Hey Guys & Gals

New visitors---thanks for checking out my game!  Can't wait for you to play the demo.

Follow me at any of my numerous sites or check back here, and I'll update you when the demo is ready next month.  Cheers!

Latest Artwork

These characters will appear in the demo that should be ready in October.

You play the middle character, Mark, fresh out of the closet.  Ian, on the left, is your (hetero) best friend, and Alex, on the right, is a guy you meet in a bar.

More guys will be in the full game, the ones above are just for the demo.

A Dating Sim...With A Story

One thing I'd like to emphasize is that Coming Out On Top will have erotic scenes, but they are still secondary to the story.

I guess I could make up a simple porn or dating game, but I actually love my characters and care quite a bit what happens to them.  I write them trying to make them as real and as fresh to players as possible.  It comes down to this: whether or not you play for erotic content, I want you to fall in love with them too.

If you played the old demo, you're probably aware that the premise just wasn't about Mark and whether or not he scored a date with someone.  There was actually a story with humor and suspense that unfolded as you played the game.  

I actually haven't played many dating sims, so I thought having a compelling story was typical...but apparently not.  I've been told it's often a case of the players just trying to get somebody's affection (or get in their pants.)  That's not what Coming Out On Top is actually about.  Every guy who is obtainable has his own personal and highly individualistic struggles, which also poses a challenge for the your character.

In the full game, you'll have guys with some pretty deep issues.  Not stuff like "oh hey, he's one of those awkward and shy types...how do I romance this guy?" but questions like, "he's Mormon and in the closet...what the HELL do I do now?!?"  I suppose that's a little intense for a simple dating game, but Coming Out On Top is not a simple dating game.  

Sure, its game mechanics are simple, (think "Choose Your Own Adventure") but I put a lot of thought into the writing of it so the characters feel very real and you care about what happens to them.   It's probably one reason the old demo struck a chord with people in spite of its clunky cartoon art!  (Speaking of which, I'm very excited to see what the new artwork will have on the game!)

So I know I've been probably pulling in a lot of folks expecting an erotic adventure (it will be hot, yes, don't you worry!), but I think a lot of you will be surprised that the Coming Out On Top isn't simply that.  If anything, my goal is to leave you remembering its characters and their stories for a long time to come.

So for those of you looking for a pure porn game, I apologize.  But if you're looking for a hot game that will alternately keep you laughing and intrigued (my goal, anyways), please stay tuned.

Mark In Technicolor

Thanks for your comments, guys.  I still felt Mark looked pretty old and I made him look younger.  Hopefully I can capture the previous line-drawing-Mark's expression though when colored-Mark is feeling devious.  This Mark has a pretty blank expression right now--I don't know why but this is how I like all my sprites to start out.  Comments and criticisms always welcome.

I'm still working on him and will be fixing the others.  But that's it for the foundation for the sprites.  Now I gotta start working out their expressions, their (egads) clothing, getting the demo together, hopefully giving it to a magician to make it extra awesome, and putting in the graphic scenes you always hoped for in your game about a gay college dude...

Oh shoot, I didn't color the button of his jeans.  (As if it matters...all you see in the game is his head mostly.  Not that head...the other one.  :-P)

Note to self: It's been almost exactly one month since I started trying to improve my artwork.  \O/

Trying to decide on Mark's looks...

I can't figure out what to do with him.  DOES HE LOOK TOO OLD?!?!  He's supposed to be a senior in college.

If you've got comments, let me know.

Be Happy I Don't Draw Manga

KashyaCharsiSeptember 27, 2012 6:10 AM 

Nice bespectacled bishonen he has become.

*removes glasses*

"You called?

Alex Redone

OMG Alex's sprite took me forever.  He has to be flawless, which means I have to sit there tweaking him endlessly until he looks right.  And abs...wow, alien terrain for me.   This guy took serious work.

I still have to clothe him and do his other pose.

Here's a link to his NSFW (18+ only please) sprite here.

I dunno if I'm going to be able to redo the entire demo in time...these sprites are taking me a bit longer than the old ones.  I may just have to actually make it a true "demo".  It will contain the new adult content, but not the entire story line that the old demo contained.

There's a lot more I want to include in his story, in any case, and I want to make sure it's done especially well.

Anyways, I gotta move onto Mark now (FINALLY), and then go back to finalizing each sprite for the game.

