The Making of M10-R1: Isekai Bartender Action

knownforbs
Jul 10, 2023
16 min read

Updated: Jul 11, 2023

What a ride it's been to get here. It's been a while since I've took the helm in a "big" collaborative project, and I figured "why not" to dust off the boots and to have made another one? For those who want to watch the video, check it out here below!

In making this article, I think the best way to go about it is segmenting the production process in various places chronologically and go into detail on each event that proceeds the next. And at the end, we'll do a roll call of everyone involved to make sure you go follow and support the people that've made this project come to life. I wouldn't have done it without the people who I had on board, and especially the community of people.

What EXACTLY is This?

This project would fit in the category of an "音MAD Video", or a YTPMV (for English speaking audiences). For this blog post, we'll just call it an 'OtoMAD.' OtoMADs are videos that compile a resource and splicing it together with a song (or idea) of the creator's choice. Examples could be mixing together Japanese animes and commercials (i.e. Death Note, Ippon Manzoku Bar, etc.) with songs that can range from video games, original music, what have you.

These types of videos, in my honest opinion, are among the best that the internet has to offer, when it comes to a musical sense, comedic sense - or just basically, a high-effort shitpost. Here are some of my favorite OtoMADs over the years, as examples!

The Origin of the Idea

Before the concept of what exactly M10-R1 was gonna be, this project actually inspired by a previous project that I had worked on before, that being a birthday gift for independent Virtual YouTuber, Miori Celesta. Check out her channel here - she truly is, I feel, one of the most earnest, hard-working VTubers in the sphere.

This was an OtoMAD that I had made relatively fast, featuring rhythm game artist owl*tree's "Baqeela." (Arranged by FinnOtaku for the OtoMAD collaboration, "New Years Dream 2022 ~ Good World, Come On!" (NSFW)) This was also aided by the help of one of the visual producers that helped meld M10-R1 into life, LeLazyOne. Make sure to check them out, as well!

It was essentially practice, but seeing Miori's live reaction to it on her birthday stream was all the motivation that I had needed to put the boots back on for another big project. That, and originally this was also a video to send Miori off, as this was made knowing she'd be going on hiatus. I'm sure to VTuber fans, hiatuses and "graduations" are no new thing, so if she was going to be going away for a year or so, why not send her off with one big fan project as a surprise?

...Keep in mind when I said "originally," as she actually ended up not having to go on hiatus. Still, we pushed on!

Pre-Production

I knew that Miori would be my base resource to use, but I didn't know at first exactly what the referenced material that I was gonna mesh her with would be. Would it be another rhythm game song, an anime? After a day of deliberation, the answer quickly rose in-front of me: Sukeban Games' indie game hit, "Cyberpunk Bartender Action: VA-11 HALL-A."

I had been meaning to play it for a while now, but when the idea of killing two birds with one stone came up? I couldn't pass up the idea. So, I had grabbed my previously-owned physical Switch copy of VA-11 HALL-A, popped it in and began playing the game.

I felt that it was important above all else to play and finish the game first to get an understanding of the aspects that I would be referencing - be it the in-universe dialogue, the use of the in-game assets, so on and so forth. If you're going to reference source materials that you're going to be working with, I feel that should be a general baseline, or else your project won't truly be "satisfactory."

Took me about 15 or so hours, wanted to really take my time with it.

After almost two weeks of playing through, I had finally beaten the game, and gotten a thorough understanding of what I'd be working with here. If you want a very brief review of the game; I think it's one of the most chill, engaging and fantastic visual novels and overall extremely polished indie games that I've played in a very long time. The music provided by the excellent Michael Kelly, is absolutely top-notch. The sprite work that went into the game's animation is exquisite, and Jill is absolutely best girl.

I had purchased a dedicated notebook for big projects like these during my playtime with VA-11 HALL-A, and took notes on each individual aspect of what I should include as references to Miori's interests, her channel and content, just in general. After about another near-two weeks of crafting the storyboard and direction of M10-R1, production would then finally begin.

Audio Production and Melding the Direction

So, for anyone who wonders what a finalized project looks like in a digital workspace for these kinds of projects - specifically FL Studio - here's what it looks like!

Overall Canvas for the "Welcome to VA-11 HALL-A" Part

And that's even with some bus sections within the playlist collapsed. It's... a lot to digest, but getting to this point for each part of the project was worth it. But how did I get here? And surely this is just all of it... right?

One of my biggest challenges going into this project was making this not your typical OtoMAD. My main source of that inspiration, was a Gachimuchi / Wrestling Series OtoMAD featuring Koei Tecmo's "Dynasty Warriors" game series. (NSFW!)

The idea of making an OtoMAD into an experience, truly meshing one resource in the essence of another thing, is what I love about this OtoMAD. The replicating of the game and its' music, using people like Billy and Kazuya as the in-game characters - it's so damn good. And so, that's what I aimed to achieve.

