The Midnight Chimes - Out Now!さんのイラストまとめ

While the three books are not directly related I also added some visual references between the books; a lighthouse and windmill on Amelie's shelf in HL, a purple dinosaur at the playground in 256 which also shows up with Digit in The Midnight Chimes!

Marina from The Midnight Chimes would also make an appearance and be able to join your party. Here's some more of the unfinished sprite work from the game;

The town in based on the English seaside location 'Walton-on-the-naze' I used to visit every summer as a child. My favourite restaurant is the building on the right in the first image and the promenade also makes an appearance during the lunch scene.

Some of the shops are also references to things. For example 'Marble's' is a place in the Gamecube game Tales of Symphonia and 'Charlotte' is a reference to a character from Madoka Magica. I love her cute witch design and made a shop based on her which sells toys.

I wanted to explore the family's backstory more in the rpgmaker game I mentioned; Nicholas is a lonely kid so his dad makes up some friends for him to play with while he's busy at work. In the game you would pick up collectable postcards that explain the story;

Nicholas' dad owns a hotel called Shrublands and his shop sign might look familiar too. The character currently checking in at the counter is @Beatrix_Keane's OC who was an amazing support to me whilst making these books. Just a fun cameo!

The postcard the story is based on appears at the beginning of the book and is written by 'Ludo'. At this point Nicholas believes Ludo is real because they've been sending postcards but at the books' end you see his father is the one who has been writing them all along.

A couple of locations in the book were also loosely inspired by Majora like the rainbow observatory and tunnels under the town. Nothing too significant but enough that I wanted to mention them.

My biggest inspiration for the book was Majora's Mask which features one boy transforming into 3 different shaped characters. I started to play with the idea of imaginary friends and it bloomed from there.

When I first decided to make another picture book I wanted the entire thing to be done as pixelart because this story was very inspired by videogames that were important to me. I realized early on this would be a nightmare to print and dropped the idea. Here's the pixelart cover!