I went to school for Creative Writing and have my BA in it -- I'm a trained novel writer but I found I could never complete a novel. With visual novels I found my niche and so whereas I've never written an actual book, I feel like an accomplished visual novel author. :D I use the engine Renpy so you can add 2D images of sprites very easily to any background and I do use Gimp if I need more specific works of art... I don't draw by trade though, this was my first game where I actual drew the characters myself. I'm glad you liked it! Thank you for playing :D