General Project Thread & Feedback

"Outsourcing specific frames invites strongly clashing styles too."

Easy to fix - don't pay them if they fail to match the style

 

lol, I like that.

 

This. Bringing money into the situation is a surefire way to have SEGA shut it down (and regardless of our general "fuck legality" viewpoint, if money is involved then it's commercial and the courts would likely not side with us). SEGA doesn't give a shit what we do now precisely because there is no money involved other than general domain and hosting costs. If we start saying "I'll pay you $X.XX for sprites, code, etc" then expect to see a C&D in one of our email accounts or snailmail boxes. As long as I'm running the forums, there will be no money involved with this project at all, end of discussion.

 

Maybe it's just me, but I'd want a lot more than $0.13 for drawing one of those frames the way Vincent has. It seems like pretty tedious work!

 

I just posted this in the art thread as a response to Tweaker; since I felt that it would be more appropriate in this discussion overall I have decided to re-post it.

 

Now that's unexpected.

I've read the comments and it's seems like some guys is ready to sell anything for it.
Some funny comments also says I put too many detailed shades on characters so It'd better to remove colors to make the progress faster.

Thanks for you suggestion(they are always welcome!)but:


I've been preparing this project from childhood and now that I can finally put my efforts into, I don't want to discontinue it for legal issues.
SEGA is dead to me, It doesn't have my respect anymore after the MD-Era, but they are still a company who could easily wipe out the entire project in one letter.
Anyone followed the "Chrono Trigger Remake"?

(quick reminder)
1)They put on "an official site"
2)The did a lot of promotion work like it was "the game"
3)Arrived a C&D letter from SquareEnix
4)Project discontinued

I'd like to say a big thanks to everyone helping us, but please no money involved.
There are 3 things needed for this project:

1)Passion
2)Hard work
3)Reward of seeing"our Sonic" running again, knowing we are part of it.

That's it.

 

Walk before you can run, man. that's pretty much why everyone (I.e. tweaker, jman, etc) has been saying this project is only going to be a remake of Sonic 2 as-is - the only is ironic. Remaking Sonc 2, as-is, in HD, is already an incredibly huge undertaking. Being overly ambitious is why most of these projects die off.

If people reeeeeeally want a sonic engine to mess with, people should bug tax to finish pro sonic

 

EDIT: This post marks the start of a topic on Art Style, which has been merged into General Discussion because it fits best there.

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Looking through the various topics, I'm seeing all kinds of horrible inconsistencies in the art styles, most coming from horrid use of gradients...

Here is a picture demonstrating how much this stuff is actually clashing.


Anyway, it's obvious to me that if this project is ever going to get done in a reasonable time frame, you are going to need to have some standards to follow so that art isn't constantly being remade to fit style. Otherwise it will be a constant back and forth wave of crap that never gets done.

So let me suggest the following:

• No gradients. Ever. (if an exception needs to be made, get it approved after making a non-gradient version that matches the original art) In addition to making stuff inconsistent with other art, it makes it almost impossible to make art from tiles that are supposed to adjoin it match up.
• Stick with the original pallete colors. Don't add extra in until you've posted work without it in and ask for approval.
• All sprites are to be exactly (whatever multiplier, right now I'm being led to believe 4) times as large as the originals in terms of rendering resolution.

Anyway, I just think you guys need to get your art style to be more consistent in general.

 

Besides the bee on top, I think that it all blends quite nicely.

 

It looks alright, but I really think it would look better if everything was stuck to flats. The gradients on everything else really make Sonic look like a 2D cutout. While if everything was done in flats, he would mix right in (this is ignoring the obviously bad cropping of the background from the Sonic image).

 

The pixelization on the tree trunks and flowers is what I find jarring, moreso than the differences between Sonic and the Bee.

 

Sonic is flat-shaded (as he should be), the landscape artwork isn't. Same deal with the second bee (the first is way off).

All of the early Sonic games had a flat-shaded style, though they started to move away from it with Sonic 3 (which probably has the least attractive artwork since the Mega Drive's pallette wasn't exactly colourful).

Sure, they probably made it look that way due to the systems limitations, but much artistic ingenuity is born from limitations. You can still have the game look fantastic in HD while keeping the colour count similar to the original look.

EDIT:
I just thought of something else that is quite important... Aspect Ratio.

As we all know, 4:3 is on its way out and 16x9 is in. Almost all TVs and Monitors produced nowadays are in a widescreen ratio (either 16x9 or 16x10) so wouldn't it make sense to widen the gamefield a little? It may provide some challenges, but it's not like it hasn't been done before. Sonic is very much suited to widescreen.

 

<!--quoteo(post=191112:date=Apr 27 2008, 11:23 AM:name=Moogle!)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Moogle! @ Apr 27 2008, 11:23 AM)

 

<!--quoteo(post=191115:date=Apr 27 2008, 10:31 AM:name=SANiK)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (SANiK @ Apr 27 2008, 10:31 AM)
[/quote]
Now the first bee blends better with the overall pic.... But if you don't want to take the trees and flower into account, just don't add them to the pic. =P


Since we still don't have any backgrounds finished, I'm still not sure if the badniks will look better to me as CG or as 2D art. On one hand, outside of the games they're sometimes treated like live creatures with different facial expressions, but in-game they're not depicted as "cartoony" like Sonic or Tails. I'd personally like to see how the CG bee looks against a CG background, while keeping the 2D Sonic.


Like I've said many times, the backgrounds have many elements that, since they were originally CG, might require some 3D modelling to look like they should. Else, it would take a lot more time to "try" to make it just look CG, and then any edit would be painful.



So I think the art should be like this:
-Main characters and animals: Cel-like vector art.
-Badniks: I'd make two sets, honestly. I like how both are looking.
-Backgrounds and objects: As CG-like as possible.

 

I agree with Cg-like as possible for the backgrounds IceKnight. I think that the backgrounds are going to need some real depth in order to do them justice. It might also be a lot easier to have them moving if they are done in CG, like moving clouds or water for example.

 

How? Remember that the original backgrounds had deformation and scrolling—it'll be much harder to recreate that adequately in CG. It'll be hard enough to recreate it at a higher resolution in general without looking weird, really.

 

...I really don't see why.

 

hello im new here, but I hope to be contributing, specifically the special stages as im from a 3d background and I have a few suggestions/opinions:

1- I think the shoe buckles should go on sonic, as they aren't in sonic 2 and for me personally are too sonic adventure etc.
2-would be nice to have some 3d dynamics going on (only graphical) I.e screws in metropolis zone are 3d, or perhaps extra layers of objects (perhaps something like a layer of falling rocks closer to the players perspective in mystic cave zone)

3- a split screen co-op mode (give tails lives as well as his own ring count) etc. that's more of a post release thing I think.

any hope to hear some good feedback.

also what is the policy on content creation? is it just get on with it, present it then it gets ok'd or does it have to be commision so to speak?

cheers

edit*

I also forgot..
4. xbox style achivements (again that's a post release)
5.sonic cd style corkscrew spring jumps (though not on every spring)

 

I think having the background moving would be extremely hard to keep looking great like Tweaker said.

As for the background in that image, ICEknight, I don't think a real background looks too great on cartoonish gameplay.

I think minor adjustments to the originals is all that needs to be done. The real life imaging is too much.

 

I personally don't like the idea of mixing in shaded CG with the regular art. If anything, pre-render them and shade them to fit with the rest of the art frame by frame.

I think it will be for the best both visually and in terms of saving time if everything is just made to match the character sprites as they are now. Flat shading, sticking to the existing pallets, and more than anything, sticking to the concept artwork for enemies and such.