Yeah, I'm trolling. Because I disagree in a direct manor. If that helps you feel better about yourselves, then that's awesome.
It's obvious that you care about the project a lot Astro, and that's really great. It sounds like there has been an interesting path to the new art style and that its making your defense of it the way that it is. I should probably be more sensitive to that, I've been there before too and I know how frustrating it is. Unfortunately passion shows in a lot of different ways and my passion tends to be interpreted by some of you as hate. I can deal with that, so maybe we can see this with more neutral eyes and debate the finer details of artistic style and merit like civilized adults?
Like I said, I'm not out to demonize the style or anything like that (nor am I blaming YOU for it), these are just my impressions and thoughts and by vocalizing them I open it up for agreement or dissent. Hopefully in a direct response. That's all that I'm looking for here.
However, is a little bit of courtesy too much to ask? You can simply state that you don't care for the new style and move on without feeling the need to try and tear down every single screenshot that gets posted or make comparisons and statements like "what is special about this that other games haven't already done better?" Is it absolutely necessary to piss all over the parade?
It wasn't my company that said that I would be impressed and not believe my eyes at the totally new, completely original art style that I've never seen before which is like concept art come to life. Oh, and it's not cel-shaded. That's how completely new and amazing it is! It defies all pre-existing knowledge!
Which was total bullshit.
So if you have a complaint with the people dissing the art style perhaps you should look at your own company's marketing strategy first and deal with that instead of passing the blame on to everyone else. When you come out of the gate swinging with massive hyperbole don't complain when you get called out for it.
As for it being a WIP, oh cry me a fucking river. I knew you'd pull out that response and it's weak. Out of all the time you've had to develop this game you didn't manage to put together one screenshot - one single screenshot - that represented the style properly to start out with. Instead you put out a bad shot which had a ton of obvious flaws. Why? You really couldn't get together one nice shot? Why on earth would you start with that shot as your premiere?
Again, criticize your own company for failing to put together proper PR material before you rant about your audience. Why did you start with that shot? Why did you not put together a final image that represented how the game was going to look? That's stupid. You might say "It's going to look better" but you know what, I don't see why I should give you the benefit of the doubt. Prove it or stop whining. Don't expect me to believe you out of the kindness of my heart: Most game companies lie outright about their game looks. Yours already has. You don't deserve blind faith anymore.
You're not going to see me bragging about the art in my games because guess what? The art in my games is filled with flaws. I could go on all day about how shitty my art is. You're never going to find me running around telling people about how amazing my new style is and how you've totally never seen it before and you should totally be amazed because people have done it before and they have done it better. Sound familiar? It's exactly what I think of your game, too.
Your style is fine. I'm glad you went in this direction and not with the generic realistic look. That doesn't mean you get a free pass for claiming it's something revolutionary when it's not even up to the standard put by other cel-shaded games before you -- especially when you're pretending that it's not cel-shaded at all (hint: it is). And if you're sad that when I say "you" I'm referring to your PR people who are beyond your control: tough shit. Not my problem.
Your art has problems, you should fix them instead of whining and bullshitting. End of story.
I like the new direction, I dont like how they claim to have invented some amazing new technology. Ive seen this before in Prince of Persia, Afro Samurai, Valkyria Chronicles and even on that Airborne mod :P
I would have thought we were all experienced enough to look past game hype an judge things on face value?
Everyone here knows what marketers are like, don't we? they'll take something and turn it into something else, invent features, and generally shout nonsense as loud as they can to get attention. that's their job, fine, whatever. I don't see how that connects in any way to a game art forum commenting on game art?
Well, I am not claiming that it is revolutionary, and I guess whether or not it is cel shaded depends on your definition of cel shading; To me, and most people I have talked to, cel shading implies a software rendering solution. The only thing that is being done to achieve this style by the rendering engine is drawing a black outline around the silhouettes of objects. That's it. The rest of the look is achieved by hand-painting the textures and painting "inks" on them. Obviously, we are still in the process of stylizing the old game assets so there are some objects in the screenshots that just have not been completed yet. I'm also not sure why some of those screenshots were chosen, but that wasn't my call.
Anyway, I guess I am being overly defensive of something that the vast majority of people think looks awesome. The couple of you who don't like it and have made a point of being extremely vocal about it do come off as being "haters" to me, but whatever.
[edit]
It just occurred to me that essentially what you are saying ACC is that you only felt the need to publicly tear down my game because the PR and Marketing department *gasp* did their jobs? So did that help you feel better about yourself that you had somehow "settled a score" that exists only in your mind? I guess you really showed them.
there's some nice unprofessionalsim going on in this thread.
