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Nice to haves in VN artbooks (with Last Birdling post)


InvertMouse

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Hi everyone :D. Once again, I want to share a Last Birdling related post, but to make things fairer, we can turn this more into a general VN discussion.

WlhcgZLh.jpg

When I love a VN (999, Narcissu, Ever17 etc), I want to also pick up its artbook, though truth be told, this has become less of a necessity over the years. CGs of popular games are readily available online, and while it is nice to have those illustrations in print, physical space is limited. There are, however, still plenty of things that will draw my interest, as I have seen in several artbooks I own:

- Interviews with developers (admittedly a struggle since they are usually in Japanese)

- Fanart

- Results for character popularity polls etc

- 4koma (common with Narcissu related books)

- Production sketches

I am not too interested in character summaries or in-game walkthroughs. By the time I pick up the book, I have already completed the game anyway. At any rate, is there anything else you can think of? I would love to know. In particular, maybe things that you have never seen in a VN artbook, and you think, "Why don't they ever do this?"

Here is my artbook preview post on The Last Birdling. It contains all the history, mistakes and lessons I have learned through the past five years:

kLmDw4ul.jpg 

Thank you :vinty:!

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Like @Chronopolis already mentioned, what's really interesting is usually artist's own vision; most of them are usually tasked with specific workload and they are rarely given complete freedom over the project (although it happens, this is when we usually get really great art that feels like an extension of the game). That said, anything from additional information about particular elements, from characters to backgrounds (aka locations) is worth having, especially if we're dealing with creative people. What I love the most are typically works in progress, showing the drawing's evolution - from design and early roughs to complete artwork.

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