I'm curious what people's thoughts are on art styles for a game like CoT. I realize it is probably far to late for any changes to the game regardless of what people come up with here, but I'm interested in hearing people's thoughts on the matter.
For reference, CoX seemed to hit it right on the money with a comic art style that really helped make the game look much better and age well despite the graphical limitations of the time. Other games that have done well with a similar approach are TF2 and to some extent WoW (at least at release, wow changed quite a bit over time). Even some games with modern graphics have embraced this approach, such as overwatch and smite. It works very well with over the top settings. I know lots of people didn't like champions because the art style was too cartoony, but games like overwatch and tf2 have almost universal appeal for their art style. In fact, when TF2 was first announced a vocal minority were really angry that the traditional realistic art had been abandoned in favor of the new cartoony look, but since valve did such a good job with it (and related character design, voice, animations, writing, etc) the characters and style have become famous and many people don't remember the bland roots team fortress came from.
In comparison after looking at youtube videos put out by ship of heroes (I know the game isn't released) the art style runs into a couple problems in my mind. One, it tries to look a bit too hyper realistic and ends up being a bit uncanny valley where people look like robots. Adding to this issue, everything looks extremely clean and cookie cutter, including the architecture and powers. It looks like everything was cut and pasted from other sources without a style that brings it all together to make it look like it belongs in the same game. This isn't entirely because of the art style, there are other issues such as animations that come into play here, but it is related.
I'm not trying to bash SoH here I'm using the art, animations, etc as an example. It is possible that it is all placeholder assets and that is fine, my point is about those assets rather than the game.
Anyway, what do people think about "realistic" and "cartoony" art styles?
For reference of CoT's style, please gander at our Halloween poster:
[img]https://cityoftitans.com/sites/default/files/Happy_Halloween_17.jpg[/img]
Technical Director
Read enough Facebook and you have to make Sanity Checks. I guess FB is the Great Old One of the interent these days... - Beamrider
Oh yeah, CoT definitely seems to hit the nail on the head when it comes to matching the CoX comic art style. I love it
I was curious what people's feelings were about styles in general. I'm betting plenty of people here are going to prefer a CoX (and thus CoT) style because of the nature of the community but there are often other ideas and I'm curious to hear them. Perhaps there will be universal accord on this topic.
Imho City of Heroes went to realistic direction and just a few hints of comics into animations and body proportions (long legs). Some sort of stylish realsim, but still realistic.
Comic style was the one used in Champions Online, for example, which is still middle ground if you compare it with TeamFortress.
It aged well simply because the graphic was top notch for a mmorpg.
Very nice.
My preferred art style leans more towards realistic in scale/proportion and form/function. The style in Champions is absolutely atrocious, IMO. DCUO is much better, but very limited in customization options beyond costume pieces.
My ideal? Take COX, combine it with both what you see in the poster and a heavily modded Skyrim (the Oldrim/original version, half the mods used for just character customization aren’t available for Special Edition yet). Note that I play on a system with an i7, GTX 1070, and a 4K display, though, so crank up the upper limits for polygons and texture resolution. :)
And UI scaling! 4K support is a MUST for UI scaling!
WoW came out later in the same year as CoH and had a similar if slightly more cartoony art style. I don't know if I would say CoH had top notch graphics compared to wow. They were good, certainly, but top? One of the main things blizzard is known for as a studio is quality art and animation.
In comparison, everquest 2, thought to be the main competition to WoW, also released that year and went for a more realistic art style. It.....has not aged well. It suffered quite a bit more from that uncanny valley effect. This was true even at the time. EQ2 even had high resolution textures and high poly count models for the time and genre. The main differences were art style and related aspects like animations.
Personally I favor a more cartoon look over realism if for no other reason than 'realistic' graphics have a much shorter lifespan.
Ultimately I think that realistic vs cartoon art styles is of far less importance than unique vs generic. I strongly desire a unique art style over a more generic one.
Games like Wildstar, Dishonored, Fortnite or even TF2 have a look that is theirs alone. You can almost instantly know that the art is from their respective games while games like DayZ, H1Z1 or PubG do not have any easily recognized art aspects that separate it from the pack.
