[FILLED] Looking for artist(s) to develop new style for A Valley Without Wind.

[Misery]

I vote for a amorphous emerald bolt trailing leaf-like particles. Or a screaming monkey bazooka.

Fixed.

"Furious George"

....DO THIS.

The game needs more summons anyway, right?  I mean..... screaming monkey bazooka!  Every game should have one of these.

[Misery]

Also, I wanted to mention one other thing related to this whole issue:




This is a pretty good example of what I meant.

There's alot of brown in this colorscheme.  BUT.  This is still a bright, colorful screen.   Sky is blue, grass is proper green, various trees in the area are various tree-tastic colors, and even the brown isnt the "ZOMG GRITTY" of games like Gears.   Some argue that the color saturation may be a bit too high, which is possible, but it still outlines my point.

G's stuff, in comparison..... washed out.   EVERYTHING is washed out.  Everything in the pic is either "grit" brown, ugly "grit" brown, grey, unpleasant grey, or a sort of sick-looking green.    The character and the.... er..... floaty dude, those dont look too bad.  They're pretty well drawn and such.  But that background is horrid.   There's about 8 squillion games already using the "ZOMG GRIMDARK GRITTY!!1111" colorscheme these days, and one thing that initially drew me to this game was the very simple fact that it WASNT doing that, and therefore stood out.  The colors brown & grey was used in places that seemed to make sense, as opposed to the usual thing of making EVERYTHING brown & grey.   Even places like the desert areas in this game, which are mostly one dominant color, are at least still bright and vivid, instead of the GRIMDARK!!!1 that is so annoyingly trendy lately.

Maybe the abandoned town isnt the best example for G here.... what would their version of the Deciduous Forest look like?  Or the Lava Flats?   The screenshot they've shown various versions of, I find ugly as dirt, but that may not be the case with other area types..... though, somehow, I suspect it will be.

[eRe4s3r]

Except the world in AVWW is supposed to be the apocalypse in different time zones, the whole point of a style is to cater to the mood of a game, and this current style has absolutely no (coherent) mood. It's like having Pinkie Pie over for a funeral. Completely erratic color and sense over saturation, that is.

How bad it is is really perfectly demonstrated by that screenshot. It took me like 10 seconds to even find where the character is standing because everything is more saturated and colorful than the char is. (Including the ground he stands on ,p) I think the art mockup by G is perfectly showcasing how it should look, it can always be brighter and colorful as long as the character is always the most noticeable piece of art on the screen.

[Coppermantis]

It's like having Pinkie Pie over for a funeral.

 


However, I do think Misery has a point. I like G's art overall, but depending on the region there should be some more color. I honestly would have been fine with the first of G's art with the Pinkish armor and cartoony look. Perhaps a more proportionate character but the style was a nice mix between what the public seems to want and the current style. Maybe brighten up the current G a little more and we have a good compromise?

[Misery]

It's like having Pinkie Pie over for a funeral.

 


However, I do think Misery has a point. I like G's art overall, but depending on the region there should be some more color. I honestly would have been fine with the first of G's art with the Pinkish armor and cartoony look. Perhaps a more proportionate character but the style was a nice mix between what the public seems to want and the current style. Maybe brighten up the current G a little more and we have a good compromise?

Aye, pretty much that.

I've had the thought before of "hm, but it's an apocalypse sort of thing".   The one in this game, though, isnt the normal sort.   Now, the Skelebot Junkyard area..... THAT makes sense, to look like that.  That is exactly the area I EXPECT to look dreary and washed out (or to have a dark, metallic look).   Other time shards though..... well, that's what they are:  Time shards.  It's not a world that got hit by a giant nuclear fireball of horrible doom;  it's a world that's stitched together from multiple time periods;  this concept allows for many different themes, graphically, among the different areas.  Something like the Deciduous Forest?  SHOULD be bright and colorful (and full of monsters of course).    The Abandoned Towns as they are right now look about right to me;  the area is bright and vivid, but they're eerily devoid of any actual population.


There are damaged areas in the game due to the general chaos..... usually represented by destroyed rooms...... but it seems alot of things were left intact (or at least mostly intact).  Having the ENTIRE GAME WORLD be all "dreary apocalypse" would frankly be pretty dull.   It's been done absolutely to death.   I'd get a little tired of exploring if I'd go into an area and "Oh.... yeah.  Another smashed up place, just like the previous 239560274567 areas.   Goody.  How very exciting."

[x4000]

I saw an interesting post on the SA forums today from someone involved with a recently failed Kickstarter project. (Retrovirus, an interesting little game that I'm kind of disappointed didn't make its goals.) Since there's a Kickstarter looming in the future, I thought some of that information might be interesting or useful for you guys.

Very interesting stuff.  Just watched their video and looked at their Kickstarter page.  I can see a lot of reasons why it didn't do well.  The developer himself summed it up best:

Looking at Kickstarter as a metagame, we failed to adequately explain the differences between a successful funding drive and a failed one, and we also failed to provide the urgency that so many other projects thrive on. Truthfully, there wasn't a financial knife to our necks, and I think that made people waver some in pledging to us. Obsurveyor pointed that out here a week or so ago, and was correct in doing so. We needed to be more clear about what our funding was going to do for us, and for the players funding us.

Basically: their game already looked really gorgeous and fun, and the things they were touting would only be of interest to a few people.  "Voice acting" and "modding tools sooner" were the only things that really came across to me out of their pitch.  For someone intensely interested in modding the game, then great.  For 99.99% of the rest of players, why invest in something you wouldn't even use and which relies on unknown third parties (modders) to create something of unknown quality?  I mean, even major games struggle to get quality mods a lot of the times, so the prospect of a few modders working on an indie engine is not inherently that exciting.

