An Update On The "A Valley Without Wind" Art Rework Project

[keith.lamothe]

(And wow -- astrophysics?)

It'll be more impressive if I ever finish this freaking dissertation. You're not actually helping in that regard, by the way. 

It's all part of a ploy to make sure you're still working on that dissertation and unavailable to help stop the massive asteroid the AI's sending... oh wait.

[x4000]

That's unfortunate. 

No, what it means is that we've actually chosen a studio and are proceeding with the work. For the last month and a half we've been in perpetual mockup land, spending 3x as much as we would because we were doing everything in triplicate with three studios all working on stuff.  Now we get to the fun part of actually doing the work and updating the game!

Cheers, Vinraith!  Thanks for all your kinds words, and your super long-term support.  IIRC, you've been around with us since 2009 or thereabouts.  That's practically since the start!

I had to look that up but yeah, summer '09. It doesn't seem that long ago!

Yeah, I've known you on the forums here as long as I've known Keith!  It seems a bit longer to me.

(And wow -- astrophysics?)

It'll be more impressive if I ever finish this freaking dissertation. You're not actually helping in that regard, by the way. 

Oops, mea culpa. 

In terms of that item that zebramatt posted, note that that's not for AVWW; it's just something else from the portfolio of Heavy Cat in general, so it's a good view of the sort of things they are capable of.  But more that direction is where a lot of the current stuff is headed, even if exactly that wouldn't be technically feasible for the reasons I noted above.

Noted. Yes, I understand about the technical restrictions, but I'm pleased that in a general sense that's where things might be headed. In short, I prefer "painterly" to cartoony, myself. Honestly, though, whatever works best for you guys is fine, I care more about the mechanics than the art.

Agreed, I prefer painterly to cartoony also.   The difference is mainly in technique and shading, though, which is kind of interesting; it's all about how the piece is finished, not how it is sketched or laid out.

[Brise Bonbons]

The importance of finishing is not to be underestimated. Like refactoring code or editing a piece of writing, it's those later steps to really clean things up that make or break a drawing or painting. Even as an artist, this is a fact that's hard to keep in perspective when you see a really impressive piece of work from someone else. It's easy to think it just sprang from their tablet/pencil/brush fully formed, when it probably started just as rough as any other sketch, but was refined over time...

Anyway, I don't mean to preach. Point is you can't really judge the finished work based on early sketches, which is part of what made comparing the different studios so hard. Heavy Cat did things a little different, and sent really loose concepts, which allowed them to be very agile in responding to feedback and tuning the style to match the project. The other studios did much more polished, impressive work, but that's because they (more or less) jumped straight into final art mode. It seems like they sort of specialized in one style, too, whereas HC tries to embrace a range of tones and styles.

My biggest concern remains HC's character art. Not because it isn't solid, but because it is so different from AVWW's current art, which I actually really like. I hope they can capture the sort of realistic, naturally proportioned simplicity of the pre-2.0 art... I'm quite confident, they seem to be very hard working and dedicated.

Looking through their portfolio, I think AVWW just needs backgrounds done by whoever did the series of fantasy landscapes. O.o Holy crap those are good.

[BobTheJanitor]

I'd really like to see an actual game screen from them. So far we've just had rough sketch work and mockups. That's not bad, but I'd like to see something that you can point to and say 'this is what the game will look like'. Also from the samples, much of their style seems very anime, which I'm a little concerned with. I'm not a person that has a visceral negative reaction to anime, but those people are definitely out there, and they're usually quite vocal about their preferences. I'd hate for this to be an 'out of the frying pan, into the fire' scenario, if you get where I'm going. That said, they do seem to have some samples that go the more traditional western route, so I'm not too terribly worried. I'm just glad to hear that the kickstarter idea has been nixed. One, for all the many reasons there were to worry about it, which have mainly been covered. But two, because I always saw its chances of success as pretty shaky, and since it's not happening, I don't have to continue to worry about whether the art change will ever happen or not. Yay!

[yllamana]

I like the gameplay angle it could take. One of the things I feel is off about the gameplay at the moment is the ranges involved and how frequently you end up fighting an enemy that isn't even on the screen at all. I hope you'll consider making the overlords smaller but better animated for that reason as well.

I'm really interested to see how it all looks in motion.

[Nanashi]

Good luck.

[Mánagarmr]

*sigh* You chose the one studio who's art I just couldn't stand. Well, I hope they own up to the challenge.

[keith.lamothe]

*sigh* You chose the one studio who's art I just couldn't stand. Well, I hope they own up to the challenge.

Someone would have said that regardless of who we picked

[Vinraith]

It's all part of a ploy to make sure you're still working on that dissertation and unavailable to help stop the massive asteroid the AI's sending... oh wait.

Dammit, who toggled that ai plot on? 

Yeah, I've known you on the forums here as long as I've known Keith!  It seems a bit longer to me.

Now that's just odd to think about, even from my end. I do remember the first time Keith popped up on RPS answering questions on behalf of Arcen though, and my wondering "who the heck is this guy?" 

Oops, mea culpa. 

Well, the alternative interpretation is that you're doing your part to keep me sane, let's go with that one.

Agreed, I prefer painterly to cartoony also.   The difference is mainly in technique and shading, though, which is kind of interesting; it's all about how the piece is finished, not how it is sketched or laid out.

And ultimately that's why I trust this will all work out fine, even if some of the preliminary art is slightly off-putting.

[x4000]

I thought you'd find that an amusing comparison with Keith.

Anyhow, all good. Cheers!

[Wingflier]

New screenshot looks fantastic.  Release so near to Diablo 3 was unfortunate, but you probably could have asked most of your gaming community and they would have told you that was going to happen.  Blizzard games have classically created a black hole for other companies for several months after their release - this is more or less common knowledge amongst the gaming world.

Anyway, I love the new art style and I hope with some more hard work and a well-timed expansion you can bring this game back to life.

[Misery]

*sigh* You chose the one studio who's art I just couldn't stand. Well, I hope they own up to the challenge.

Someone would have said that regardless of who we picked

And amazingly, it was someone other than me.     

[BobTheJanitor]

Blizzard games have classically created a black hole for other companies for several months after their release - this is more or less common knowledge amongst the gaming world.

Although maybe that won't happen so much in the future, after the rather mixed reaction to D3. But that's a tangent that could go on for pages, so I guess I should leave the D3 discussion in the off topic thread that's already like 20 pages long.

Any news on when we might get to see an actual (not sketched or mocked up or patched together) shot of what their art revamp will look like?

[Wingflier]

With Mists of Pandora and Guild Wars 2 coming out at practically the same time, I hope Arenanet buries Blizzard. But yeah, off topic ;p

[Misery]

Ok, here's a question about the art:


What about spell effects?

To me, these all seem fine, they seem to be made of various particle effects rather than sprites of any sort (at least, as far as I can tell by looking at them) and for the most part, they all look pretty cool.  Obviously a few of them would end up being changed, mostly the summons in any case, but I'm wondering about the rest of them.   I'd prefer to have them mostly be left alone, but that's just me, I dunno what others think about that.   As best I can remember, the spell effects werent really discussed all that much in the overall art discussion.