It's not hard to tell the difference between Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter but it's not as easy when you compare Tekken and DOA.
I am not just talking character models but map design as well.
Unique art obviously gets more and more difficult as you add in increasing levels of customization options but I think it is still a worthy goal to try and establish an art style that is all your own.
I agree with preferring unique to generic art styles but that being said I loathe the cartoony look of CO. Not sure exactly why it just fell way short for me after years of COH. Kinda ironic since I liked the graphics of torchlight 2 over diablo 3 when diablo 3 first released. I guess for me itckmes down more to how does gameplay feel versus the graphics quality.
Great gameplay with just ok graphics is acceptable to me but great graphics with horrible gameplay isn’t. COH had the recipe just right for me. Not too realistic but not an outright comic book heavy inked look either.
Somewhere in the middle. I think COT will likely be right in my sweet spot based on what I’ve seen so far.
"A sad spectacle. If they be inhabited, what a scope for misery and folly. If they be not inhabited, what a waste of space." ~ Thomas Carlyle
[img]https://i.imgur.com/awlIgYz.jpg[/img]
Something closer to this, than ESO, is what I would prefer.
Truthfully, I've been worried the aesthetic direction of CoT will suck, with every character I've seen so far, with the possible exception of Rottweiler, and even then, the animations have left me worried.
From what I see in the Halloween pic above, the robot seems fine, the guy looks like total crap. :/
^ I thought that guy WAS Rottweiler, just a previous iteration of him?
As for your screenshot there: That looks creepy and weird as hell to me. Can you point out what about it specifically you like? Is it the accessories?
I absolutely hated CO art style. It looked like a cartoon game and it completely took me out of it.
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[color=#FF0000]Graphic Designer[/color]
[img]https://i.imgur.com/JkJmvU8.png[/img]
[img]https://i.imgur.com/CPCc6Jp.png[/img]
[img]https://i.imgur.com/uXXXWQY.png[/img]
And here's a few others (I have one of each class to varying levels in the game), as you can see, I like to reuse that face tat :) Third one with an npc in the game. I'm curious as to what you find creepy about it. Is it the outfit?
As for what I like about it? I like the aesthetic of the characters in general. Takes awhile to get sliders to where I like them and I'll usually go back and change them at some point. Had that problem in CoH though. Part of it may be the more animish style to what appears, for the human characters anyways, in CoT, to be possibly craptastic (I hope it gets better with later viewings and maybe better models shown to us) trying to be realistic.
[img]https://i.imgur.com/io46Aoz.jpg[/img]
^This is crap to me. I hate Alex Ross.
[img]https://i.imgur.com/goxapc7.jpg[/img]
and
[img]https://i.imgur.com/2o3PHLh.jpg[/img]
Are much better.
For your first screen shot, Brand, personally I find the face, pose, and proportions rather off-putting.
When it comes to an art style I like stylization a lot. Borderlands, Wind Waker, and some of the more artsy indie games out there. A good art style never looks old. Not saying CoT should take that approach, Champions Online tried it and look how that turned out... Everything looks like it's made from plastic and the faces all look the same.
Pretty sure CoT is trying to go for a MCU kind of look with the art direction, realistic with a splash of comic book. Which is great, I think the MCU looks pretty spiffy.
"Let the past die. Kill it if you have to."
Asian MMO styles to me are so boring. I hope CoT is the opposite of that aesthetic.
I like the Halloween poster and all of the more finished rendered art that MWM has released. Gets me excited to play!
FIGHT EVIL! (or go cause trouble so the Heroes have something to do.)
Wind Waker would be something I would want to avoid O.O A lot! Oh gawd.
Though, on matters of proportions...
[img]https://orig00.deviantart.net/f8c9/f/2012/078/3/6/brandx_with_staff_by_joybuzzer-d4tbp0g.jpg[/img]
...how's this? If these are bad, then it could be a matter of just not liking my sliders versus the actual aesthetic.