Chibi of Ian

Speaking of Ian, have you seen Ian as a chibi?  The artist, Silver Hyena, is a chibi grandmaster or something.  If I won the lotto I'd ask her to make an entire version of my game in her chibis.  The SFW version of course...though now that I think of it, the x-rated adult chibi version might be hilarious.

Check out Silver Hyena's boylove visual novel game  called Sacred Sand here!!!

I haven't played it yet (because I'm busy learning to draw penises and whatnot for you insatiable people), but I played the demo some months ago.  It's adorable.

Ian WIP Sprite

I guess I can post this here because it's a SFW sprite of Ian.

Cleaned up his line work, and of course, I'm not showing his you-know-what (even though I drew it) because he's the most difficult obtainable in the full game.  (Your hetero best bro.)  Work it, girls and boys.

Good luck getting him in bed, darlings.  Maybe I'll be totally evil and never post a walkthrough for his route when the game comes out.  BWAHAHAHAHA.

Penny WIP

Your character Mark has two best friends, one of which is Penny.  People who have played the demo noted her fine skills as a programmer and enthusiastic attempts to be Mark's wingwoman.

This is a work-in-progress for her sprite, which I did entirely in Sai to see if that was gonna be any easier.  It's obvious I've got color issues right now.

OMG, that's the last of the non-boneable sprites for now.  Her colors need adjustment and her additional poses still need to be colored.  And of course, I gotta do all her expressions.

Now I gotta work on Mark, Ian, and Alex.  Hmmm, I figure I should just to do their sprites butt naked now that I'm officially a smut peddler?

In any case, back to drawing naked guys...I'm so happy I could cry.

OMG

It's probably too early to say but I don't care...I might have a super cool level 30 ninja person working on Coming Out On Top.

I'm thrilled.  I love this person's work!!!

It's got class, style, and polish.

In other words, basically everything I lack, lol.

Graham Redone

These will be closer to the style of the final sprites...but comments so far are:

- "he's too orange" (obviously I need to recalibrate my monitor)

- change the backlight

- make him a secret relationship...LOL!!!

After drawing naked dudes for the past week, clothing was a challenge.

Coming Out On Top: Now A Gay ADULT Visual Novel/Dating Sim

So, after the genteel commentators on Steam Greenlight gave me feedback on how my art was terrible, I spent every free moment I had this month learning how to improve my artwork.

In addition, I also got feedback from my web poll showing clearly people wanted explicit sex scenes.  I thought this was gonna be a small minority of people, but it turns out I am just one among many perverts.

I'm happy to appease my fellow pervs, but...OMG, I JUST learned how to color and shade properly like, three weeks ago.  The penises I've drawn in the past look like animal balloons.  Now I'm gonna either need to hire somebody to do all the sex scenes, or draw them myself.

There are probably fewer things more difficult for me than drawing a sex scene.  My knowledge of anatomy is still pretty shaky...and a kind soul had to give me a tutorial on how to draw male genitalia.  And I got more feedback from a couple of other wonderful people who I doubt are gay porn enthusiasts.

Anyways, I think I hit a ceiling last weekend, hampered by my lack of tools (or maybe just the knowledge to use them properly).  So I finally bit the bullet, and purchased a Windows PC, Sai, and a Wacom Intuos tablet.

The combination of all three has allowed me to do the one thing I've been trying to do for the past month--draw a smooth line that has tapered ends.  That sounds so simple...but that smooth tapered line is pretty much the building block of everything else.  Every piece of equipment I had was failing me on some level prior to this week.

Anyways, with my new gear, I think I'm finally ready to head back into the demo and start redoing the sprites.  As well as write in all the new adult scenes.

BTW, this is the first drawing (NSFW!) I've done with the Intuos, and the second drawing I've done with Sai.  It has its many problems, but I feel like the combo of a faster computer/Sai/and the new tablet is giving me a lot more room in terms of what I can now do.  The drawing (2nd warning: NSFW!!!!) has nothing to do with Coming Out On Top.  It's just me pairing a bara-ish guy with a yaoi-ish guy for my own amusement, that I stuck in my Tumblr blog.

I still dunno how I'm gonna explain this to my mom.  Thank the lord she's out of the country right now.

New Equipment

After a decade of not owning a Windows machine, it's finally happened.

