something i tussled about endlessly in earlier dev stuff this year was how to visually represent sign language usage in my sprites or if i even could. the two main characters' family is [Culturally Deaf] and though Tippy is hearing and can operate in an oral and hearing world, Dewdrop ain't. For a character, The Main Guy no less, who exclusively communicates in his woodland critter sign language, I was like.
how'm I gonna handle that when it comes to sprites? it's complicated!!! and gave me a lot of ponders.
All my sprites are hand drawn. Not too tough when it comes to a hearing character who verbally speaks. In any game or visual novel, we really don't need mouth flaps for us to accept a character is speaking. Mouth movements are so secondary and small. But. Using ASL as a reference point, the language contains five parameters for a sign. Dr Bill Vicars classifies them as:
"
- Movement
- Handshape
- Location or position
- Palm Orientation
- Nonmanual markers (facial expressions and various body language--like head tilts and cheek to shoulder movements)."
There's a lot of visual elements going on and it's highly expressive and deeply nuanced and not in any form static A hearing person is largely relying only on their sense of hearing and isnt usually paying attention to a person's lips to define a word, but sign language is nothing but visual. Sprites are all visual.
So when Dewdrop is signing with his buddy Peaches... What am I drawing? What accompanies his speech bubble? What feels missing and what's required?
Well, first off, I am using a different hue and value and dialogue box shape for signing. That's an easy one and you can tell immediately which language anyone in the cast is using. But is there any merit in trying to visually represent that a character is signing too?
I struggled with this question. In an ideal world in another style of game with infinite budget, hey, of course, it'd be cool to have a 3D model with a huge team of fluent animators whose role is to literally and accurately animate ASL for every cutscene or whatever (not tjat my characters ar eusing ASL...). But I'm one (very beautiful) limited guy!
I considered "is there a visual equivalent animalese from ac i could do?" like having hand and arm layers that would pop on when signing where a few random ambiguous but static hand shapes/positioms kind of ghost into each other. Like for a shorthand visual. Think when Reigen Mob Psycho is doing that hand shit but less animated. Another idea was having like a light trail hover in front of the sprites of a hand shape with randomly selected specific points that could, maybe, ambiguously, sort of look like signing, or something.
But I didn't like those ideas. I REALLY didn't like that. A lot of people playing my game won't know much about sign languages and I felt like it would have this side effect of grossly simplifying signing into "that thing where people just throw up a bunch of random gestures" when, as we said earlier, it's a highly nuanced and particular and expressive language. It's not JUST hand gestures. It's how you move your hand, tilt your head, raise your eyebrows, all in conjunction. To try to just throw in one major element of it half assed felt weird to me. I'm not saying it's objectively offensive, but... I certainly wasn't satisfied.
No... Instead I moved my representational interest into the realm of nonmanual markers. The decision I've come to is more artistically economical and it hits an ideal spot for me.
When Dewdrop is signing in Scornhorn, he too will be using the same genre of fun, gestural, expressive sprites and poses that everyone else uses. He shrugs, he claws at his face, he puts his hands on his hips. Him trouncing around on stage kicking the floor angrily while he talks is the important visual. I'm no longer really concerned about what his hands are doing so much as what his face is doing.
Again, with ASL as my personal frame of reference for a signing language, though the characters aren't technically using it in universe or anything, I wanted his face to express itself when he's chatting the way you do when you sign. When he's talking about a huge problem, he opens his mouth and really intensifies his eyebrows in a way that a hearing person might think is over the top. His face scrunches in really dramatically when he's describing something he doesn't like. His eyebrows flatten at "who? why?" and raise up when he's asking "yes or no?"
THAT's what I have the budget for. That's what makes him look and feel "Deaf" to me... That's what feels familiar. Just a lot of highly specified expressions lol. Hearing people are so much more apathetic and stoic and less animated than any Deaf person, for real, seriously, ask any deafie how stiff they are. So I want him to feel Right. When a dialogue box is already telling you what he's saying and representing portions of the signing by itself, I want to fill out what I can: his emotions, his expressions, his positioning in relation to other characters and what he's getting visuals on... Hands certainly play a role but. Hey. I'm only one guy...