The aesthetic looks fine, Brand, but your slider settings...I’ve seen worse *hides*
The Wind Waker style works for a more whimsical kind of game. And it can work for a super hero game, just more likely one aimed at a younger audience.
And the more I look at those proportions the worse it gets. Her feet are so tiny they look like hooves.
"Let the past die. Kill it if you have to."
lol...CoH didn't have feet sliders and I LOVED LOVED LOVED the "Large Boots" and "Banded Gloves" which just made for bigger hands really. :p
Didn't CoX have feet sliders? Must just be the angle then.
"Let the past die. Kill it if you have to."
Nope. No feet or hand sliders. CO has them though.
If the devs pull off a "HD CoH" - I'll be happy. Not hyper-realistic, not super-cartoony, but a nice happy medium.
Just as important to me is INTERNAL CONSITENCY. This is a concern of mine as the devs will be grabbing some things from the UE4 marketplace - I'm afraid that certain items or props will look out of place next to other items/props stylistically or quality-wise. Basically - I hope everything will be getting an aesthetic once-over so that if I load into a certain map, or go to a different part of town I don't start wondering if I'm playing a different game, or that our characters don't look like Captain Asset Flip - a frankenstein of parts of different quality.
Good point there. Even if we had two totally different genre of characters in CoH, they at least looked like they belonged in the same universe.
Of course, maybe they could take passes on items to make them fit in better for the ones they buy, which I'm sure they're allowed to edit after buying.
Kind of like when World of Warcraft Cataclysm came out. The Worgen and Goblins were all:
[img]https://d1u5p3l4wpay3k.cloudfront.net/wowpedia/7/7f/Worgen_Warrior_furiouslooks.jpg[/img] and [img]https://d1u5p3l4wpay3k.cloudfront.net/wowpedia/2/25/Goblins_cataclysm.png?version=28192c6383f901c12486017304101959[/img]
while the rest of the races were still like:
[img]https://i.redditmedia.com/fr5JyR0PG1lsXr8vn16PJ7k9Cp2dt6Ov52WENpxaajU.png?w=676&s=27178f556c37fe993d6163f314749ef7[/img]
[hr]I like to take your ideas and supersize them. This isn't criticism, it is flattery. I come with nothing but good will and a spirit of team-building. If you take what I write any other way, that is probably just because I wasn't very clear.
Some of that looks like some poor settings O.O
Normally I prefer utter realism, especially in proportions, even in a fantastical setting. This has to do with suspension of disbelief. If the setting is more realistic, it makes the fantastical elements stand out more and mean more. For example, if I'm walking down a dark alley, and a ghoul comes at me, but it has ridiculously cartoonish proportions, big gold teeth caps, and a rapper chain on... it's not scary, not in the slightest. But, if it's proportioned and shaped like a human that's been ripped up and put back together wrong, and the lighting and other characters went for realism too, then it could be suitably terrifying. Realism makes fantasy better.
However, I would say the one exception is comic book stuff. I'm used to seeing comic book stuff as cartoons or comics, with outlines, and odd proportions. There are some drawings of Batman and Superman where their jaw is three times the size Jay Leno's. But, with the art style, it still looks correct, somehow, so long as you don't focus on it. So when it comes to art in this game, I can go with anywhere between western comic book cartoony to realism. It just can't go further on the cartoony scale than western comic book. If it hits obligate loony tunes or obligate anime, then it's gone too far.
Like
[img]https://78.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_ltpeitmHW81qfxwtoo1_500.jpg[/img]
Humberto Ramos artwork? Love his style too :) Wouldn't mind the game looking like his work! Which shows, I can like different styles. I'm just afraid of an Alex Ross or Gary Frank looking game :/
I've always loved (male) Worgen (the females look terribad though, like pissed of chihuhuas (sure their models are high quality, they're just stupid looking)).
I really hope that we'll have the parts to make something similar, even if not at launch (though maybe at launch, there is a canon humanoid-wolf character already, after all).
He did the art for the Runaways stuff when it was starting to get bad. Reminds me of the WoW comics.
