
I made a little collage of the expressions of the game character I created in Blender for my WIP Visual Novel I'm creating in Ren'Py, named
Interview with a lonely machine.Since you'll pretty much be seeing her on-screen throughout the game, I wanted a large library of varied poses and facial expressions. So I ended up learning OSS 3D-program Blender for this, designed, sculpted and rigged her from scratch. Now I have a quite flexible model I can pose for all sorts of expressions. A 3D model in VN always has the risk of feeling cold and too clean, so I try to avoid that, but still have a lot to learn. I get help from the fact that she's not meant to be entirely human-looking. I'm starting to get the hang of making her somewhat relatable, I think.
This story is a 'chamber piece' of a conversation between two very strange entities; a very lonely machine-girl and the sub-process (you) she created to help her recover herself, but maybe most importantly, to keep her company.
It's very easy for a 3D character to feel sterile or cold, so I've tried hard to work with her face rig here. I hope that the fact that she's an android and not meant to be 100% realistic helps me out here ... I hope to have a character one can relate to as one talks to her.
Feedback is appreciated!