Black Rose Valkyrie
- Efficient workflow with original 2D portraits intact
- IDEA FACTORY Co., Ltd., Tokyo
PROFILE: Creating a model for each pose for artistic accuracy, Black Rose Valkyrie is the first title under the new IDEA FACTORY INTERNATIONAL brand. This project has ambitious challenges and is different from other regular titles we publish. With Kosuke Fujishima for character design and Takumi Miyajima for scenario writing, our team was brought together to take on this challenge, taking the full advantage of our experiences and technological expertise.
The main challenge for this game was to achieve attractive character animations without degrading the quality of the original 2D art. This is why we decided to create a Live2D model from each of the character illustrations with various poses. Because of this, we believe that these animations are rendered accurately in the game as our designers had in mind.
In the planning phase, we had deep discussions and assessed existing samples. And we came to conclude that Live2D could achieve various 3D-like animations while directly & harmoniously using 2D art, which is one of our big strengths. With the help of the PSD import as well as the clipping mask features, the software allows an efficient workflow for modeling illustrated portraits with the original charms intact.
Even with 3D in triumph of modern animation, 2D will never be abolished, particularly in the area of character contents in Japan. It is undeniable that 3D has its big advantage in dynamic motions, especially in interactive applications, but even with the advances of 2D-like rendering methods, it hardly compares with the genuine quality of 2D. We believe that Live2D is there to achieve just that not just for characters but also for background art.
We believe in the future, we’ll be able to experience a Live2D interactive content in which you are immersed fully in two-dimensional world yet able to look all around 360 degrees.