Give me a Bruce Timm or Cheeks-74 art style. Cheeks did the designs for the Spectacular Spiderman TV series (IIRC), great series, possibly the best Spiderman show.
"Let the past die. Kill it if you have to."
My understanding is that a lot of such aesthetic/stylistic choices is done through shaders so asset packs can be fairly "generic" and still look like they fit in due to how those shaders change them. Of course there can always be asset packs that need special care to fit in but I think those are the exception but for properly built games that is much more of an exception.
Since "asset flip" games don't seem to care about making anything more then a quick buck so spending time on shaders is just wasted resources for them, which makes it painfully obvious that they are an "asset flip" game.
We've showcased certain scenes and GIFs and all that to showcase the rendering style and all that. A game that has as variation like this needs to adapt to different levels of believably. I have always stated Semi-Realism rather than aiming for actual realism (More along the lines of beefed up CoX cinematics with a hint of Arkham/Injustice level fidelity in character materials.) We want expresssions on characters to be a tiny bit exagerrated like a comic book while retaining some real life quality. We do want lifelike materials on characters so skin feels like skin, leather feels like leather, metals feels like metal.
While I can't make you -smell- the materials, I'm definitely going to make you want to -touch- the materials :P
Sharing a few from a long while ago in production. (reminder, we are FAR ahead at this point but we're saving those for later) If you've followed up with certain areas of our announcements you should be caught up by now on what style we have anyway. You'll get better idea along the way.
[img]https://i.imgur.com/RWaBp3s.gif[/img]
[img]https://i.imgur.com/JRpuzpU.png[/img]
[img]https://i.imgur.com/7yXit0Y.jpg[/img]
[img]https://i.imgur.com/pM2sBBA.jpg[/img]
[img]https://i.imgur.com/6YnbJQK.jpg[/img]
Charles Logan
www.cloganart.com
Damn! These graphics are just the top of the iceberg from some time ago? This game is gonna look awesome!
"A sad spectacle. If they be inhabited, what a scope for misery and folly. If they be not inhabited, what a waste of space." ~ Thomas Carlyle
You said it, rook. I can’t wait to see more!
From my point of view, I can say you've succeeded in all these goals. I almost think I can smell the materials.
Spurn all ye kindle.
Thanks for the kind words, but we are aware that we can't please everybody with all the decisions. These decisions were made for reasons, so over time, especially when the Character Creator is released, you will understand the reasoning behind all this more we believe.
Charles Logan
www.cloganart.com
As has been stated before I suspect 99% of our collective questions and bickering will disappear once we can start playing with these things ourselves. Thanks for giving us some more info on the subject and pics (old or new) to look at.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
Fair enough. As Darth Fez has said to me in the past, we all need to be prepared for the likelihood that there will be at least one or two things about the game that we don't like, and focus instead on the positive majority of the game.
I really enjoyed those last 6 shots of facial expressions. I don't recall seeing those before.
(The first 4 frames of that look like a storyboard, where after the fourth the guy says, 'Shrinkage!')
Spurn all ye kindle.
I guaran-dang-tee that there were at least a couple things people didn't like about COH and every other game they've played. If you want a game with everything you love and nothing you don't care for, you'd have to make it yourself for you only, and there would still probably be some things you didn't like in the end. Some people are just not happy unless they have something to complain about, ironically enough.
(insert pithy comment here)
I know I had gripes. CoH was grindy, and there was no way to design characters with anything but human-looking faces without them looking awful.
An infinite number of tries doesn't mean that any one of those tries will succeed. I could flip an infinite number of pennies an infinite number of times and, barring genuine randomness, they will never come up "Waffles".
Hmmm...
Couldn't put Street Justice Animations into Martial Arts and vice versa.
Almost all blasting sets had the most boring of attack animations (except Dual Pistols, which is why it was so awesome to play!)
Epic Pools sucked!
Yup. Somethings I totally disliked. Not hate. Dislike. I say that as someone who would totally say I hate something! :)
I really liked the nova animation for blasters!
