In Search of Dustin

Meet Valerie: She a manipulative little b*tch who hates your guts and will do everything in her power to ruin your chances with your dream guy. She also happens to be your ex-girlfriend.



Meet Stacy: Your dear friend, who's always ready for a laugh and a rockin' good time.


Meet Ben: What a beautiful face and body... Unfortunately, that's pretty much all there is to him.
Meet Phil: Not sure what he's trying to say here, but whatever it is, it'll be important.

As you can see, I've started to compile the images I will be using for the game. Good images are really hard to come by. Only a few sets of the thousands I've skimmed through are suitable for character-construction. The main reason is that I need more than one image per character. I need preferably, a set of images showing the a person wearing different expressions - ie: normal, surprised, upset, sad, happy, etc, images consistant with those you'd find in a regular Visual Novel. The bigger the role of the character in the story the more images I need for that character.

Those that I've found have proven to be quite useful in shaping a personality for my characters. Like they say, a picture paints a million words. Unfortunately, I have yet to find an image for my "Dream Guy", the guy you've fallen in love with and you're trying to track down. I've come up with a tentaive name which I think's pretty hot: Dustin. The title of the game will (possibly) be "In Search of Dustin (insert last name here)". The fact that I've been unable to find a suitable "Dustin" isn't me being too picky. There's plenty of pictures of pretty girls and pretty guys, there are even pretty girls with personalities. But there just ain't no hot guys with personalities. (Art imitating life?) Have you noticed how few pics there are of good looking guys wearing expressions other than "sexy" or "I want to fuck you"? Take this guy:

I'd love him to be my "Dustin", but I've only got a few pics of him and they're not really that different. I need him to cry, laugh, or whatever! This is really important, 'cause Dustin can't keep looking as sexy as hell while he informs you that he's serious considering suicide because you ruined his life.

The best I can find so far is this guy. What he's got going for him is that he's pretty good looking, and I've got pics of him showing a dozen different expressions. He looks like a guy I'd want to meet, rather than a guy I'd just want to fuck (ala Ben). The only thing is... he's an itty bit too old for my liking. I mean, I originally planned for "Dustin's" to be in his twenties. This guy's got white hair at his temples already, though admitedly his true age is more obvious in some pics than others.

Oh, and it seems that most of the character, if not all of them, will be Caucasian. I've no real choice in this matter, as there simply aren't that many images of minorities to choose from.

Also having some technical difficulties, which has been reported to the Blade Engine forum and is currently being investigated.