I got kind of douchey about the art in Hellgate and I still feel bad about that. This isn't like we're accountants that have a secret identity on another forum. When you show your ass here you're showing it to coworkers and future employers.
there's some nice unprofessionalsim going on in this thread.
I got kind of douchey about the art in Hellgate and I still feel bad about that. This isn't like we're accountants that have a secret identity on another forum. When you show your ass here you're showing it to coworkers and future employers.
I dunno what you mean; do you mean being overdefensive about the title you are working on is unproffesional, or people bitching is unproffesional?
I can't wait for a few years to pass for everyone to get sick of cartoony graphics so we can go back to masturbating over bald power-armored space marines. Like god intended.
Holy Frack....The Days of our Lives is up in this bitch.
I can see both sides. Astro like any of us is passionate about his work and the project he is on. I don't like to see people tear into shit I work or have worked on.
Take MK vs DC for example. That was a steaming pile of dog shit. I worked my ass off on it and made all kinds of things that were based of the original "COOL" Batcave concept art but 2 of the like 4 fucking art directors didn't like it because they wanted something different so I was forced to dumb shit down and make something that I hated. People rip on the game all the time saying it's terrible and yeah it is but I still try to defend it for some reason.
I didn't mind the old style and I don't mind the new style. I can't wait to see what it looks like in motion like many of you have said.
But yeah let's try to be a bit more professional around here. I know I have been a huge dick at times. (Blenderhead shut up!) But seriously...
Now... Everyone hug and go make some fucking art you hippies!!!
"cel shading" means "shaded like a traditional animation cel". It has nothing AT ALL to do with black outlines. The outlines are not part of the shading.
Astro - Are you redoing all the textures from scratch or have you guys adopted a method to rework the exisitng textures to look hand drawn? There was an article for TF2(sorry to bring it up) about how they could use various filters to help achieve the look. I don't think it did everything for them but aided in consistency and speed.
There was an article for TF2(sorry to bring it up) about how they could use various filters to help achieve the look. I don't think it did everything for them but aided in consistency and speed.
Bit off-topic, but where can I find this? It's not the NPAR07 Illustrative rendering paper, I hope, since all that says is "we used filters".
And I like this new style, it's always great to see art direction go in bolder directions than the average next-gen look. For that reason alone i think the haters should calm down a bit and let things rest.
when you work very hard for something, you need a little faith in what your doing, other wise you wouldnt see it through. this can lead to being somewhat overdefensive of it, i mean why spend so much of your life on something and fail to defend it.
As much as i disagree with sandbag on the art style and liking it, I think that everyone attacking and resorting to douchebag name callin is a tad unprofessional. He's entitled to his own opinion. Maybe his post put a turd in a thread full of sugar coated responses, but thats life.
Astro - Are you redoing all the textures from scratch or have you guys adopted a method to rework the exisitng textures to look hand drawn? There was an article for TF2(sorry to bring it up) about how they could use various filters to help achieve the look. I don't think it did everything for them but aided in consistency and speed.
They're all from scratch, for the most part. There have been a few instances where I was able to use something as a jumping off point, but by the time it's done it's a completely new texture anyhow.
As much as i disagree with sandbag on the art style and liking it, I think that everyone attacking and resorting to douchebag name callin is a tad unprofessional. He's entitled to his own opinion. Maybe his post put a turd in a thread full of sugar coated responses, but thats life.
I wasn't disputing his right to an opinion, I just took issue with his continued and repeated attacks (which he has done, as well as his own bit of name-calling). I mean, typically if there is a thread about a game that I am not impressed with or straight up don't like, and I know that a fellow Polycounter has worked on it, I have chosen to not say anything about it rather than shit all over something that I know one of my peers takes pride in. Even if I felt the need to say I don't care for something, it is possible to say you don't like something without the need to nitpick every little flaw you can possibly find and come off sounding like a douchebag.
It looks badass. Its been said, but its nice to see a game take a stylised approach to thier design. Too many games are trying to pull off "realism" that ends up looking like the same homogenised, rehashed crap. I think the best way to deal with douches is to hurrang them with yo'momma jokes
douche: I hate your game because new things scare me...also the gun in the second image is two inches shorter than it should be..I have leet gun spotting skills. This is my opinion, so that makes it a valid response to a thread that didnt ask for it. I will continue to post my dislike, just in case someone missed it the first time
I mean, typically if there is a thread about a game that I am not impressed with or straight up don't like, and I know that a fellow Polycounter has worked on it, I have chosen to not say anything about it rather than shit all over something that I know one of my peers takes pride in.