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[color=#FF0000]Graphic Designer[/color]
They were nice. I was thinking more in line with the general blast animations. They needed more movement! :) Unless I guess, I wanted to feel like a Cyclops as a turrent.
Speaking of blast animations I hated the first tier fire blast power, Flares or whatever? You like stand there like a zombie as tiny flames come out of your hands, so weird looking.
"Let the past die. Kill it if you have to."
Yep and the coloring and animation never looked right on them. No matter what color combination you chose the whole thing looked like you were shooting ugly streamers.
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[color=#FF0000]Graphic Designer[/color]
Aye, I found colour customisation to have that sort of problem with lots of powers. The light & dark colour combo looked great in the original version, but none of the combinations we could set had the same balance, so often they ended up looking like photographic negatives. It didn't help that for some reason there was no combination one could select in customisation that exactly reproduced the original colours.
Spurn all ye kindle.
Yeah. Color was never intended to be customizable in CoH, so to do it they had to really jury rig the code. You could get some cool unintended effects that some people used creatively to good effect, but it could be hard to get a power to look like it was supposed to.
FIGHT EVIL! (or go cause trouble so the Heroes have something to do.)
Thanks to these unintended effects I turned fire into stink, for one of my favorite sillier characters.
"Let the past die. Kill it if you have to."
I saw one guy on Virtue who used the dark scrapper power set to make a desert ghost hero. He made the darkness auras a tanish color and it really looked like moving, flowing sand!
FIGHT EVIL! (or go cause trouble so the Heroes have something to do.)
I enjoyed seeing the pictures cloganart. I patiently await the day when I get to see that level of detail with the skin with the addition of all the different hair styles!
The Carnival of Light in the Phoenix Rising
"We never lose our demons, we only learn to live above them." - The Ancient One
Avatar by lilshironeko
That sounds awesome. :D
Part of the problem was that we could only choose two colors to tint our powers but the original powers used at least three colors, in some cases, so it was impossible to match your secondary set to your primary unless you changed them both.
"I don't think you understand the gravity of your situation."
Hopefully I'll be able to remake Skunk Girl on CoT.
"Let the past die. Kill it if you have to."
[img]https://professormortis.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/skunk.jpg[/img]
#ROTOR ...2?
I know CO is widely hated here, but I think CO's art style is just about perfect for a game based off comic books. I think a tooled up version would have been awesome. More akin to a mix of CO and Wildstar. If the graphics are too realistic, it'll take me out of it, and make it feel like i am playing an MCU movie-based game. I don't want that.
My DeviantArt page
http://shamanatdawn.deviantart.com/
I get the concerns about having CoT be too "realistic" if for no other reason than it's currently hard to pull that off without falling into various uncanny valleys. On the other hand I would have to agree with the collective majority in saying that the CO style art went too far into "cartoony" territory. Yes I get that CoT will technically be a "comic book" game but that doesn't mean the art style needs to be as overtly "unrealistic" as CO was.
It's hard to describe what I'd want in an "art style" using words alone, but if the Devs of CoT can pull off making CoT look like what CoH would have looked like using 2018 era software quality/techniques instead of 2004 era standards I'd probably be happy. Basically CoT just needs to be the "2018 version of CoH" in terms of graphics style/quality.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
I don’t like CO’s art style for two reasons.
1) Every human face is identical. Seriously, if you took two males or two females you could only tell them apart with hairstyle or facial hair. It’s like they just assumed you’d cover it with a mask so skipped that part of character design.
2) It’s very dated. I think you kind of acknowledged that with your “tooled up” comment but it’s really dated. Not as much as CoH of course but the graphics are so crude and old school that it’s hard to look at it compared to a modern game. Even for something trying to emulate comic books; I hate to say it but comic books look more sophisticated these days than CoH.
In general their aesthetic isn’t too bad, but they’re a bit too unrealistic and I feel like I’m playing with a toy than a person. It’s reminiscent of Skylanders or the late Disney Infinity, two game series where your character was literally a toy. What I see so far from CoT has more promise.