I would take note of this as I wrote down all the ideas and congruent storyboard soon after. Here are a few pics of the physical storyboard that I had written down!

I then would choose various songs that I had in mind while going through the soundtrack on YouTube, and would come up with three songs that would flow swimmingly together in sequence, as if you were playing the actual game of VA-11 HALL-A. The title screen theme - "Hopes and Dreams," the music when you're at Jill's apartment before she heads to work - "Safe Haven," and one of the selectable songs to play in the background during the main game - "Welcome to VA-11 HALL-A."

Fun Fact: I originally was going to include more songs, such as the transitional songs "CALICOMP 1.1 Startup / Shutdown", the shift closing BGM, and even "Everything Will Be Okay" for a little message at the end, but those ideas were scrapped, as the video would've been way longer than it needed to be.

There also is the very brief appearance of the intro cinematic music before the title screen, "A Neon Glow Lights the Way." This was to replicate the player pressing any button just to get back into the swing of things and load up their save, as shown in the video. But, with how quick of a segment that is, it ended up being a part of the first part (Hopes and Dreams) anyways.

Working on each part in FL Studio was a treat, and it really made me learn new ways about going about audio production, mixing and mastering. The timing of the production was actually just in time for when the newest version of FL Studio with FL 21 coming out, and the new features really helped out for volume balancing on resources, et cetera. I'll quickly go over each part's audio when needed!

Gathering People and the Scale

In the meanwhile making the audio and direction of this project, I figured I'd take the opportunity and do something different when it comes to going for visuals. I'm still nowhere close to even being a visual editor, my main venue is always audio and music. Hence my previous projects before M10-R1 being essentially visualizers, done by LeLazyOne - I've worked with them in the past, and always produced fantastic stuff, so this was practically a no-brainer.

But, this was going to be more than just a visualizer - where I wanted to go was a full-on direction and vision. And this job was clearly gonna be more than a two-person assignment. So what I had done was I had gathered familiar people I had worked with, met a new colleague, and when the team had fully formed, we were set to go!

While there will be a final roll call of people, the team would be as follows: Me, LeLazyOne, TunnelingOG, soaroz, and MajorMilk. (With some additional audio feedback from Viravax and Xarlable.)

Primarily contact was just 1-on-1 with the editor(s) and myself, since the idea and vision came from myself. As time went on, the scale of the project would constantly change, but not in a bad way. It was pretty consistent, the only "major" change that I had to scale down was for the near the end of the third part, but for the most part, I feel that my vision was kept intact and I cannot thank everyone enough for their help.

Again, there will be a final roll call with everyone's socials and links, so please, please, PLEASE check it down below!

Visual Production - Part 1 (Hopes and Dreams)

First, came the the "intro / title" part of the project. If you happen to watch the video, you'll notice that there are a lot of pixel and sprite edits and work to make it fit within the universe and the artstyle of VA-11 HALL-A. Well, that was also done by yours truly.

Originally, I wanted to get in contact with a friend of another fellow editor that I happen to work with - dejota. If you've seen the Mother 3 part in THE POWER OF TERRY, that part had pixel assets that was all done by MemeMemeiro.

I wanted to work with him again on this project, but alas, I hadn't been able to get a response. Nothing on them, to be clear. So I figured, "why not. I've edited sprites before back when I was a kid!" I should make it clear though, that I did not do the font for the "Sukedeez Games" logo, the Clsta Games logo, or the Mogu edits for the brief Glitch City splash (that was done by LeLazyOne, actually). Per their request, they'll be anonymous, but I cannot thank them enough for the help.

Aside from that, any other asset that happen to be re-used were originally from the game itself. Here's some screenshots of this first part.

The main goal of this video is to replicate the in-game feel, attributes - everything that is VA-11 HALL-A, and I feel that the first part here with replicating the title does the trick to show what this project is about.

Considering that this part would be about around 30 or so seconds, this part would actually be combined with the next part, that being Safe Haven. I felt it'd make sense to do that, also given the fact that both Tunneling and soaroz was working about a minute of work respectively for their halves on the third part, so everyone essentially had an equal amount of work length-wise.

When it comes to the audio production, both this part (and the second part with Safe Haven) were relatively straightforward. It didn't need any sentencing or what not, because it would've taken out of the "chill" experience of said part(s), I felt. So it was just getting the melodies and tones right, add in a "Yo-ho" panning, call it there.

For sprite assets, my job was essentially to get Jill herself in the title screen swapped to colors that reference Miori, the little Mio and speech bubble in the Sukedeez logo, and then the doodles that appear in the SAVE/LOAD screen before transitioning into the second part.

