Requesting feedback on Soul Assassin, iPhone 3D game

Kawe

I haven't posted here in a while but... basically me and some friends decided to go down the iPhone route a while ago and it hasn't been going too well. One thing I realized was that our art wasn't really up to par.

So I asked our graphics guy to post his art on some forums to try to get some feedback. For some reason he didn't go here so I figured I'd make a post here in his stead.

Uhm... ya so we would like to get some help on how to improve the graphics and uhm... make it more marketable so to say.

Here's the images he posted on gameartisans and the unity forums. Note that the GUI is broken in this build (positioning and scale).




Our website: http://www.spearheadgames.com

Steve Schulze

Are you planning to have any kind of lighting on the characters? You're losing a bit of readability having them full-bright like that, particularly on that big, muscley guy. If you're going to leave them as is then I'd suggest painting in some fairly stong lighting and shadows to the textures so that they're easy to read at the Iphone scale.

fearian

Jackablade hit the nail on the head. Also, with the environment textures, you're (he's?) gonna need to paint more depth and lighting into them as they won't have normal maps or whatever to pick up that slack. It's all too flat.

Good luck!

Kawe

Hey, thanks for the feedback guys.

I agree completely. Uhm... just another question then. Assuming that he does add some lighting on the textures. Do you think it would be enough to make it look good?

fearian

Well it would improve it alot. But there is no 'good' checklist that wou will reach and suddenly find, 'hey we did that thing and now it looks GOOD!'. You have to keep revising and developing until you're happy with the result. Looking over the screenshots again, I would point out that the last one looks like most stuff is completely untextured, and you could probably spare a few more poly's to define the props.

Just keep at it and every now and then take a step back for a broader look and think, 'what do I want it to look like and how will it get there?'.

LRoy

I don't think it looks bad at all. It just looks flat. The enviroments look good, but some of the props/characters don't go well with them because the backgrounds have lighting and they don't.

Kawe

Haha, that is true, fearian.

Yes. You guys are right.

My personal opinion is that it looks flat and that nothing here is very memorable. I guess it doesn't stick out enough. But I don't really know how to address that.

DeanoRoe

The main thing that stands out to me first is lighting, but thats already been covered.

Secondly is the textures all appear to be very soft and lacking that extra bit of definition. They need sharpening up a little bit, plus they need some depth of tone. At the moment is very difficult to make out any detail. I understand that its a tough balance as you don't want people to be able to see Pixelation in your texture however at the moment i think detail is being sacrificed.

:thumbup:

Kawe

Here's some progress. I don't think he actually painted any more details on the textures but instead we added some more fluff as in geometry (god rays, banners and flags). Also changed up the lighting in some areas.
I also changed up the GUI a bit (I'm responsible for that and animations).








So yes, still need to fix up the character textures.

LRoy

Why is the clothing one solid color?

JasonLavoie

Most likely cause its still a wip... (read the post above you)

This has a great POP vibe to it, would love to see it in motion

Kawe

JasonLavoie wrote: »

Most likely cause its still a wip... (read the post above you)

This has a great POP vibe to it, would love to see it in motion

Haha, well.. aside from some shabby acrobatics in the opening cutscene there isn't much going on in that department sadly the gameplay is more like inspired by third person action games like uhm.. god of war I guess. but not as awesome and brutal.

Justin Meisse

I'm digging the environments. If the characters won't get effected by lights then I suggest painting more lighting info into their textures old skoole style, basically paint as if there's a light source above the character.

edit: lulz, looks like it's already been said!

AGuyCalledSpyke

Looks very interesting, but, as has already been said, lighting.
Also, I don't know if it's just me, but I prefer the first joystick in the OP