I bought a PC.  A new graphics tablet is on its way.  My old Macbook can barely handle it when I edit a 2gb graphics file.

All this so my wang drawings look more professional.

Another NSFW Drawing

I wonder what these are gonna look like after I start using Sai and the new tablet.  I hope it was worth the investment...

Thus Spake the People

Well, if I go by the poll, it looks like I'm definitely making two versions of Coming Out On Top: 16+ and adult.  Sweet!  I'm glad there's so many people who want to see the adult version.

(57% in favor of a hardcore version, 54% in favor of both versions, and 3% in favor of a non-explicit version.)

Thanks for replying, everyone.

ACK! Where's the Old Demo with Alex?

I've taken it down because I'm reworking it.  It will feature different art (not the cartoon characters from the old demo).  And it will have explicit adult content.

It should be ready in October.

To clarify: some time this November.

(I seriously wish I could get this out ASAP, but I have a day job that pays my bills, darlings.  Part of my upcoming Kickstarter is to help me work fewer shifts so I can deliver the game to you within the next century.)

What's Ahead

So...I think I've gotten 2 weeks of time off.

I'll be spending most of it reworking the demo, specifically replacing all the art as well as making the writing more explicit (I had to censor myself several times when I originally wrote it.)

Hopefully, the new demo should be ready (approximately) by October 1st.

At that point I'll be launching a Kickstarter for the full version Coming Out On Top, which will let you have sexy times not just with Alex, but Ian (if you can navigate the treacherous waters of your friendship), as well as three new guys: a jock, a rocker, and a Marine.

I'm hoping you will love the new demo enough to pull the Kickstarter through.  There's only one thing I want to do and it's to spend every moment making this game as funny, sweet, and hot as possible.

I'll also be updating Tumblr and Twitter when I've got the new demo ready and Kickstarter ready to go.

Thanks much for stopping by, and hope you stick around.

:-)

<3

My First NSFW Art

Gosh, I think only 1 or 2 of you prefer a rated PG-13 game?  Well, I'm working hard on drawing penises as of this week.  Hey, it's not just a knob on top of stick!  Here's the first hardcore sex drawing I've ever done:


+18 only

Do I need to mention how many doggy style photos I had to wade through to draw this?  Oh man.

Anyways, feedback good or bad, is always appreciated.

P.S. In case you're wondering, I'm gonna start redoing the demo today to see if I can pull off the game in the new style, with raunchier writing and art.

Brief Update

Thanks for the feedback on Alex, everybody.  Work's gotten busier so I haven't been able to reply to the comments (I will in due time!), but they are so outrageously helpful.  I'll still be working on his neck, etc. to make him look more proportional.

I'm so looking forward to my upcoming vacation this month...I'm planning to spend my entire vacation drawing for the game--my only desire right now, really.  Is that sad I don't want to travel...I'd rather be holed up in my dark office drawing perverted pictures.

At the moment I'm working on my first true adult drawing for the game--WAHAHA PENIS.  It finally rears its head, so to speak.

Anyways, please answer the poll in the right sidebar if you haven't already, thanks! ---->

How Hard(core) Do You Like It?

I want to get a read on how much explicit sex you guys want in the full version of Coming Out On Top.

When I originally made the demo, the intended audience was for the Lemmasoft forum (mostly a group of Visual Novel makers and enthusiasts, many of them quite young) and I didn't want the game to get banished into the Hentai section, which nobody ever visits.

I'm trying to figure out if you want to see hardcore action in this game.

I'm prepared to make it...but do you want it?

Please fill out the poll to your right (you can mark more than one answer)--->

or

leave a comment if you've got more to say.

Thanks, guys!

Alex's Sprite

Hopefully I can settle on a style soon and bring all the other sprites up to par.

I keep getting excellent feedback from the people on the Lemmasoft forums so my sprites keep changing.  They are the best teachers, I swear.  I've posted this sprite and am waiting for the next batch of "you're doing this, this, and this wrong."

Now, I've often heard the Lemmasoft forums being criticized as a giant circle jerk.  I dunno, I've gotten loads of criticism about my art, and I believe it's all been helpful, so if that's what constitutes a circle jerk, I'm totally fine with that.

Hmm...I'm thinking the neck is too long?

Redone Penny Sprite

I'm going to have "a time" trying to get their poses to look more animated, now that the sprites are more realistic looking.  Criticisms always welcome.

