Quote

Not super confident with how this chapter came out, let me know if there's any way I could improve this sort of theme for the next one.

Rape is quite a common theme on LL. The way you approach it is up to you : you can insist on realism, by depicting the consequences, and the psychological aspects before and afterwards. This does allows you to reduce the part of the rape itself, and is what you will find in works like GoT. Or you can on the contrary choose the way of humor, and lessen with that any consequences. If you do neither of those, then repetition without consequences will bring your works closer to smut, and lessen the emphasis on the story and the characters.

As for the technicalities, you don't need to have perfect screenarchery in order to get a good story ; but never opening the mouth of your characters as they speak still looks unnatural. Also, I would advice not skipping fights until having shown at least how it started. ?

Okay. So chapter 5.

I'm gonna agree with everything my esteemed colleague  Tirloque has offered right off the bat. ?

Now, on to my own thoughts: 

The writing itself is still solid. I don't think you have any issues there. And the images themselves are pleasant enough to look at. I think we have a kind of an instinct about our own work. You said you weren't super confident about this chapter, and sometimes when we hear that little voice inside it's prudent to listen and take a closer look at work. 

But we can also learn from that, and there are some things to learn from here. We've already mentioned the lip movements, and I'm going to bring up facial expression again. (I mean I'm kinda known for making my characters a little over expressive ? so maybe try and find a happy middle ground)

The rape scenes themselves aren't bad, and I feel the dialogue carries it well. One thing to think about is that you can turn off sexlab's own facial expressions and use the console and mfg fix (I believe that's the right mod but I'm sure someone will correct me if I'm wrong) to set your own expressions during the act. Alot of people recommend that actually. 

11 hours ago, Tirloque said:

Rape is quite a common theme on LL. The way you approach it is up to you : you can insist on realism, by depicting the consequences, and the psychological aspects before and afterwards. This does allows you to reduce the part of the rape itself, and is what you will find in works like GoT. Or you can on the contrary choose the way of humor, and lessen with that any consequences. If you do neither of those, then repetition without consequences will bring your works closer to smut, and lessen the emphasis on the story and the characters.?

I'm going on and on here, but I'll shut up soon, I promise. The aftermath and consequences are like super important in a situation like this and honestly I came away from the end of this chapter with the impression that both characters were like, "Well, that's a thing that happened. Now, let's go out for breakfast."

For Alicia, this largely comes down to facial expression for me. I don't feel the look on her face really reflects the ordeal she just went through. With the fight being taken out (The fight haveing been a good opportunity for the audience to rebound and actually see the justice being handed out to those bastards bandits, which can help shift the mood of your audience after such an event... Okay, this sentence got away from me! ? Micah seemed far too calm. I'd have loved to see him screaming with rage as he murdered those assholes. I mean, look what they did to his love!

Okay, that being said, I hope you don't think I'm being too hard on you. I'm just still very intrigued by these characters and this story, and I'd like to see it kind of reach its potential. ? I'm by no means a pro at this. I'm still learning a lot as I go, but feel free to message me if you ever need help or advice and I'll certainly try! 

18 hours ago, Tirloque said:

Rape is quite a common theme on LL. The way you approach it is up to you : you can insist on realism, by depicting the consequences, and the psychological aspects before and afterwards. This does allows you to reduce the part of the rape itself, and is what you will find in works like GoT. Or you can on the contrary choose the way of humor, and lessen with that any consequences. If you do neither of those, then repetition without consequences will bring your works closer to smut, and lessen the emphasis on the story and the characters.

 

As for the technicalities, you don't need to have perfect screenarchery in order to get a good story ; but never opening the mouth of your characters as they speak still looks unnatural. Also, I would advice not skipping fights until having shown at least how it started. ?

When it comes to using mfg to make facial expressions I try it, something like mfg phoneme 0 40 or 1 50 or anything, I play around with it for a bit but it doesn't ever look good to me so I end up just not using it at all.  When it comes to fights however I have absolutely noo idea how to make something like that work.  I look at something like your fight scene in this chapter

And have no clue how I'd be able to make something anywhere close to that.

17 hours ago, LexiAJ82 said:

Okay. So chapter 5.

 

I'm gonna agree with everything my esteemed colleague  Tirloque has offered right off the bat. ?

 

Now, on to my own thoughts: 

 

The writing itself is still solid. I don't think you have any issues there. And the images themselves are pleasant enough to look at. I think we have a kind of an instinct about our own work. You said you weren't super confident about this chapter, and sometimes when we hear that little voice inside it's prudent to listen and take a closer look at work. 

