a bit on deafness being mute and sign language

[rustyarmor]

i found this while searching for new half life 3 news. It explains how someone born deaf and/or mute acts and how the Valve team should incorporate it into HL3
Even though this a visual novel and is limited compaired to a full 3D game. It seemed to me that Shizune wasnt exactly to emotional while signing. What are your views on on this?

[EmP|ty]

Surely you mean half life 2 episode 3.

And besides, if what I am gathering from this is correct, you are saying they should encorporate some kind of animation into her character when she is signing?
because actual animation is relatively hard, hell nearly impossible to do (or at least to do it WELL) in Visual Novels, Ren'Py supports it to an extent (snow, falling leaves, eye's blinking, transitions.), but nothing this complex.

Or are you saying that there should be more poses displaying more noticeable 'emotions' and 'feelings' that Shizune is having?
Because in all honesty I feel she conveys emotion relatively well with the facial expressions and poses in the demo so far.

[rustyarmor]

yes i did mean half life 2 episode 3 it was just to long to write out.
No I didn't mean to add animation maybe more explain it in written form. I might need to replay it but i remeber stuff like "Shizune motions something to Misha". When it could be easily changed to "Smiling, Shizune motions something to Misha" . It seem that she displayed emotions was after she was done motioning or looking at Hiaso's reaction.

[EmP|ty]

Hmmm, well, I'm not familiar with Japanese sign language, but in British Sign language (now don't knock me, I only learned the basics), I remember facial expressions and such things played a part in communication, so making facial expressions after or before signing something would be appropriate conduct.

[HeMeido]

Hisao does mention Shizune's expressions a few times, but it's not something he would deliberately look out for as long as he expects Misha to translate. That's the sort of thing that'll probably come up more frequently once Hisao learns sign language.

Personally, I think that Shizune's sprites do an excellent job of portraying her expressions.

[Caesius]

No I didn't mean to add animation maybe more explain it in written form. I might need to replay it but i remeber stuff like "Shizune motions something to Misha". When it could be easily changed to "Smiling, Shizune motions something to Misha" .

This is what the sprites are there for. In fact, this is the point of a visual novel! You just need to pay more attention to the sprites; they can be real subtle at times.

[Goldilurks]

I read up a little on JSL and the Wikipedia page indicates some complications for the portrayal of our dear Student Council President.

First off is mouthing. After training in language instruction I understand the difficulty synonyms can cause, and after studying Japanese I definitely can understand the difficulty in distinguishing between two different meanings/pronunciations of the same character. I'm not surprised that they use mouthing in JSL to make those distinctions, but it would seem to indicate that Shizune's signing animations should frequently show her mouth open.

More confounding is this piece from the Wikipedia article:

However, up to 2002, most Japanese schools for the deaf emphasized oral education, i.e. teaching through lip-reading. Even now, at least officially, JSL is not taught. It is only a decade since the official school ban on the use of JSL was lifted.

What I got from this is that it would be rather odd for Shizune not to be able to read lips. I'm curious as to how the devs resolve that tension (I'm sure they've done more than enough research themselves).

[Caesius]

Lip reading isn't perfect. There was a deaf girl here who said that she's very good at lip reading and could only catch something like half of what someone is saying.

Shizune probably can lip-read to an extent (everyone can really), but she probably would prefer to know precisely what someone is saying instead of asking them to repeat it or write it down or just fuckin' filling in the blanks herself.


As for mouth animations, I think that would get hella distracting and just make more work than necessary for the sake of realism. They've already said they're taking artistic liberties with the girls' disabilities so as to avoid an unnecessary or confusing amount of detail.

[ZystraL]

As someone who personally knows and is very close to someone else who is a deaf-mute, I can say that emotion is not always needed in sign language. Often, a straight face gets the message across strongly.
Plus I'm sure the character sprites given in KS have more than enough emotion in them if you look at how they change.