Kickstarter Update

Just in case you've missed my last few posts or are a first-time visitor to this site...I've received Kickstarter approval (yay) but have decided to delay launch so I can update the demo with all my new character art.  So apologies if you've been waiting.

The new character sprites are going to look dramatically different from the old ones.  If you want to know what spurred this, you can read about it here: Steam Greenlight vs. Me.

Anyways, I'm hoping to have everything ready by the end of this month so I can launch Kickstarter.

There's a lot to be done.  Right now I'm still trying perfect my new style.  Once the style is established, I have 6 character sprites, 4 of whom require at least 2 poses a piece.  And then their outfits.  Alex has 3 different outfits, and Penny has an additional pose.  Each of the characters have at least 12 different elements that make up their expressions, all of which have to be drawn and recoded.

Wow, that's a lot when I think about it.  Can I get this done before October? 

On top of this I'm learning two new graphics programs to accomplish this, one for my ipad, the other for my Mac.  So there are really two learning curves going on.

I'm pretty excited to see how the new art work fits in with the game. 

All right, I'm dead tired.  I spent the entire day drawing.  Sleep at last!

New Ian

Lines go a wobble wobble.  Hopefully if I get a Kickstarter going maybe I can buy a tablet and some more art equipment.  There must be more than 20 people out there wanting to see a gay dating sim.  Right?  RIGHT?!?!  (-_-)

Anyways, still working on him...still have a ton more characters to redo.  And he'll also need his second pose.  Hopefully I'll get faster as I continue.

If you see problems or have criticisms with this drawing, let me know.  That's pretty much the only way I improve.  Thanks!

Random Thoughts While Drawing the New Sprites

1) Grr.  Can't all you male models just relax and stop flexing your muscles.  I can't use you as a drawing reference because of your awkward "check out my awesome abs"pose that looks halfway constipated.

2) Waaah.  I miss my old sprites.  I'm already feeling nostalgic over them.  I don't care what anybody says, I thought my old sprites were adorable, if a bit rough around the edges.  I admit the game will look more professional with new sprites.  (Why didn't I just polish up the old ones?  Well, sometimes it's a lot easier drawing starting with a blank slate and drawing in a whole new style than trying to prettify old art.)

3) The challenge with these new sprites will be giving them dynamic expressions.  This is gonna be weird.  The game is comedic...the new sprites must be able to convey a range of expressions.  Yet my new sprites look way more realistic, and less cartoony.  Can I pull this off?

4) Men's hips.  What the hell is going on with men's hips?  So confused.  And frightened.

5) How can Mark be this ripped?  Husband noted that I'm gonna have to change the story...Ian can't be dragging Mark to the gym.  "The new Mark already looks like a guy who spends four hours a day minimum working out!"  Well...the fact is, you're never gonna see below Mark's chest...so I guess it doesn't really matter.  His abs are a dirty little secret.

6) I'm having a real problem getting the age right.  The first Mark I drew over the weekend looked like he was 14.  The next one looked around 30.  And I keep having weird "Wil Wheaton" moments every time I draw a new Mark.  (Meaning, I look at my drawing, and think 'WTF this looks like Wil Wheaton.")

7) Drawing CGs (event scenes) is gonna take about 20X longer if I want to use this new style.  OMG.

8) So I can write, draw, make some music with varying degrees of competence.  Ideally I wish I had a team member who could do all the other stuff in the game: update the interface to match the new artwork, design promotional material, filter backgrounds, and do some minor programming.  I am super weak at graphic design.  But I dunno how I could pay this person.  Maybe offer a percentage off of the whatever we make in Kickstarter (should we miraculously achieve our goal?)

Yawn, I'm sleepy.  This post is no longer making sense.  G'night.

Mark Redone. Work in progress

Like you even see below Mark's neck in the game.  Oh well.

I'm gonna have to start working on his expressions so I can code them back into the game.

Steam Greenlight vs.... Me

I don't have Kickstarter approval yet, but I don't know if it matters because of a possible change in plans.

Basically I put my game up on Steam Greenlight on Friday just to get some feedback (not that I ever thought I'd actually get my game greenlit or anything.  It was purely to see what strangers would think.  Steam is totally not the audience for this game...but I still wanted to see some first impressions.)

They came rolling right in.  Mind you, these are people who haven't played the game.  They just saw some promotional stuff I haphazardly threw up there.