 

But we can also learn from that, and there are some things to learn from here. We've already mentioned the lip movements, and I'm going to bring up facial expression again. (I mean I'm kinda known for making my characters a little over expressive ? so maybe try and find a happy middle ground)

 

The rape scenes themselves aren't bad, and I feel the dialogue carries it well. One thing to think about is that you can turn off sexlab's own facial expressions and use the console and mfg fix (I believe that's the right mod but I'm sure someone will correct me if I'm wrong) to set your own expressions during the act. Alot of people recommend that actually. 

I'm going on and on here, but I'll shut up soon, I promise. The aftermath and consequences are like super important in a situation like this and honestly I came away from the end of this chapter with the impression that both characters were like, "Well, that's a thing that happened. Now, let's go out for breakfast."

 

For Alicia, this largely comes down to facial expression for me. I don't feel the look on her face really reflects the ordeal she just went through. With the fight being taken out (The fight haveing been a good opportunity for the audience to rebound and actually see the justice being handed out to those bastards bandits, which can help shift the mood of your audience after such an event... Okay, this sentence got away from me! ? Micah seemed far too calm. I'd have loved to see him screaming with rage as he murdered those assholes. I mean, look what they did to his love!

 

Okay, that being said, I hope you don't think I'm being too hard on you. I'm just still very intrigued by these characters and this story, and I'd like to see it kind of reach its potential. ? I'm by no means a pro at this. I'm still learning a lot as I go, but feel free to message me if you ever need help or advice and I'll certainly try! 

For the aftermath and consequences there is definitely more I can do in this chapter to make it feel better.  Same with the fight as well.  Thank you both for the advice I'm gonna go and see what all I can do to fix up those parts of this chapter ❤️

18 hours ago, Exjordanary said:

When it comes to using mfg to make facial expressions I try it, something like mfg phoneme 0 40 or 1 50 or anything, I play around with it for a bit but it doesn't ever look good to me so I end up just not using it at all. 

Every author has her or his style regarding that. What I do is that I pay attention to one of the words the character is saying, and then I do mimick one of the phonemes.

For example : ATTENTION !  => phoneme for the "A" => mfg phoneme 1 30 + phoneme for T => mfg phoneme 4 25.

The louder your character talks, the more you increase the values. The lower, the more you reduce them. And you can adjust the combination to your liking so that they look good on the shots : if it looks ugly, then either lower the values or find a phoneme you like more. ?

18 hours ago, Exjordanary said:

 When it comes to fights however I have absolutely noo idea how to make something like that work.  I look at something like your fight scene in this chapter

And have no clue how I'd be able to make something anywhere close to that.

Spoiler

 

For the aftermath and consequences there is definitely more I can do in this chapter to make it feel better.  Same with the fight as well.  Thank you both for the advice I'm gonna go and see what all I can do to fix up those parts of this chapter ❤️

That, is footage from a storyteller who was starting to get experimented at that point.

It's a combination of freezing the movements of the actors during a normal fight ("tfc 1" in the console), and using poses from posers mod on the others. There's also work on the expressions, Facelights, some photoshopping for the effects (speed, movements, trajectories), control on the weather, and even a story-script written beforehand. You do not need to do all of that to show a fight.

At your level, I would start by using a normal fight between your character and his opponents (either by asking him do fight them or by setting them on enemy factions if they aren't already) and using "tcf1" to be able to choose the moments you want to show, and the angles of view you wish to show. You may need several attempts (=> reloads) do capture those the way you want.

More info about fights here, when you'll feel ready to go beyond that.

PS : nice added fighting sequence, it really changes the overall feel of the chapter.

Definitely an improvement on the end! ? 

The fight scene was a bit dark, but that may just be because I'm viewing it on my phone. Haveing that fight scene in though completely changed the tone of the ending and made it feel a lot more real.

In addition Alicia now looks like she's been through an ordeal, rather than looking like someone just got her takeout order wrong. 

Really love that screenshot btw ? 

Nice job on the improvements, and keep it up. I feel like you're getting better with each chapter! 

24 minutes ago, LexiAJ82 said:

Definitely an improvement on the end! ? 

 

The fight scene was a bit dark, but that may just be because I'm viewing it on my phone. Haveing that fight scene in though completely changed the tone of the ending and made it feel a lot more real.

 

In addition Alicia now looks like she's been through an ordeal, rather than looking like someone just got her takeout order wrong. 

 

  Hide contents

 

Really love that screenshot btw ? 

 

Nice job on the improvements, and keep it up. I feel like you're getting better with each chapter! 

Yeah the fight scene shots are a little dark, I'm still trying to improve in the lighting department, thank you ❤️

The lighting isn't as bad as I thought it was now that I'm looking at it under better conditions. (My phone is not the ideal way to view images I suppose ?)

Lighting in general is tricky. I don't really know a good way to handle it or tweak it in game or CK so more often than not I end up moving or adjusting a scene if I can't get the lighting right. Going forward I would probably usually have face light active on just about anybody involved in a particular scene. I think it would have helped the bandits stand out a bit more.