itch.io

Sure, I'd love to answer your questions where I can.

So, while this was a solo project, I did get assistance here and there from industry contacts from my time as a copywriter ("ERODH Copy and Content" is my copywriting company, very small and niche market stuff, but enough for my needs.) A lot of those skills they had ranged from artistic, designer, to Unity programmers, and even people in the adult industry!  I put my VN in front of them VERY EARLY in the development process, and I feel like this was a big part of improving the end product. I know it's nerve-wracking to share unfinished work or work that you're not yet proud of, but the feedback from experienced people can help you scrap good/bad ideas very quickly.

If you check out the product page, you'll see that our art was AI generated. Now, that's not as easy as it sounds, but as someone (a former copywriter) who started having trouble finding clients because of the advent of ChatGPT, I think I'm VERY sensitive to this issue so I've done my best to integrate the art in the most ethical way possible. At least, what I think is ethical - and I'll try to be transparent about it here. I have promised to make no attempt to copyright the visuals in this game now and forever. I consider AI art to the product of humanity writ large, I believe that no amount of post-work or touch-up work, or even visual prompts (which I did use Daz3D to model some poses that I couldn't just get from AI, and then feed those in as references) entitles anyone to copyright the end results of AI. When you purchase Blew-It, you're purchasing the story I wrote and the overall experience. In fact, if you want to rip open the game and take every single art asset for your project - you can! That is both the beauty (and the corporate Achilles Heel) to AI art, in my humble opinion. I even provided AI prompts to generate the three main love interests and the one VERY persuasive sociopath in NovelAI so you can enjoy the ladies, uh..... however you like.

Now, while the AI gave me a lot of basis for the art, I had to learn a lot myself, too. I had to learn to use DAZ for more complex poses, I had to learn to REALLY use the AI, and pony up the cash to use it properly with all its features, and then I also had to learn GIMP. Photoshop is even better, but for my purposes isn't necessary.

The AI is also quite good at generating environmental art! (Just uh..... don't look at some of my backgrounds too closely, okay ;-) )

It's not perfect, and every once in a while I'll be bug-checking and notice a warp in the space time continuum in the corner of someone's living room!!!

For this project, I used TyranoBuilder, which has improved a lot recently. But if you're comfortable with Renpy, ABSOLUTELY learn it the most you can. I still believe it's the superior engine in the end, but I will vouch for TyranoBuilder as being the easiest to learn AND still put out a quality product if you're willing to take a little time to learn about its features.