But every game was worked on by someone, so all this boils down to is not providing negative feedback to someone's face? There are plenty of things I would have liked to be done differently in Ghostbusters, and if you were to start chewing into it with your thoughts on this or that asset or environment I certainly wouldn't be against it. I might think back with a sigh if something I wished was changed came up, but you just cant get upset at that stuff.
Post Apocalyptic and anything like it is one of the nearest and dearest visual themes to my heart, because of that I'm going to be extra critical about it like I am about all the things I love. I still hope that it turns out to be an awesome game and I will still more than likely buy it, but that will never mean that I wont critique the hell out of it regardless of who worked on it.
ps - Dusty, dont you start that Diablo III wackyness again, haha; I was merely illustrating the similarities between the two environments that became extra clear with the slightest touch of "post processing."
pps - funny how that works out, isn't it blenderhead.
i think it was a very brave decision to go into such a direction, especially when a look was already settled, i hope more developers have the guts to create their own look i'm looking forward to see it finished.
i absolutely hate the graphics. you've somehow managed to combine both of the worst trends in game graphics; cel-shading and pathetic coloring. if you wanted to be different from the rest of the games these days then you should have made the game have color. anyway i was interested in this game because of the El-Fish sort of technology (which is ridiculously long overdue by the way) but now i'm too disgusted with what has been done to the graphics. but if i was in a rival game company i would say these graphics are excellent so that there would be more sales for my game when your game fails.
i absolutely hate the graphics. you've somehow managed to combine both of the worst trends in game graphics; cel-shading and pathetic coloring. if you wanted to be different from the rest of the games these days then you should have made the game have color. anyway i was interested in this game because of the El-Fish sort of technology (which is ridiculously long overdue by the way) but now i'm too disgusted with what has been done to the graphics. but if i was in a rival game company i would say these graphics are excellent so that there would be more sales for my game when your game fails.
It is not cel shading. I think I give a pretty good reason why in my previous post.
Replies
It's obvious that you care about the project a lot Astro, and that's really great. It sounds like there has been an interesting path to the new art style and that its making your defense of it the way that it is. I should probably be more sensitive to that, I've been there before too and I know how frustrating it is. Unfortunately passion shows in a lot of different ways and my passion tends to be interpreted by some of you as hate. I can deal with that, so maybe we can see this with more neutral eyes and debate the finer details of artistic style and merit like civilized adults?
Like I said, I'm not out to demonize the style or anything like that (nor am I blaming YOU for it), these are just my impressions and thoughts and by vocalizing them I open it up for agreement or dissent. Hopefully in a direct response. That's all that I'm looking for here.
Which was total bullshit.
So if you have a complaint with the people dissing the art style perhaps you should look at your own company's marketing strategy first and deal with that instead of passing the blame on to everyone else. When you come out of the gate swinging with massive hyperbole don't complain when you get called out for it.
As for it being a WIP, oh cry me a fucking river. I knew you'd pull out that response and it's weak. Out of all the time you've had to develop this game you didn't manage to put together one screenshot - one single screenshot - that represented the style properly to start out with. Instead you put out a bad shot which had a ton of obvious flaws. Why? You really couldn't get together one nice shot? Why on earth would you start with that shot as your premiere?
Again, criticize your own company for failing to put together proper PR material before you rant about your audience. Why did you start with that shot? Why did you not put together a final image that represented how the game was going to look? That's stupid. You might say "It's going to look better" but you know what, I don't see why I should give you the benefit of the doubt. Prove it or stop whining. Don't expect me to believe you out of the kindness of my heart: Most game companies lie outright about their game looks. Yours already has. You don't deserve blind faith anymore.
You're not going to see me bragging about the art in my games because guess what? The art in my games is filled with flaws. I could go on all day about how shitty my art is. You're never going to find me running around telling people about how amazing my new style is and how you've totally never seen it before and you should totally be amazed because people have done it before and they have done it better. Sound familiar? It's exactly what I think of your game, too.
Your style is fine. I'm glad you went in this direction and not with the generic realistic look. That doesn't mean you get a free pass for claiming it's something revolutionary when it's not even up to the standard put by other cel-shaded games before you -- especially when you're pretending that it's not cel-shaded at all (hint: it is). And if you're sad that when I say "you" I'm referring to your PR people who are beyond your control: tough shit. Not my problem.
Your art has problems, you should fix them instead of whining and bullshitting. End of story.
The man does have a point there. Whether you like the new style or not, hype tends to generate anti-hype, so it's to be expected.
edit: err, going through the rest of the thread, I feel I should say that sandbag does act a bit douchey.
Everyone here knows what marketers are like, don't we? they'll take something and turn it into something else, invent features, and generally shout nonsense as loud as they can to get attention. that's their job, fine, whatever. I don't see how that connects in any way to a game art forum commenting on game art?
