CSF August Update!

Hi there! I’m Lizzy, Cook Serve Forever’s Art Director. We’re getting very, very close to finishing up the remaining art assets for the game - the team has created some absolutely gorgeous work that I can’t wait for you to see! For this month’s post, I thought I’d give you all a look at how I approach the character art for the game’s visual novel sections (plus a sneak peek at some future scenes).

Among the team, we call these “Dialogue Box” scenes or DBs for short. If a DB requires any new characters or outfit changes, I’ll draw up some rough concepts and send them to the writers for feedback. Usually it’s a pretty quick process, but anything concerning the main characters can take a few rounds of sketches. For example, these are just some of the drawings I made while we were figuring out Brie’s design.

Choosing the right outfit is important! We ended up combining elements from a few of these concepts for her final look.

>> Note: if you haven’t played through the Rhubarb & Grill part of the story, this next section will have some visual spoilers! <<

Once the general designs needed for a scene are settled, I listen to the voice actors’ audio and scribble all over the script like so.

A little on the chaotic side, but it’s basically just me planning out the poses for the Rhubarb & Grill DBs. I use notes like these as a rough guide when I go to draw the character art in Clip Studio Paint. For each character or new outfit, I generally make a “default” pose as well as a bunch of other heads/arms I can switch out with some minor cleanup.

I mix and match these components to create the final assets, rotating and skewing the different parts a bit as I go. Doing so makes the characters seem like they’re shifting their weights, raising their shoulders, etc. as they switch between expressions (which I think looks cool).

So cool, right? Anyway… Once all the art for a scene is finished, I use Photoshop to create mockups of what each line of dialogue should look like in-game. Below is an example of one such mockup from the Rhubarb & Grill section (special shout out to Andrea and Pierre for the beautiful background art!). Other members of the team use images like these as a guide when they construct the DB in GameMaker.

That’s a little different to what’s currently in Cook Serve Forever, isn’t it? That’s right! I want the visual novel portions to feel more like the characters are actually talking to each other, so we’ve redesigned them to display multiple characters at a time. This change is coming in a future update, but I have a few more examples to share with you for now.

Thanks so much for playing! I can’t wait until we can show you more! :)

-Lizzy