don't click here

(OLD - ARCHIVE PURPOSE) Items, Menus, Title Cards & Misc Art

Discussion in 'Sonic 2 HD (Archive)' started by Hitaxas, Apr 24, 2008.

Thread Status:
Not open for further replies.
  1. I've decided I'm not entirely happy with my previous spikes, so I made new ones from scratch. The light now reflects better and the metal looks less blurry. I also didn't make them as rounded because I think they look sharper this way.

    From left to right: Original, Old, New

    [​IMG] [​IMG] [​IMG]
     
  2. nineko

    nineko

    I am the Holy Cat Tech Member
    6,386
    537
    93
    italy
    I like the old ones a lot more, to be honest.
     
  3. Trying out yet another version here. This one has the original lighting, more curvature, and I've created a brushed metal texture to make it seem a little more realistic, although at this resolution the texture could be interpreted as water damage and weathering rather than brushed metal. Oh, and I tweaked them to be as pointy as possible.

    [​IMG]
     
  4. MaximusDM

    MaximusDM

    Sonic 2HD - Concept Artist Member
    These look chubby since you took its lines and curved them at the base. Either that or the texture you put it on it amplified it.
    That being said, I had no problem with the view of the old or new spikes. They both look good and I don't think it needs a texture.
     
  5. It's interesting that we are so texture-phobic in our current style when the original concept art that launched this project contains detailed texturing on just about everything! I'm just exploring different options; if the older ones meet the community's standard then ultimately I'll be happy that some of my work has achieved that.

    With regard to the fatness, I will trim them down.
     
  6. BlazeHedgehog

    BlazeHedgehog

    A "Community Enigma"? Oldbie
    1,472
    18
    18
    I like the "old" ones, too. The way the reflective properties of the metal is rendered looks better.
     
  7. Vincent

    Vincent

    Sonic 2HD - Project Leader & Chara Member
    1,253
    0
    16
    Sonic 2 HD
    Both of them looks well done, good job dear Blue! ^^

    As per my critique:

    [​IMG]
    +This one has a very nice reflection of metal and the thicker base is very personal and a nice touch.
    -The spike edges are blurred and aligned to the left

    [​IMG]
    +The spike edges even if a bit blurred are not misaligned anymore
    -The complex reflection of metal and thicker base were dropped for a very simple shape.
     
  8. The effect seen in the first set is a lower resolution polymesh lit with more than one light source and fewer rendering effects, all of which was later manually modified as vector art (which led to the misalignments and some color modifications).

    The second set is a much higher resolution mesh with one lighting source, more realistic rendering effects, and no vector editing. If this project were remaking a game from a 3D console, we'd probably want something closer to this version (or even version three posted above).

    One of my problems with the first ones is that my vector work on them was sloppy. I may try and fix that soon.

    I've realized something that is making this project tough for me: my scientific mind wants to put realistic physics into everything I work on. For most games this would be the goal anyway, but with these early Sonic games the approach seems to work better if we forget about the physics involved and just reproduce what's on the screen as a first step. Maybe for an artist this is a much easier way to work, but for a scientist it is frustrating because it's counter-intuitive.
     
  9. McAleeCh

    McAleeCh

    Oldbie
    1,558
    587
    93
    Well, thought I'd bump this to update you guys on what's going down Monitor-wise - Vincent sent me a PM recently asking me to try my hand at the remaining non-character-based icons for the Monitors. So, here's my attempt, presented side-by-side with the original sprites for your convenience:

    [​IMG][​IMG]

    This new iteration has been uploaded into the database already, with a transparent-background version of the above image - I remember there being problems exporting that with the previous version, so I took the liberty of doing one while I was here. I'll admit I did cheat a little and use gradients to get the desired effect on the Invincibility stars, since after a lot of trying I still couldn't quite capture the effect I'd been going for using manual shading. I wasn't able to fix the anti-aliasing issues this art apparently has, such as the top and bottom of the border around the icons appearing to be thinner than the sides, when really it's just the aliasing messing things up since they're all actually the same size. I've been working entirely in Flash for this and don't know the first thing about Illustrator to import and fix such a thing. If anyone is willing to show me, or to take up the challenge themselves, please be my guest!

