Hello everyone!

In today's post I’m going to talk about the music of Last Time I Saw You, which has been composed by Laryssa Okada, who, among other games, made the soundtrack for Manifold Garden.

I first met Laryssa back in 2018 as she was a fan of Yume Nikki: Dream Diary, the game I previously worked as art director. Some time later, when Last Time I Saw You was starting to take shape, I went through my list of contacts looking for a possible composer and, after listening to what she made for Manifold Garden I thought she could be a very good fit. What I had in mind was actually very different from Manifold Garden, but still I got the feeling that we could work out something together.

Likewise, although she is the composer, in a way I’m also involved in the making of the music, giving certain guidelines and direction of how I would like each track to sound as well as providing many, MANY references from other artists. It's a process I first did when I worked on Yume Nikki: Dream Diary with its composer and it was a creative process that I really enjoyed a lot.

In the case of Last Time I Saw You, I knew I wanted a strong presence of brass instruments, especially trumpets and saxophones. It's a sound that over time has become more and more attractive to me, perhaps because during many years I was very into American Football, a band that used a trumpet from time to time. It’s an instrument that I think transmits (at least to me) a feeling of nostalgia and exaltation of emotions that I like a lot. Here’s one of my favorite American Football songs from their first (and best) album where you can listen to what I mean.

Also, another good example of a particular track from the game Unravel, composed by Frida Johansson that gives me that feeling too.

Another of the main references was also lofi hip-hop music, a genre that I discovered many years ago when I was back in highschool through Samurai Champloo and the music of Nujabes. Again, the music of Last Time I Saw You doesn't go in that direction but it does base some of its sources on it.

And of course, the biggest reference of them all I would say that has been the marvelous soundtrack of Disco Elysium, created by the band Sea Power. It has not only been a great inspiration for the music of Last Time I Saw You but also for the narrative, something I will talk about in the future.

Overall I think Laryssa has made a wonderful job bringing music to the world of Ayumi. Here’s the first track that she composed for the game. It's called Sunshower, and it's the music you can listen to in the Main Menu. As you can appreciate, the brass and wind instruments are very present, and I think they give it a very emotional build up. I hope you like it as much as I do!


What do you think of the music? Does it remind you of any other artist? Tell me in the comments which are some of your favorite game soundtracks!

If you want to listen more about Laryssa’s work check her Bandcamp[laryssaokada.bandcamp.com]. She’s worked on other game soundtracks as well as a couple of albums of her own with a very different style from Last Time I Saw You. This is one of my favorite tracks from her. It’s very good!

In the next post I will talk about the writing of Last Time I Saw You. References and the writing method we followed.

Until next time! 💙
.Juan

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1909750/Last_Time_I_Saw_You/

[discord.gg][www.maboroshiartworks.com]

Hello everyone!

In today's post I'm going to talk about the animations of Last Time I Saw You, which have been animated frame by frame following the standards of traditional animation. There are many ways to do 2D animation. In fact, during my previous work, I did some skeletal animation using a software called Spine, which allows you to animate 2D images as if they were 3D to give them a very special look (I'm sure you've seen this type of animation in many mobile games). But for Last Time I Saw You, because of the 90's anime references I was following, I decided to go with a traditional frame by frame approach like the movies I was getting inspiration from.

Animating frame by frame is a long - and sometimes tedious - process, but it gives some very unique and charming results. If animated well, all sorts of emotions can be conveyed with traditional animation. Just look at Ghibli and Disney films to see what I mean!

The workflow is as follows: First, the animation team adapts my character designs so that they can be more easily animated (basically redrawing shapes and simplifying some elements without losing the soul of the character). Then, following my guidelines, they make what is called a “rough”, basically the "sketch" of the animation. Here is an example.

Once approved, they make the intercalations and then clean it, reaching what is commonly referred as the Tie Down phase. Here the shadow areas are also marked so they can be better understood when coloring it later.

Finally, they complete it by adding color, shadows and finishing touches. In many movies and in some games, like Cuphead, all of this is made by pencil on paper and then digitally scanned. However, in Last Time I Saw You we made it from the start using an animation software called Toon Boom. As you can see it’s quite a slow and complicated process, but the final results are really lovely!

And that's how we animated the game! I hope you liked this little introduction to 2D animation. What are your favorite animated movies or animes? Leave them in the comments!

In the next post I will talk about the music of Last Time I Saw You, who composed it and what references we used.

Until next time! 💙
.Juan

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1909750/Last_Time_I_Saw_You/

[discord.gg][www.maboroshiartworks.com]