Mh... been away for quite a while, haven't I? Well, I've been busy, if I wasn't doing schoolwork I was on holiday. Aaaanyway, enough of these poor excuses, here's a step closer to the finished explosion.
Looks Really cool! Definitely two step forward the "Approval". Now because there is one last step: -An overall blurriness still affect the animation frames, so make them a bit sharper. -On Last two frames, smoke particles are too big. They must be smaller to fade out the exploding animation properly.
Please make use of the alpha channel, It would look so much better if it was varied within that channel. If you can, look at emitter sprites in UT2k4. It isn't just you, I see many of the sprites being produced almost too faithfully, and we forget or are unaware that we have the alpha channel to play with. The animation should move from opaque -> clear ; more than big -> small particles. I know that's how the original sprites look, but they were working with an engine that has no opacity. Also make the animation smoother, The last frame looks out of place.
<!--quoteo(post=284439:date=Feb 27 2009, 11:52 PM:name=CornetTheory)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (CornetTheory @ Feb 27 2009, 11:52 PM) I admit that is is difficult to make surreal subjects look realistic.[/quote] This looks really great but in my opinion would look even better the following adjustments: - Increase the contrast of the hills and adjust their color to match the original. - Add a bit more of that nice bright green on the top of the background hills from the original, making them look a bit more solid and less like emeralds. - Make the clouds less blurry on the edges, it looks more like artificial fog from a fog machine than clouds. Everyone, please remember: Too much blurriness make things look less professional.
Orange hills: Part of that is the radiosity from the sun, and the original palette; The darkest color is the darkest in the original. Clouds: Remember these clouds are relatively fast moving and will probably resemble fog anyway. Green: I was lazy, and this isn't the final product, it's a concept.
Yes, but since you added much darker shades that weren't on the original doing that makes the rest of the shades much lighter and not looking right. Sorry, but that's really not the case. The clouds look too blurry on the edges anyway to look like clouds in a long distance like that.
Guys, further critiques on the HTZ mockup Cornet did for us are fairly useless. Vincent asked him to do that concept as a validation of his skill level, which he has surpassed and then some. It's not a piece we're looking to work into the final version at present as it's not in tiles. Might have it in with the extras though as concept art, who knows. There will be a another, even higher quality version, but that will come much later on in the scheme of things.
Oh, ok then! By the way, everything's looking really great guys, keep up the good work and the high quality level.
<!--quoteo(post=288460:date=Mar 10 2009, 12:36 PM:name=Master Emerald)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Master Emerald @ Mar 10 2009, 12:36 PM) [/quote] This looks really good for the most part. There are 3 things I dislike: 1.) The star looks a little funky. I think the only reason the original star looked so misshapen was because of pixel limitations; I'm sure they wanted to make the star as small as possible while still making it resemble a star. Try to make a star with regular sides and angles. 2.) The stroke of the Q should not be perfectly diagonal. It should be more curved, maybe S-like. 3.) I think you could stand to make the V look a little more pointed. Right now it looks like it can't decide whether it's a U or V. Otherwise, nice work.
The U and V in the original were very similar so if I change it I will change the font =P! I has to be diagonal because it is the style I used, it follows the style of the zero. And I'll try something on the star so. Thanks for the feed back
<!--quoteo(post=288460:date=Mar 10 2009, 10:36 AM:name=Master Emerald)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Master Emerald @ Mar 10 2009, 10:36 AM) [/quote] You added an unnecessary amount of shades to the tree and used gradients for the rest. High Definition indeed
You big asshole LOL xDDDDDDDDDDDD Kidding (maybe not! xD). But, your feedback is important too (ok, sometimes it's not, whatever...) so thanks! Here, better? =P
I would rather do it the other way around: using gradients also for the tree itself. I'm not good at graphics but here's an example:
<!--quoteo(post=288617:date=Mar 10 2009, 08:57 PM:name=nineko)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (nineko @ Mar 10 2009, 08:57 PM) [/quote] I get what you're talking about, but I personally feel as if it deviates too far from the original art in terms of smoothness and whatnot. I think your idea would be better suited in a level like Mystic Cave, where the darker colors would make the gradients "flow" into each other better.
You could try combining the two approaches -- keep your sharp divisions, but apply color gradients where you currently have solid shades.
<!--quoteo(post=288611:date=Mar 10 2009, 07:37 PM:name=Master Emerald)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Master Emerald @ Mar 10 2009, 07:37 PM) better? =P [/quote]I think it looked better before... But anyway, you should be careful to follow the original shapes for the shaded parts (the second and next to last shadows don't seem to follow the branches as the originals did.
CK, excelent idea! I'll try that out. And Ice, it seems that I only replaced the first and the last green polygon of the three xDD I'll fix that so you will be able to judge better, ok? =P