By the way, I don’t hate CO. I have more time playing that game than any other superhero game. But we need a newer generation of games.
I always thought CO tried to emulate cartoons more than comics.
FFXIV with more slider and options would be a good style. Blade & Soul would be a good style.
WildStar is more cartoon than comic book imo. I mean sure, you can have comics that look loony toons, but I believe that makes the point.
That would likely be because few people went to the facial sliders. I don't have access to CO ATM, but I do recall the facial sliders. I also recall difficulty in making oriental-looking characters, so you may actually have a point...
Foradain, Mage of Phoenix Rising.
[url=https://cityoftitans.com/forum/foradains-character-conclave]Foradain's Character Conclave[/url]
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Avatar courtesy of [s]Satellite9[/s] [url=https://www.instagram.com/irezoomie/]Irezoomie[/url]
This MvCI image is pretty much what I would love to see. Any more realism and I would find it distracting. An less and it feel inadequate to me.
[img=1200x480]https://dontfeedthegamers.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/marvel-vs-capcom-infinite-collectors-edition-images_1gsq.jpg[/img]
That image is inconsistant. The textures on the outfit are hyperrealistic, yet the sash and hair are not, and the face is stylistic, (or realistic for a 10 year old girl).
Is that a photograph of a scale model? If so, then I understand that the different elements all had their own manufacturing processes. If it was computer generated, then I would expect it to have a more consistent approach.
[hr]I like to take your ideas and supersize them. This isn't criticism, it is flattery. I come with nothing but good will and a spirit of team-building. If you take what I write any other way, that is probably just because I wasn't very clear.
It's a 3d rendering of a statuette. This is what it looks like after it is printed.
[img=640x480]http://marveltoynews.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/IMG_2713.jpg[/img]
The game can look like anything so long as the characters and creatures don't look too plastic-y imo. An example of too plastic-y would be Ark survival evolved. All the characters and creatures have shiny skin. It's like playing with a bunch of action figures. Also another example is the game witch hunt. All the characters look like they're made of plastic. So long as CoT stays away from that they can go with what ever art style they want for me.
That has to be the best distillation of the problems with the character model in CO that I've ever heard.
Spurn all ye kindle.
I spent quite a bit of time playing with the sliders, struggling to make a female character not look like a bug-eyed fish person. Cannot be done. For a male, everyone looks like Mr. Incredible, you just pick if his lantern jaw is wide or skinny, prominent or recessed, etc. You literally have one face you stretch out in different directions with sliders then put facial hair on.
I just gave up and made sure everyone had a mask.
I didn't mean identical to CO, I just meant I don't want it, or rather my idea of what I would've liked would be NOT hyper realistic. That's boring. Maybe something akin to SWTOR on hyper graphics. With obviously more sliders and such. If it looks like every triple a game out there, it won't stand out (to me).
I'm not sure about every CO character looking the same, none of mine do.
My DeviantArt page
http://shamanatdawn.deviantart.com/
Hopefully it won't be long until we get a trailer-like video of gameplay where we will get a really good sense for how this game will be, the graphics, movement, etc etc etc.I would hope they'd want to show that off to us ASAP since we are supposedly drawing close to some kind of release. Well, I see 'close' as meaning up to a year or two before release since that seems to be the industry average.
Compulsively clicking the refresh button until the next update.
That screenshot the CoT devs gave us from Halloween seemed to be right on the mark for what everyone has talked about wanting for an art style. It is only one screenshot but it did look like it captured that CoH look and feel.
I think some has to do with sliders. People want sliders, then get so many, they're lazy on using them and/or they like one look so much, they have a tendency to stick with that one look, making them all look alike. I know I didn't think mine looked all alike.
You could make different faces in CO... If you didn't mind them looking inhuman.
But in all seriousness you could change the face around a bit but it still ended up a bit samey...
Actually that is very comic book cartoon. Bruce Timm's designs spring to mind. Nothing against the guy, I love his style and the cartoons with it it's just that a lot of people look pretty similar.
"Let the past die. Kill it if you have to."