Anyway, I guess I am being overly defensive of something that the vast majority of people think looks awesome. The couple of you who don't like it and have made a point of being extremely vocal about it do come off as being "haters" to me, but whatever.
[edit]
It just occurred to me that essentially what you are saying ACC is that you only felt the need to publicly tear down my game because the PR and Marketing department *gasp* did their jobs? So did that help you feel better about yourself that you had somehow "settled a score" that exists only in your mind? I guess you really showed them.
I got kind of douchey about the art in Hellgate and I still feel bad about that. This isn't like we're accountants that have a secret identity on another forum. When you show your ass here you're showing it to coworkers and future employers.
I dunno what you mean; do you mean being overdefensive about the title you are working on is unproffesional, or people bitching is unproffesional?
I can see both sides. Astro like any of us is passionate about his work and the project he is on. I don't like to see people tear into shit I work or have worked on.
Take MK vs DC for example. That was a steaming pile of dog shit. I worked my ass off on it and made all kinds of things that were based of the original "COOL" Batcave concept art but 2 of the like 4 fucking art directors didn't like it because they wanted something different so I was forced to dumb shit down and make something that I hated. People rip on the game all the time saying it's terrible and yeah it is but I still try to defend it for some reason.
I didn't mind the old style and I don't mind the new style. I can't wait to see what it looks like in motion like many of you have said.
But yeah let's try to be a bit more professional around here. I know I have been a huge dick at times. (Blenderhead shut up!) But seriously...
Now... Everyone hug and go make some fucking art you hippies!!!
Jesse - Care to show those concepts?
It does look good in motion!
He has an office? Someone was actually willing to hire Sandbag? lolololololololololol
Bit off-topic, but where can I find this? It's not the NPAR07 Illustrative rendering paper, I hope, since all that says is "we used filters".
And I like this new style, it's always great to see art direction go in bolder directions than the average next-gen look. For that reason alone i think the haters should calm down a bit and let things rest.
They're all from scratch, for the most part. There have been a few instances where I was able to use something as a jumping off point, but by the time it's done it's a completely new texture anyhow.
I wasn't disputing his right to an opinion, I just took issue with his continued and repeated attacks (which he has done, as well as his own bit of name-calling). I mean, typically if there is a thread about a game that I am not impressed with or straight up don't like, and I know that a fellow Polycounter has worked on it, I have chosen to not say anything about it rather than shit all over something that I know one of my peers takes pride in. Even if I felt the need to say I don't care for something, it is possible to say you don't like something without the need to nitpick every little flaw you can possibly find and come off sounding like a douchebag.
douche: I hate your game because new things scare me...also the gun in the second image is two inches shorter than it should be..I have leet gun spotting skills. This is my opinion, so that makes it a valid response to a thread that didnt ask for it. I will continue to post my dislike, just in case someone missed it the first time
AZ: Yo mama so fat she eats Wheat Thicks.
http://www.valvesoftware.com/publications/2007/NPAR07_IllustrativeRenderingInTeamFortress2.pdf
Video here as well you might like. http://www.gametrailers.com/player/23520.html
But every game was worked on by someone, so all this boils down to is not providing negative feedback to someone's face? There are plenty of things I would have liked to be done differently in Ghostbusters, and if you were to start chewing into it with your thoughts on this or that asset or environment I certainly wouldn't be against it. I might think back with a sigh if something I wished was changed came up, but you just cant get upset at that stuff.
Post Apocalyptic and anything like it is one of the nearest and dearest visual themes to my heart, because of that I'm going to be extra critical about it like I am about all the things I love. I still hope that it turns out to be an awesome game and I will still more than likely buy it, but that will never mean that I wont critique the hell out of it regardless of who worked on it.
ps - Dusty, dont you start that Diablo III wackyness again, haha; I was merely illustrating the similarities between the two environments that became extra clear with the slightest touch of "post processing."
pps - funny how that works out, isn't it blenderhead.
Don't worry, I don't think you have a reputation of being a dick. I'm pretty sure people know you as the guy with the creepy looking tomato avatar.
Creepy...lol I'll show you creepy....*zip*
I think the new art direction looks awesome! It's unique, and will definitely help it stand out on store shelves.
Avatar?!?! This whole time I thought that was an actual photo of him.
can i touch it? :0
and for humors sake
Simpsons did it.
[ame]
http://www.gamespot.com/xbox360/action/borderlands/images.html?om_act=convert&om_clk=gsimage&tag=images;header;more
Any plans to replace that chrome-y water shader with something that actually matches the rest of the style?
if only i had the power to lock threads...
It is not cel shading. I think I give a pretty good reason why in my previous post.