These would also include deeper references, such as the "12.19.2020" part of the 'Good Bye Miss Guild Leader' text actually being the date of Miori's debut, the doodles references Nemona from Pokémon Scarlet and Violet, and Mogu - Miori's pseudo-mascot, etc.

Visual Production - Part 2 (Safe Haven)

And now, part two!

This would be where the "second half" of Lazy's work would be. While it may look "simple" at first viewing, making sure to get the general vibe of the game right - with having the "Day 7" show in the previous part and other things, was my main goal. If you were to play VA-11 HALL-A, Jill's apartment would most likely be the first thing you'd see when loading a save. So right when we were done with part one, I immediately sorted and gathered all the necessary assets needed and went ahead.

Among some examples, getting the sprites that didn't need edits were pretty simple, recolored sprites where needed (like Mio as Jill, recoloring *Kira* Miki as "*Cool* Girl, etc.) was also relatively smooth. Replacing "Fore" with Mogu on the table and having replacing the original font of the T-Shirt that said "SLUT" with "NTR" was practically a must.

Editing the phone icons also were really fun, too!

The biggest challenges for this part were re-editing the character Dana, that was originally on the phone wallpaper next to Jill, and the small poster above the TV. With how much sprite work would be needed compared the the next upcoming part, this wasn't too bad, but making sure to keep the essence of Nemona into the artstyle of VA-11 HALL-A was certainly an interesting, but most definitely fun challenge.

The dialogue was an interesting concept to tackle, as I wanted to keep a lot of what made VA-11 HALL-A's writing style in the project. Essentially thinking, "what would the developers of VA-11 HALL-A have made Miori and the other characters / references say?" For the most part, I think I believe I achieved that, especially going into the latter half of this project, with part three.

Audio for this section of the project was also relatively simple to get down, like the first part. Just had to get the melodies and bass right, and we'd essentially have our audio. For both of these parts, Lazy had fun making and organizing everything to put everything into motion, and as a visual editor - especially one who's helped me with other projects - I cannot thank them enough. I feel they really encapsulated the feel of how you'd be playing VA-11 HALL-A down to a tee.

Visual Production - Part 3 (Welcome to VA-11 HALL-A)

And now, we arrive at the two-person part of the video! This part is split into two halves, the first part (the first verse and introductory parts) being done by TunnelingOG, and the second half (being the chorus and ending parts) done by soaroz. I felt this was the best way to go about handling the direction after Lazy's part, as it would equal workload for people, and we wouldn't have to worry about one person having to do two minutes of editing work.

First, we'll start off with circling back into the audio production, as shown earlier in this post with the FL playlist. This was the most daunting part of the entire audio for this project; obviously because it takes 2/3rds of the video, but for other reasons. Having to get the pitch exactly right, mastering and leveling all of the volumes exactly how they should, getting the sentencing all in both rhythmically and making sense - it was all definitely the most I've done so far for making audio.

But I feel it was worth it. It was necessary for me to grow as an audio producer / engineer, and I think this experience will leave me with an impression of feeling satisfied, but also wanting to continue this grind of "creatively challenging" experiences.

Then comes the visual editing part. For this part, I wanted to replicate what you'll mostly see during your playtime in VA-11 HALL-A, at the bar. I figured that we'd keep this aesthetic, and even the UI placements and everything else, too - but to also switch things up a bit.

We would edit one or two things in the background, swap out the VA-11 HALL-A logo at the top right accordingly - hell, even go as far as to raise the money count when orders would come in, and replicate the niconico-style comments when Streaming-chan would arrive. But, we also had the ingredient sidebar act as if it was it's own waveform synthesizer.

This culminated in what I feel a great switch-up to what would be expected from the viewer who'd be watching, but that wasn't just it. Thanks to Tunneling - who was the editor for this part of the song - he went as far as to have the sentencing be showcased on the TV screen. It was a very ingenious move on his part, and here's examples of the sprites he made!

Before getting to the main meat and potatoes of this part, I should quickly mention that I also took charge of writing the dialogue for all of the characters for this part, as well. This circles back to what I said before about my intent of 'what would the writers think,' as I tried to aim for getting the closest it can be to VA-11 HALL-A's dialogue. I think it went pretty well, for the most part.

Now, for the fun part! The character sprites! Tunneling took care of the animation and putting it all together, but making the sprite assets themselves were primarily all on me. And boy, do I have to say - this was the most challenging part of the entire project.

Keep in mind, I'm not necessarily an artist, let alone a pixel artist, and as I'll talk about in my next segment, I could've contacted our artist that I had commissioned, MajorMilk. But, I had a vision and I wanted to see it done the way I wanted to, so... I said screw it again, got my mouse and went to work. It was... a lot. But, I got it done, and sent each sheet as I did over to Tunneling. Here's the full roster of characters that were shown.