    A side note, too: as you can probably see from the original sprites above, I've been working from an un-brightened image of the original art - that is, the "white" colour is actually #E0E0E0 rather than #FFFFFF. I noticed that most (but not all) of the art in this project actually seems to be using #FFFFFF, true white, as the 'white colour' - the thing that made me notice this being the character life icon tests in another topic - they still used my #E0E0E0 icon background, but used #FFFFFF as white for the most part. Just a heads-up - after exporting this art, it'll need to be brightened slightly if it's to match a lot of the other artwork. Hope that made sense, I'm not good at explaining things. = S

    As usual, any comments / crits are welcome, as I'm always willing to try and improve my work! = ) Ta muchly.
     
  10. Blanche Hodapp

    Blanche Hodapp

    *urp* Eternal Queen
    Wasn't it just because of palette limitations that the ring had a yellow border and everything else had orange?
    I mean, wouldn't it be better to have them all share a colour for the border?
     
  11. That Invincibility monitor looks awesome!

    The ring looks nice too.
     
  12. McAleeCh

    McAleeCh

    Oldbie
    1,558
    587
    93
    Good question - I know this was brought up shortly after my original submission of the monitor with the pre-Uber shading; I've just left it as-is with all but one orange because I can't remember if anything was decided on.

    I do remember doing a test version with all the icons having yellow borders (my reasoning being that the orange was chosen due to it being the closest colour to yellow in Sonic's palette line; see also Star Posts in S3K, which use only one palette line as opposed to S2's two, and have thus become orange instead of yellow). I don't think I ever made it public, though.

    Still, it's worth discussion - it's a simple fix to make either way. = )
     
  13. Vincent

    Vincent

    Sonic 2HD - Project Leader & Chara Member
    1,253
    0
    16
    Sonic 2 HD
    Everything is looking pretty good Mc! ^^

    Unfortunately, the blurred edges problem with Flash is really a nasty one.
    Flash simplifies the vectors and generates the alpha pixels in a strange way, while Illustrator can control and force them to look exact.

    You can try to slightly move each offset until the lines gets not blurred, or just try to upgrade on Flash CS4 to use the Pixel Grid function, ot just export it to Illustrator! ;)

    About the new icons:
    -The invincibility is spot on, just add some more variety on the smaller stars making their size slightly dfferent.
    -Make the ring look more round (it might be the antialias, generating this).

    That's it!

    Thanks again for your great work! ;)
     
  14. LOst

    LOst

    Tech Member
    4,891
    8
    18
    Now we need to make all flashing stars with that design! :)
    And hopefully we can render them using glowing texture stage and it will look good. And hopefully the design is not limited to Flash.
     
  15. Endgame

    Endgame

    Formerly The Growler Member
    I'm just waiting for the 'scanlined', 2-framed animated versions of the final ones of these, and also what Vincent thinks of how fast the monitor 'flicker' should go

    I.e. whose suggestion about the monitor animation should I go with? There's different people telling me different things, and I don't know what to do with it next.
     
  16. Vincent

    Vincent

    Sonic 2HD - Project Leader & Chara Member
    1,253
    0
    16
    Sonic 2 HD
    Sorry for the late reply Growler,

    About your monitors animation, In fact your art is "Approved" as it is. ^^
    The changes on animation speed and / or frame combination will be scripted and tested ingame laters, so there is no need to make hundreds of revisions just to change the order/speed of some frames, what is really important is to create the raw total of frames for each icon.

    So, let's first have the main base monitors aliasing problems solved and icons finalized, then you can proceed on animating them! ;)

    P.s. Actually, I'm pretty busy working on other art, so if anyone can make the flicker effect on the other icons He's more than welcome! ^^
    Otherwise I'll produce them in the next weeks, just upon I've completed my recent schedule.
     
  17. Mastered Realm

    Mastered Realm

    Member
    3,863
    576
    93
    -
    Blue, you can get similar effects when working with vectors too:

    Mine (Vectorized):
    [​IMG] [​IMG]
    ----------OLD----------- ----------NEW

    Yours (3D):
    [​IMG] [​IMG]
    ----------OLD----------- ----------NEW

    ORIGINAL:
    [​IMG]
     
  18. I like your new one. Also, this vector version has better contrast between the front spikes and the back ones than the 3D version.
     
  19. RedStripedShoes

    RedStripedShoes

    And I'm gone again. Member
    If you want the spikes to look sharper, shouldn't the edges be concave instead of convex?
     
  20. ICEknight

    ICEknight

    Researcher Researcher
    He based them on the original shape. Only spikes in Sonic 1 were concave, if I remember correctly.
     
Thread Status:
Not open for further replies.