Clara V

Sasha's Anime Sprite, Visual Novel Style

YouTube • ZZP

Feb 2025 - Mar 2025 • 1 mo

So Sasha messaged me wanting fresh anime style art for her YouTube channel, and it felt like starting a visual novel project. She makes YouTube videos with 2D characters and wanted them to move like an anime sprite shifting moods per scene. My background is mostly visual novel character design, so building an anime sprite for her felt natural. Most of my work is drawing an anime sprite with many expressions, so her request fit right in. We talked, and she wanted her character cute but sassy, like a lead in a visual novel. That gave me clear direction. I told her this is the same process I use for a visual novel anime sprite, just made for YouTube instead of a game engine. I started with a base pose, the same way I start every anime sprite. We skipped visual novel engine layering but kept the swappable face idea. She wanted five expressions: happy, shocked, annoyed, thinking, and a wink. That's normal for a visual novel anime sprite too. I sent the sketch first so she could approve proportions, since fixing that after coloring on any anime sprite is a pain. Once approved, I moved to lineart and color. Palette stayed bright, since thumbnails pop more than a typical visual novel scene. I still used my usual anime sprite shading, soft cell shading with highlights on hair and eyes. Expressions were my favorite part. Keeping one anime sprite feel consistent across moods is what I love most in visual novel work, and it carried over here. Her voice clips helped me nail each anime sprite reaction. After small revisions, she loved the final set. It felt like her character matched her videos, the same feeling I get from a happy visual novel client. Working with Sasha showed me anime sprite skills from visual novel work stretch beyond games. Whether a full visual novel cast or one YouTuber's character, the goal stays the same, make something expressive people connect with.