Nemona (from Pokémon Scarlet and Violet) as Dana

Geralt (from The Witcher) as Gillian

Kobayashi (from Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid) as Stella

Tohru (from Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid) as Sei

Cuckold (from Cuckold Simulator) as Art Von Delay

Malimba (Originally "Saran" from "The Convenience Store") as Betty

Cass (from Fallout: New Vegas) as Alma

KAngel (from NEEDY STREAMER OVERDOSE) as Streaming-chan

These were all either references to what Miori herself has streamed in terms of games or content, her own interests in fiction, etc. I think if you compared these to the original sprites, you could tell the massive difference and editorial work I had to do. But... Like I've said in various parts of this post, it was all worth it.

I felt it was a huge learning experience as a beginning artist, and if I were to ever go back and do pixel artwork, I would have the experience I had with this project under my belt with the know-how to figure out what I'd do. And if it wasn't for Tunneling's assistance, replicating characters speaking and coming-going like the video game, just simply wouldn't have been possible.

And with the clutch help for the second half, comes soaroz! During the chorus part of Welcome to VA-11 HALL-A, I wanted to switch it up and go for the more "classic" route of a YTPMV, so to speak. And who better to contact than someone who's been in deep in the game for visual assistance?

Definitely more straightforward of a direction than Tunneling's part, but I feel it does enough to justify the switch up, and gives the spotlight to Miori herself as Jill. I also took the reign of doing the sprite work for the Jill edits, and I'm really proud of it, much like the rest of the other sprites. Here's the full character sheet.

During the production of this part, soaroz actually had an idea request to reference an old YouTube video during the "Onii-chan I love you" sentencing breakdown, and I figured, "y'know what, why not." I think it actually added a bit more humor to the video, here's the video in reference:

At the end, I had the direction of Miori saying goodbye in line with what I said way earlier, when it came to her going on hiatus. With how things changed, thankfully it can just be interpreted as her just getting off work and having good luck to whatever future endeavor she has planned.

Credits splash screen at the end, featuring a special art piece that we'll get into, and it's done!

Artwork and The Final Stretch (Feedback)

A key part that I would be very regretful and remiss to point out, would be the starring artwork and logo made by none other than the talented artist, MajorMilk. I wanted to really make this project special, so I had the idea of contacting him to see if he was available to help with making a specialized art piece for the project, as Miori dressed like Jill.

Later on down the line, we needed some additional assistance with getting the logo replicated for the title screen, and he was able to get it just right, too. But with what he's done for the project for both the beginning and end parts, and just in general, is nothing short of phenomenal stuff. Like everyone else, I cannot thank them more than I have.

Base line art before (left); final completed design after (right).

And the logo for the title screen in part one!

I would like to take the time before wrapping up on everything to give a bit of a pseudo-postmortem tidbit. I want to thank two individuals who helped me with feedback in the audio department during production, those being Viravax and Xarlable. These two I've worked with as well in the past, and their expertise was definitely grateful to have.

I'm still learning every day when it comes to trying to get the best out of my projects, and their insight and feedback will always be grateful to me. Like, for example, I still feel the pitching when it comes the melodies and bass could've been a tad bit better during the chorus of the third part, but they thought it was fine. I'm that much of a perfectionist.

During the initial release of the video, I reached out to Miori herself, surprising her with the release of the project. Like I said before, this was always meant as a surprise gift out of nowhere for her. She was really, really happy with it, though had also provided some feedback to take into account. There were elements in the original release that would've best served to be replaced, so I ended up taking the initiative, worked with my fellow editors and got a second version done out as quick as I could.

The re-edit ended up being all good to go, and it should be noted above all else that she was very kind in our conversations. I knew that her feedback came from a good place, and overall she was still very grateful and supportive towards the release, of which I absolutely cannot thank her enough for her kind words and support. It really does mean a lot.

There are still some things looking back at the video that I wish I caught, however. A small asset or two being edited, for the visuals, and the examples I have above for the audio with pitching - but it should be noted that this project already took three months to make. By then, it's time to know when to call it there and to not continue being a perfectionist.

Just gotta keep it all in mind and store it as creative energy for the next idea.

Regardless, I'm still so grateful to have everyone who helped make this vision come to life, and especially the support from Miori herself. Ever since the start of this project back in March up until it's recent release, it has been a wild rollercoaster. But overall, I know that I leave this project with lessons being learned, things to take account of; building more bonds and knowledge of my fellow collaborators, getting better at things I'm used to, and things that I'm new at.

If I ain't learning, then I ain't living.

Roll Call!

Before we wrap up on this, I would like to take a minute and give thanks, show support and link everyone's socials who helped make this happen! Again, without these amazing people, I wouldn't have made this passion project come to reality. They deserve the credit even more than I do!