Doki Doki Literature Club: The Story of Character Artist Satchely (Exclusive Interview)
Channel: Video Game Story Time
Date: 2018-02-23

Doki Doki Literature Club was not the work of a single creator. While Dan Salvato came up with the story for the game, the character art was created by Satchely, who's been kind enough to provide us with an exclusive interview to talk about her journey as an artist.

The video is done in our standard storybook format, but for those who are interested in reading things in Satchely's own words, we've posted it onto Kotor's Life, Love and Video Games Tumblr (http://lifeloveandvideogames.com/post/171203555932 or http://kotorcomics.tumblr.com/post/171203555932) as the text is too long for the YouTube description.

That said, here's a few highlights:

"My first influences were digimon/pokemon as a young kid. I started drawing the creatures in those to create my own worlds. Then I would basically just sit in my room and play out stories with my own art. Which kinda leads back to present time where other people use my art to tell stories.

...

"My art style comes from the moe art-style you see in lots of anime and japanese visual novels/games. Often times it's being used for sexual themed media, so I think it's great that DDLC didn't follow this trend. I hope more creators out there will realize that you don't need sexually explicit content when making an anime styled game.

...

"Being a self-taught artist is easier than ever with the internet. There's a ton of free tutorials/references out there that helped me become better. Besides this, I surround myself with art everyday so I develop a better eye for what looks good and what doesn't. I also learned that real life is the best teacher. If there's something I don't know how to draw, I turn to real life and that solves the problem most of the time for me. I feel like a lot of beginner artists don't do that and shy away from using references.

...

"I went to an art focused high school and initially I wanted to continue by studying medicine. After much research and soul searching I've decided to follow my true passion (art and design), so that's what led me here.

"I've now been studying design at college for half a year. I had to go through entrance exams and submit a 30 piece portfolio, which was a big challenge for me. I had to step out of my comfort zone and draw things that weren't in my usual style, but in the end it taught me a lot of things that helped make my regular art better.

...

"Working with Dan was fun and I liked that his vision for the game was very clear. It made my life as the character artist a whole lot easier instead of having to guess what he might like to see.

"While I was working on DDLC I was close to graduating high school, so often times my studies had to be prioritized over drawing. It was great that he understood that and was patient with me.

"There were a few reference pictures of the characters that existed before I started drawing them. After that, he just sent me random references of poses/clothes etc that really helped me.

...

"The biggest challenge was probably the process of slowly becoming a better artist. Before DDLC I shied away from drawing full size characters because I had trouble drawing legs/hands or scenes. When I started facing these challenges I slowly became better.

...

"I'm still really surprised by the huge reaction this game has had. Neither I nor Dan expected this at all. At first I thought maybe a few hundred people would write reviews for it on Steam, but to see it climbing towards 100k now is just incredible to me.

"Also it's just surreal to me that millions of people saw my art. With that comes a lot of critique and often times I can agree with it. The most common ones are probably that the anatomy is wrong in places. Like I said before, your own mistakes are kind of invisible to you until you take a step back.

"But the positive feedback I get on my art has been the majority and I couldn't be more thankful and happy for that! It really means a lot to me to see people appreciating my work.

"Overall, I think the community built around this game has been fantastic so far, especially on Reddit. Now and then I go there and laugh at all the creative memes/jokes people make or be impressed by all the fanart.

...

"When I create my own story, I would want it to show that there's beauty in the little things, that you can find happiness/inspiration anywhere and that life is too short to waste it on things that make you unhappy.

"I would want the characters to grow and get past their fears, accomplishing the things they love."


Please be sure to check out Satchely's social media:
https://satchely.deviantart.com
https://twitter.com/_Satchely
https://twitter.com/_Satchely

Thanks, you guys are great!
BretonStripes (http://twitter.com/bretonstriped) and Kotor (http://twitter.com/kotorcomics)

Music: Peace of Mind by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/