Badniks & Bosses Art

Just thought I'd tell y'all that you don't even need to use gradients or the blend tool to remove visible color steps.

 

You got it!

They don't look jagged and rough—they look like they have texture, shape, and something other than a 3 second gradient job in Photoshop. I don't know when having an engine that supported an image with any kind of color amount made lazy, aesthetically ugly techniques acceptable, but it's far from a welcome change in my view.

For the first time in god knows how long, I saw a submission that I actually liked for this project, and the first thing I see following its submission is a post asking it to make it look like an overshaded pile of arse. Anybody with any kind of decent eye for detail and traditional animation could tell that the art is fine as-is. Did you ever wonder why animated films with huge budgets and digital animation don't slap gradients on everything? Because it looks like shit.

I reiterate—please leave your shading style as it is, lest another contribution gets ruined on this project.

 

Why do the Green Mark look like a penis? >___>

 

I think the only thing about this that should be smoothed out a bit for certain is the jet where the fire comes out. It looks kinda out-of-place even now because the color steps are a lot more visible there than anywhere else on the enemy.

 

Tweaker is not suggesting that there should be a mix between styles. He merly said that he think the more visable colorsteps are better looking than gradient.
I agree with Tweaker on this. The current style of S2HD looks good, but I would had prefered the more rougly colorsteps. Those remasters have soul in them. This looks like an upscaled and filtered version. S2 gameplay with upgraded style (new unique style) was my S2HD dream. Don't get me wrong though, I am still looking forward to playing this, I just think the style could had been different/better.

 

This faux-philosophical statement is what makes no sense.

If you're telling me that what Philosoraptor created is bad, as-is then you are the one considering something bad.

What I'm saying is that using "uber" shades has done the exact opposite of what you claim—it's made everything look worse, because now all of your art relies far too heavily on automated, lifeless gradients through which to add detail to the art. Just because you can use a wider range of colors doesn't mean you should. The 256 color imposed limit before wasn't because of technical limitations—it was a limitation in place to force the artists to creatively work around color restriction to create something that would, ultimately look far better than something that had just abused an infinite amount of color steps liberally.

Of course, all of this is going in one ear and out the other, so I don't even know why I'm bothering to say anything. I just continuously think it's a damn shame that a project I was once totally enthralled by is now going in a counter-productive, aesthetically displeasing direction that almost makes me embarrassed to read the forum for. I don't doubt that this project will be finished in the least—in fact, I know it will. But that's what upsets me.

Whatever. I'm not here.

 

No, it simply does not fit the Über style, it has to be überized as all the previous art, Sonic frames had to be überized and they were not bad. Having visible color steps with gradients is ridiculous. If we chose the Über style it has to be consistent. Each piece of art has to match the rest, that is why we made polls about things like rings, all rings were awsome but some didn't fit the rest.

 

I'm sorry to hear you feel that way Tweaker. The art style for S2HD has already been laid out and gone through enough iterations to make it unfair to ask all the artists who have contributed finalized pieces to redo them. I do find it curious that you're upset with the color shadings now when there have been countless remasterings that have gone through the same process, if not with the initial quality we're seeing from this one. Do you really believe that all the completed frames on Sonic look terrible as well?

That said, I'm thrilled with the submission Philosoraptor has created. It's far and away one of the best first draft submissions we've seen on the project. It does clash with the artistic style on Sonic though, and that's what we're trying to minimize here. I agree that there's no need to go crazy with the gradients, which is why we've been evaluating each piece on a case by case basis - the ultimate goal is to achieve a cohesive style throughout all the remasters.

 

I think the -uber- style its not just about gradients, its about a correct shading style while using all resources you have, simple layers, glows, gradients, not to limit a 256 colors pallete, we are in 2009 guys...in the last tech demo with TD art, people complained about the art, they said it was like flash... and -that's no good- for a HD project.

After all, everybody have worked really hard to get almost every art uberized or uber-drawed.

 

the problem is, you've gone and made it look even more "Flash" by abusing the living fuck out of gradients. The problem isn't how many colours you have in your image, it's what you do with those colours and the image itself, and how your shading technique made the image look.

As for your second comment, take a look at any modern 2D game. None of them use the extreme blending and gradient style for inappropriate situations seen here.

 

That's why I said, its not about gradients, - its about a correct shading style - ...extreme blending its not a correct shading style to me, so, that's why you need to know what you're shading, the surface, the color, the style...look at the last egg-o-matic I made, It was a concept using color steps, gradients, soft shadings with contrast and some airbrushing, and fits the art really nice.

As you can see, its very important to know what you're drawing.

I know some people abuse of gradients, but look, a color-stepped shading its not good anyway, so...we need to get a mix between the two I think.

Nice, I think its almost perfect now n-n

 

Very awesome details!
Can you make it more airbrush? Smoothen some shadings without loosing the metallic look? I know it is not the easiest thing to do, but try!


There was another HD project that went for shadings like this, and I wasn't a fan of it (art style):


Limiting colors at this level is only a waste of our modern hardware. We have hardware that can animate Sonic the way he looked on the Japanese Sonic box arts (the airbrushed ones), so why not?

 

That image is a GIF - not an APNG. That's probably why it's not so smooth.

 

are you seriouslt suggesting that art drawn and shaded in several steps via hand is worse looking than what you're aiming at here? Super Street Fighter II HD Remix may have ended up looking like shit because hiring a comic book company to do the job of sprite artists and animators, but it's style is still miles ahead what you're suggesting. And games such as The King Of Fighters XII pull of the high-res 2D artwork technique successfuly, and with good knowledge of exactly how and when to shade in steps of colour.

An example of much better artwork from when SSFIIT HD Remix had some promise:



"Wasting modern hardware" doesn't have shit all to do with making an attractive looking game with modern standards, yet you seem to think that putting as many colours and gradients on is intergral to. I repeat, somebody find me a professional 2D game that uses the same shading techniquie and uses so many colours on individual sprites that this project does.

 

Why are we still arguing about this? If you look at that Ryu animation you can clearly see that there are more color steps in that thing than there are in the Balkiry. Adding a few more steps here and there wouldn't hurt the thing.

 

Open your eyes. The uber drawings clearly look better. Why would you rather have a rubbish lucking one than a smoother, more realistic one?

2D games are only on portable games consoles these days. Let me show you an example...



Look at Edgeworth's sprite from Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney. The game was originally made for the GBA. In those days, their primitive game engine only allowed for a small amount of colours.

PC are able to use modern state-of-the-art game engines that support multiple colours. Lets embrace that.