Similarly, while a lot of people like voice acting, they didn't show anything related to story mode or whatever would need voice acting in that video.  So it really seems like a superfluous expense.  The game itself is cool, but in no way would I have funded that kickstarter either.

It's quite possible that there was a lot more that they were planning to do with this money, but that didn't come across in the video, and that's basically all that I watch to weed out the projects that I don't even want to read any more about.  The rest of their page was a clutter of information, most of which was superfluous to the kickstarter (telling about story, etc).  It wasn't to the point or a clear message in any way on the rest of that page.

So, there again, I can see why the press failed to pick it up and talk about it more: the press are generally busy and only give a casual glance to something they aren't intimately familiar with or immediately struck by, and in journalism parlance these guys "buried the lead."  Just watching their video, my impression -- and I'm sure I'm not alone in this -- is that the game sounded interesting, but seemed to be doing great on its own, and I had interest in neither modding tools nor expensive voice acting, so this kickstarter was immediately of no interest.  Though it did flag me to remember to keep an eye on the game itself in the future, because their video did sell that well.

TLDR: These guys are right that they aren't very good at PR, but it looks like they're making quite awesome games.  I wish them the best, and I hope that they get what they need to make it a success.  But their experience with kickstarter doesn't inherently worry me, because if we fail (which we may very well) it won't be for the same reasons as them.  We'll clearly articulate what the stakes are, and the main reason for failure should hopefully be lack of interest in what we're trying to do (revamp the art) if we fail.

[x4000]

Regarding the whole "this is too brown" thing: I agree with basically all of the above, and don't worry. 

Essentially, if you look at the game as it stands now, most areas of the game have really strong color sets: the grasslands very green and blue; the junkyards very poison green and brown; the lava flats very red; the ice age very white and blue; the forests very green, brown, and yellow (with bits of blue, or lots of orange depending on the forest type); etc.  I don't want or expect any of that to change.

However, the abandoned towns are one of the ugliest parts of the game because they don't have a consistent color scheme at the moment.  And given their theme, I think that their colors are appropriate.

Once this particular scene has been done by all three studios (and Studio H is now going to be doing both a painterly and a pixelart version, by the way), then the next step is choosing one of them based on that scene and their animation skills.  Then before we ever hit the level of a kickstarter, my next goal is to have them do one or two other area/enemy mockups.  I don't think that one area is going to sell this idea to a kickstarter crowd, and also I don't want people to get the impression that this is going to go all monochrome. 

The deciduous forests are also kind of ugly, so would make a great comparison screenshot for them to do.  And those could be suitably brighter.  And possibly if need be we could have them do the desert or something, although the background there already looks wicked good.  It's mainly some of the buildings and the ground itself that look bad there, so that would have to be emphasized.

We'll see; to do this right, we're further out from a kickstarter than I had originally hoped.  But it's certainly a good process to take the appropriate amount of time with.

[x4000]

The latest from Studio K:

I'm sending you a rough sample of the Darren's running animation...let me know what you think about it. It's still rough and still needs a lot of work but we're just wanna let you know the progress, and as always feel free to give comments so we can do that along with the revisions we'll going to make...We're on jumping animation now so hopefully we can send it tomorrow for you to check out...

[Mánagarmr]

Aside from the fact that he seems to be missing a nose, that looks quite ok, by my standards. K is definitely a contender with their more distinctive pixelart style. I likes! G is still appealing to me more though, but it will likely come down to coherence and how it looks in movement (animation) more so than style.

[x4000]

The problem with the pixelart style from K is that it is easily 2-3x more expensive than either of the other styles.  Given that G is so compelling (and so much faster developed), I've asked K to halt work on their pixelart efforts.  I really like a lot of what they did, and it was a good experiment, but I don't feel it's right for the game.

Part of it also is that it's too big a departure for the graphics of the game.  I'm talking with K about some alternative options that we might be able to explore with their studio at a lower cost (basically trying to improve what is already there and add to it, which isn't an approach that we've yet tried with any studio; and I don't know if that will fit with K or be to their interests, but it strikes me as one unexplored avenue to try).

Meanwhile, H is going to be doing both a pixelart and painterly style of the stuff that they have mocked up so far.

And meanwhile meanwhile, I still really love what G has put together thus far (and it's been lowest-cost and fastest, too, note).

[Mánagarmr]

Aye, in the end it's usually "money rules", and seeing as G's style is pretty much universally praised (Misery aside ) and cheaper by several magnitudes then... yeah.

If K had gone with the style they had in the enemy mockup, I would've loved if all of it was made that way. But then again, backgrounds could've been messy in that style.

H still needs to prove themselves to me. I just cannot stomach their style yet, so I'm waiting for more mockups.

G is like that gorgeous "girl next door". I can't stop looking

[x4000]

Pretty much sums up how I feel at this point, too.

Though I've seen H's other work, unlike others here, and I know that they do particularly amazing stuff when given the chance.  So I don't put a lot of stock in the crude mockups of their stuff yet.

[zebramatt]

I had hopes for K too!

Oh well.

[Mánagarmr]

I had hopes for K too!

Oh well.

Well, K aren't out of the picture. They're just spendy. We'll see.

[x4000]

I had hopes for K too!

Oh well.

Well, K aren't out of the picture. They're just spendy. We'll see.

Their pixelart style is out of the picture, anyhow.  And it remains to be seen if they'll agree to doing what amounts to an "extreme makeover touchup" of the existing assets, or if that's even feasible for them.