I remember reading once that the reason anime girls have all the colorful hair styles was to help distinguish them from one another as facial features alone wasn't sufficient. I only have a passing interest in anime/manga so maybe someone with more knowledge on the subject could confirm or deny my memory.
I agree with PH though, American comics originally tended to have a sameness about their heroes facial features, something that can still be seen today like PH's Bruce Timm example. This has to do with the art style. Traditional heroic or villainous traits are emphasized to create an immediate recognition. Square jaws and chiseled physiques for your heroes while prominent brows and hunched posture were traits for villains (as a general guideline not as a rule). This has changed quite a bit since those days and comic styles vary greatly from artist to artist now.
I personally would be content with a variety of facial pre-sets and would likely never delve too deep into that subset of sliders. But facial customization is popular so despite the fact I won't get much use from them, I would still feel the game made a mistake if it did not include them.
There's an artist I follow on DA [url=https://nebezial.deviantart.com/]Nebezial[/url] / [url=https://shiniez.deviantart.com/]Shiniez[/url] a popular artist on DA, who's done comic books as well (both mainstream and his own) I find does this often, even more so now when his art style improved in a sense of...I want to say...realism. I thought the faces were much more different in his earlier days.
I even commented on it, when wondering if one of his pics was his character cos-playing as the characters or if it was the characters themselves. :p
oh heck yeah! I love Stjepan Sejic's artwork. I have the first 5 volumes of Sunstone, and follow his work with Top Cow comics.
My DeviantArt page
http://shamanatdawn.deviantart.com/
Pitching in since I've been a bit vocal about the overall look of CoT.
It might be because of the nighttime setting, but this looks 100% better than much of the dev images we've seen since it lacks the overt shiny and clean look. Only thing I could think to improve on is a bit more of "grit" added in although any ideas for implementing said grit escape me.
[B]Revenge is motivation enough. At least it's honest...[/B]
Roleplayer; Esteemed Villain
[img]http://www.nodiatis.com/pub/5.jpg[/img]
I think a lot of the other images we've seen Haven't had the correct in world lighting on them.
Though speaking of lighting hopefully on the costume creator we'll be able to apply different lighting styles used in the game so we can see how our costumes will look under different light options.
"Let the past die. Kill it if you have to."
That’s one thing I liked about the character creator in Black Desert Online. You can see what you’d look like in many different lighting scenarios (day, night, indoors, etc.).
FF14 does that too. They do a lot of stuff I'd like to see in more MMOs
"Let the past die. Kill it if you have to."
FFXIV and Blade & Soul have that option as well with the different lighting options.
I would prefer more "neutral look." thus far this appears the direction they are going for which is fine by me. although, I would assume that one could "tweek" any characters look via the sliders a lil bit in the attempt to achieve a specific stylistic look they are looking for.
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I both agree and disagree. A "neutral" look wouldn't sway designs one way or another so you aren't compelled to keep every character within a certain concept or appearance (aside from, ya know, the Superhero part) however it would also cause a large clash in terms of various styles. Darkedge, Avenger of the Night would look super out of place next to Princess Sparklepants of the Neo Solar Empire. A good example is CO which allows [i]so many various styles[/i] of design that rarely if ever mesh together well whereas CoH was very toned down on most of its costume concepts (aside from some of the crazier ones like the Elemental sets) that most everything looked like it fit.
[B]Revenge is motivation enough. At least it's honest...[/B]
Roleplayer; Esteemed Villain
[img]http://www.nodiatis.com/pub/5.jpg[/img]
You bring up a good point. No matter what art style CoT goes with, I hope they are consistent. Wildstar is a great example of consistency in artistic design. Even the hi-res cutscenes are consistent with the in-game art style. It takes a strong central authority to be able to say, "I like it, but it's not consistent stylewise. Do it over" Especially in an all-volunteer environment like this.
[hr]I like to take your ideas and supersize them. This isn't criticism, it is flattery. I come with nothing but good will and a spirit of team-building. If you take what I write any other way, that is probably just because I wasn't very clear.