General Project Thread & Feedback

Jimmy, those look like you just ran them through RotSprite at 4X.

 

<!--quoteo(post=188747:date=Apr 17 2008, 03:43 PM:name=ICEknight)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (ICEknight @ Apr 17 2008, 03:43 PM)

Turns into:



...after a little CG'ing (By which I actually don't mean 3D rendering, but photoshop painting; to me it looks better anyway. CG does stand for 'Computer Generated', you know...). I ask again whether or not my approach is working here (And feedback), because I'd love to do some zone art. I would do my best to keep to the original style (As I have done here), but I say my work would damn well be better than simply slapping a grass texture over a badly-scaled graphic.

Bear in mind that I'm developing my CG skills all the time.

EDIT

Yeah, one of the birds is flipped. This is because the original emulator shot was took just now, because I deleted the old reference.

 

Hitaxas: Zoom in on them, you can tell they aren't just upscaled. There's way to many pixels.

 

Yeah... that's what a filter does. Regardless, we don't care. It's not what we're looking for, end of story.

 

That looks incredible. I wish Bioware was working on this instead of that lame RPG.

 

Seriously, it's not. I had the original screen blown up to 720p HD resolution (Which explains the borders) and traced over it. I colour-picked every last colour from the original screen, but other than that it was painted with a tablet.

By which I mean, I have not altered the original art, I redrew it. This is the approach I think the level art should take, not simply resizing a graphic and then seeing what can be done to it.

Anyways, I'll set about drawing some level tiles this weekend if you're all interested? Suggest a zone!

 

Why not emerald hill, since we've seen some attempts at that already, we'll be able to compare it.

 

Yeah, I actually noticed the significant differences after blowing up the image (now I remember why I turned off inline image scaling =P). I guess I just mean I would have preferred something a bit more "snazzy" like that Death Egg picture, but then I realized what you did is fine so I'll back off. Joy! :D

Anyway, I suppose Emerald Hill is probably the best choice, since that's what everybody seems to be doing material for. The grass might be a challenge to get the feel of down properly, but I'm sure you'll think of something.

 

I hear you loud and clear. The only reason this lacks any kind of real flair is that it wasn't such a good-looking game to begin with, and I was trying to stay true to the original. Again, inspired by that very Sonic 2 image we're all basing this upon.

As for the grass; it's the bit I'm looking forward to tacking most. That and the palm tree leaves :D.

 

Oh... I've always meant 3D CG.

EDIT: But anyway, that looks better than the attempts at EHZ grass.

 

Wow, very cool love.self.hate. Unfortunately I don't have a graphics tablet so I feel like anything I do from this point on can't really match up to what we're looking for. :/

I think we just have to realize that at the end of the day this is going to be more difficult than just about any other hack because it's going to actually require CG skills or drawing skills, not SonED-based edits or even vector-based edits perhaps.

 

Actually, I've found your contributions thus far to be extremely well done. Please don't let this discourage you—you've shown that your skills are definitely up to par.

 

Here's how to improve it: START OVER. And don't use stupid brushes, textures, filters or any other similar shitty automated crap.

Let's all type like morons so somebody barges in and makes even better forums for us

Aren't quite yet good enough? Are you motherfucking high? Look at that piece of shit! It's worse than the kind of crap you find in random deviantART accounts!

Which reminds me, that's basically all that GrandMasterJimmy seems to be doing. What's the point? We've already got hq4x.

Good job. It no longer makes my cranium bleed. But kindly stop posting now, thanks.

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I had an idea earlier. If someone could make cool little HTML versions of the zones' level layout by displaying the 8x8 tiles in all the right places, it'd allow for editing a single tile and immediately see our changes in the final output, which would be the ideal way to upscale level art (making sure that each tile looks alright on its own, but also on the final product). If someone who knows a fair bit on how level layout and tile information is stored in the game could convert all the levels, or pass it along to someone else who might be able to program a little converter (maybe me, I dunno), I'd try my hand at properly rescaling all the levels pixel by pixel. It's just what I'm good at.

 

Yeah but... For example, I can't do 3D rendering to save my life; chances are, if I were to do EHZ's tiles, you'd be applying one of my textures to a 3D corkscrew for the loop. Seriously, your spikes were great. Very simple and accurate. Now, imagine that the fate of Metropolis Zone's rotating drum lies solely on the fact that someone can use a 3D application... you dig? :D

Oddly enough, I'm probably better suited to this kind of thing than a hack because of the art skills required. And, I'm totally willing to do all the level graphics if I can get them good and accurate enough.

 

I already said I gave up, thank you.

 

Tweaker, thanks for the encouragement. I admit to having taken a stab at the simpler objects first on purpose and I have not tested myself on something harder like the palmtrees or grass. Not sure when I'm going to tackle that stuff; it seems more daunting and less likely to turn out well without actual drawing equipment or CG skills. :P

The ring I made is a vectorized image like some of the stuff that has been criticized on the previous couple pages. If we're really looking for a bit of a "reimagining" of the art then I guess it's not really what we're looking for.

I have a question for Vincent. Are you redrawing Sonic's sprites on a tablet or using a mouse (in Illustrator of course)?

EDIT: love.self.hate, great that you're willing to work hard on this. Again, the spikes aren't too complex as objects, just some cones with the right lighting. I'll have to learn really fast if I want to make palmtrees.

 

About the spikes... I'd modify them a little like Vincent suggested, since they don't really seem to be just perfect cones in the original sprite. They seem to be more vertical than diagonal in the original sprites, something like this:

 

Saying "my last try" doesn't instantly invalidate all of your previous posts. Actually, "my last try" hints more of a "I hope this one is good enough, what do you think". I think I've pretty much given you a piece of my mind.

EDIT: ICEknight: Like I said three pages back, it has to do with the light source. It should come directly from the camera and not displaced a bit to the left.

 

Well, I mainly meant that for the level art, since tackling that is a completely different beast. What you've done so far is more than sufficient.

 

Let's not.

Well there's always Sonic Cult for you, though I doubt a project like this could be sustained there.