeber the same thing, but it was just an example of an extroverted character

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having a character mouth open just because it's talking would look weird, characters should exteriorize expressions with their sprites, including the mouth, not what they are "actually doing", having the mouth open should mean something like being angry, expressing happiness or surprise but not the reflect of an action they are normally doing. 

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