ADV / NVL Text Layout vs Anime Style
ADV／NVL（ノベルゲームの文字組み） / アニメ絵
ADV / NVL Text Layout comes from Games and Play and Anime Style from Animation Techniques. One is layout and the other style. They are reached for with some of the same intent, which is where they get confused.
ADV / NVL Text Layout
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The visual novel has two named text layouts, of which ADV mode presents dialogue and narration one line at a time, generally in a window at the bottom of the screen. NVL mode presents several lines at once in a window that takes up the entire screen and starts a fresh page at marked breaks. The Ren'Py documentation defines the pair in exactly those terms.
Anime Style
The drawing conventions Japanese television animation accumulated in order to deliver the most information from the fewest drawings. A unified, sign like face, clarity of contour, and speed produced by held drawings and effects have influenced drawing styles around the world.
| ADV / NVL Text Layout | Anime Style | |
|---|---|---|
| Era | 1990s– | 1960s– |
| Family | Games and Play | Animation Techniques |
| Kind | Layout | Style |
| Cues | In ADV mode a wide window stays at the bottom of the screen and holds one line at a time / In NVL mode the text fills the screen and the lines already read stack upward / An NVL page break clears the whole stack at once and the next page starts empty / Choices behave differently in each mode: NVL puts them directly after the current text instead of on a full screen menu | Eyes and nose placed as signs / Contour lines of even weight / Painting that splits shading into two steps / Held drawings used together with speed lines |
| Best used for | Choosing between the two layouts when building a reading app that advances dialogue one line at a time · Presenting a long monologue or letter as an accumulating page rather than a sequence of screens | Making a character's expression work with little information · Learning direction designed around constraint |
| Type | Fix the line spacing and put the speaker's name at the head of the line. Give each speaker a distinct name colour so the voice is legible at a glance. | Match subtitles and logotype to the weight of the contour line. |
| Composition | In ADV mode pin the window to a band at the bottom and leave the art above it. In NVL mode give the window the whole screen and stack lines from the top. Decide the lines per page before anything else. | Fix the composition of the held drawing first and concentrate movement at the key points. |
| Material | Lay a translucent window over background and character art, dark or light enough that text survives whatever is behind it. Pick speaker colours by the value that separates them from the background. | Paint in two step shading and fields of limited saturation. |
| Caution | Stacking lines in NVL mode without inserting page breaks pushes text below the bottom of the screen where it cannot be read. | The size of the eyes is not the style. The point is that it was designed as an answer to a limit on the number of drawings. |