Katawa Shoujo Forums

Well, I didn't know if this question was asked but: how did you choose the girls' disabilities? And why? ^^

We didn't choose them. KS is based on an image by the artist RAITA, which is also the source of the disabilities. The details, such as the extent or origin of each disability, were chosen to fit the stories we wanted to tell.

Here's an extra thing for the people who already knew that: the personalities of the girls were chosen to fit RAITA's image as well, even though it only informs them with a single expression each, and the burned girl getting a slight description. Emi is cheerful, Rin is aloof, Hanako is shy and Shizune is direct. Only Lilly is a departure from this, as her calm and friendly personality clashes with what I see is a seemingly reserved or even snobbish girl in the original image. I remember having spent a lot of time back in 2007 staring at the image and thinking about how RAITA might've imagined the girls to be like. Lilly was the hardest, I recall someone else interpreting her as a clumsy ditz (also based only on the image).

Aura wrote:We didn't choose them. KS is based on an image by the artist RAITA, which is also the source of the disabilities. The details, such as the extent or origin of each disability, were chosen to fit the stories we wanted to tell.

Here's an extra thing for the people who already knew that: the personalities of the girls were chosen to fit RAITA's image as well, even though it only informs them with a single expression each, and the burned girl getting a slight description. Emi is cheerful, Rin is aloof, Hanako is shy and Shizune is direct. Only Lilly is a departure from this, as her calm and friendly personality clashes with what I see is a seemingly reserved or even snobbish girl in the original image. I remember having spent a lot of time back in 2007 staring at the image and thinking about how RAITA might've imagined the girls to be like. Lilly was the hardest, I recall someone else interpreting her as a clumsy ditz (also based only on the image).

And wasn't that last one was discarded because it would be too obvious/stereotypical?

Aura wrote:I don't answer that question because it's intentionally left vague and I've not seen anyone get it right yet.

By any chance would that book be Pussikaljaromaani?

That's been guessed before and it's not.

Suriko wrote:

100312sidethumbs.jpg

Pretty cuddly in it's own, squiggly way.

What about dialogue, the interaction between the characters? I've recently experimented a little bit with writing a screenplay, and I must say, trying to think up something sensible for the characters to say is bloody difficult. So basically, what's the trick behind thinking up meaningful, sensible things for the characters to say and talk about, without the whole thing feeling “No, John. You are the demons”-levels of stupid? From what cornucopia did you manage to draw all the text that ended up comprising the Katawa Shoujo script? What was the creative process like that gave you something to say, an opinion to voice, the ability to express yourselves exactly the way you wanted to? Like during the Rin-path, when Rin suddenly throws out that flurry of words, I've always wondered what inspired that?

Also, @Aura, that book you're referencing, is it the Juoppohullun Päiväkirja?

Shockproof Jamo wrote:
What about dialogue, the interaction between the characters? I've recently experimented a little bit with writing a screenplay, and I must say, trying to think up something sensible for the characters to say is bloody difficult. So basically, what's the trick behind thinking up meaningful, sensible things for the characters to say and talk about, without the whole thing feeling “No, John. You are the demons”-levels of stupid? From what cornucopia did you manage to draw all the text that ended up comprising the Katawa Shoujo script? What was the creative process like that gave you something to say, an opinion to voice, the ability to express yourselves exactly the way you wanted to? Like during the Rin-path, when Rin suddenly throws out that flurry of words, I've always wondered what inspired that?

I always try and map the conversation out in my head, playing both roles as a person (although with Hanako this was almost universally "...").

Then have a cup of tea and read it again to make sure it flows like a real conversation. That is about as close as I ever get to proof reading OTL

it helps to have a lot of other people reading it and commenting on it.

On some rare occasions I'll actually say the sentence out loud to make sure that it rolls off the tongue like real speech.

Shockproof Jamo wrote:

Suriko wrote:

100312sidethumbs.jpg

Pretty cuddly in it's own, squiggly way.

What about dialogue, the interaction between the characters? I've recently experimented a little bit with writing a screenplay, and I must say, trying to think up something sensible for the characters to say is bloody difficult. So basically, what's the trick behind thinking up meaningful, sensible things for the characters to say and talk about, without the whole thing feeling “No, John. You are the demons”-levels of stupid? From what cornucopia did you manage to draw all the text that ended up comprising the Katawa Shoujo script? What was the creative process like that gave you something to say, an opinion to voice, the ability to express yourselves exactly the way you wanted to? Like during the Rin-path, when Rin suddenly throws out that flurry of words, I've always wondered what inspired that?

Also, @Aura, that book you're referencing, is it the Juoppohullun Päiväkirja?

Written dialog, for me at least, doesn't need to necessarily sound good when spoken aloud--it needs to read well, and those two are different things (this is true of screenplays too, really, unless you are writing some mumblecore bullshit up its own ass with "naturalistic" dialog). The way people talk in real life is full of long pauses and bursts of words--a lot more "um's" and the like. I always tried to have a sort of rhythm to my dialog, which can get out of hand if I'm not careful. As for coming up with "meaningful, sensible things" to talk about, well... I'm not sure it's as important as you think--if you can make the characters bounce off one another enough, and get the words to flow well enough, it will still be enjoyable to read. That being said, mostly characters talk to one another to wrestle with an idea or move the plot along or (my personal favorite) to show their personalities off. It's why so much of Emi and Hisao's dialog is kind of nonsense, because it's just two people going back and forth with no real direction--except at the same time, their inability to have a serious conversation is in itself a somewhat important plot point. You just kind of have to be willing to do a lot of writing and re-writing until it feels right--or sometimes you get lucky and knock out a scene in one shot (this only has ever happened to me once, with Emi at the graveyard, and even then I think I wound up going back and tweaking her phrasing a few times before the final release).

What does these quotes mean in Rin's route?
"Ysae s'ti tub, drah smees."
"Ti tsujda ot evah uoy won."
Rin said that these are talked backwards(according to the game), and I have no idea about how to say those, so I couldn't even try to record it and play it reversely.

Question from me:
I heard somewhere that Rika was supposed to be based off of Rei Ayanami from Evangelion (if I'm wrong, please correct me).
If that is the case, then was there any inspiration for Saki's design, or was it just random?

Neither of them are inspired by anything specific, certainly not by Rei.

I did some rudimentary searches and it doesn't look like the question was ever asked, so hopefully this isn't redundant:

Was there ever any interest by the dev team in including a song with vocals on the soundtrack? Was having a purely instrumental OST an artistic decision or a pragmatic one?

Leaty wrote:I did some rudimentary searches and it doesn't look like the question was ever asked, so hopefully this isn't redundant:

Was there ever any interest by the dev team in including a song with vocals on the soundtrack? Was having a purely instrumental OST an artistic decision or a pragmatic one?

I think there were lengthy discussions about a theme song. I made some basic enquiries through my friends but it all got a little too hard, and I also think that we never really convinced the whole team of the need of a song.


But that was really early in the process, when things like "story" and "art" were much Bigger issues.

So I guess you could say it was an artistic decision, and probably for the best

When/if Four Leaf Studios release a new project, will you get website dedicated to the studio and it's projects or will you stick to your blog?

I dunno, I guess? I think we probably require some kind of a critical mass of stuff to bother with a website for the studio itself (since we haven't made one so far in the soon 8 years of our existence). How much that is, I couldn't say.